Many thanks to Carolyn Miller, who voluntarily typed the entire text without complaint, making many valuable suggestions along the way. I’m also grateful to my daughter, Jenessa, for her thorough and merciless editing. Just knowing I would be subject to her scrutiny inspired me to be clearer.
THE READER WILL NOTICE that throughout this book I rarely use Zen or Buddhist terminology, such as emptiness or nonduality. In language and in content, I have tried to avoid the esoteric and philosophical. This aversion to the philosophical has been a consistent theme in my life; in fact, I left graduate school in philosophy because it was too philosophical!As our protective veneer wears thin, we’ll find ourselves encountering more and more frightening or painful experiences. Sometimes we can enter into them deeply. Other times we’ll resist mightily. Whatever happens, everything we meet is an opportunity to practice. Everything that comes up is an opportunity to learn. This is especially true of our disappointments. To the extent that we can learn from our disappointments, to that extent we will be able to practice with all the ups and downs of life.
We had been skating on thin ice. No matter what we do, no matter how good our intentions are, there’s no way to guarantee that we can avoid falling into the icy water.When uncomfortable things happen to us, we rarely want to have anything to do with them. We might respond with the belief “Things shouldn’t be this way” or “Life shouldn’t be so messy.” Who says? Who says life shouldn’t be a mess? When life is not fitting our expectations of how it’s supposed to be, we usually try to change it to fit our expectations. But the key to practice is not to try to change our life but to change our relationship to our expectations—to learn to see whatever is happening as our path.When we’re in distress, this is often one of the hardest things to do, because we so want to defend ourselves. We so want to be right. But it is much more helpful to look at what we ourselves have brought to the situation—beliefs, expectations, requirements, and cravings. Then we might gradually come to understand that whenever we’re having an emotional reaction, it’s a signal that we have some belief system in place that we haven’t yet looked at deeply enough.Intellectually we may realize that we need to look deeply inside, yet we don’t really know it. There are people we laugh at because they can’t see the most obvious things about themselves. Well, those people are us! We have to acknowledge that we often simply don’t want to see the aspects of ourselves that cause us distress. We basically want life to please us—to feel comfortable and secure. Our last priority is to expose our own shaky supports, the tenuous beliefs that stand between us and unknown territory. Why? Because investigating ourselves at this level doesn’t necessarily feel good. But until we become aware of all the ways in which we keep ourselves oblivious to what lies under the ice, we will continue to simply glide along with no direction.The willingness to learn from our disappointments and disillusionments is key. Pain we thought we could never endure becomes approachable. As we cultivate our willingness to just be, we discover that everything is workable. Until we come to know what this means, we are cutting ourselves off from the openness, the connectedness, and the appreciation that are our human gifts.
The lion tamer’s control strategy is never to show fear. Every time he leaves the cage, he is dripping with sweat, but he never lets the lions know that he’s afraid. He must maintain the illusion that he is in charge. Even when a lion bites his calf and blood is dripping into his boot, he won’t leave the cage. He stays to finish the act, to maintain his stance of control of these animals, knowing they could tear him apart in the blink of an eye.The Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön likens our ego to a room, a protective cocoon we spin exactly as we’d like it. The temperature is always just right, we hear only the music we want to hear, we eat only the food we want to eat, and perhaps best of all, we only allow the people we like into our room. In short, we make our life exactly the way we want it—pleasing, comfortable, and safe.Of the many paths that there are in this life,
There is only one that is worthwhile—The path of the truly human being.We can then ask ourselves the simple practice question “What is going on right now?” Are we just trying to look good? Are we motivated by the need simply to be comfortable or secure? Are we ruled by the desire for money or possessions? Does our distress come from our pursuit of status or power? Does our anxiety tie in to our craving for approval? Are we just holding on, trying to maintain control? All these patterns lead to a life of no real satisfaction—in other words, a substitute life.Until we turn and face what we’ve spent our whole lives avoiding, what are we really doing with our lives? Practice is not some pretty thing we do just on a meditation cushion. Until we learn to observe ourselves objectively, we will remain prisoners of our substitute life. Yet as we live the practice life, looking with increasing honesty at all the ways that we’ve held ourselves back in fear, we can also begin to experience the freedom of stepping outside our protected room and into the genuine life that awaits us.
LET’S IMAGINE OURSELVES as a big piece of Swiss cheese, including all the holes. The holes are our identities, mental constructs, desires, blind spots, stuck places—all those aspects of ourselves that seem to get in the way of realizing our “cheese nature.” Sometimes when a meditator gets a glimpse that he’s the whole cheese, he forgets that he’s also the little holes and instead sees himself as a big cheese. However, we are more likely to identify solely with the little holes—being fearful, being a victim, being confused, being right, and so on. In doing so, we forget our basic cheese nature—the vastness, God, call it what you will. We are the little holes; we can’t ignore that. But we’re also the whole cheese, and we can’t ignore that either. When we finally see the little holes for what they are, then we see they are truly holes—that is, of no substantial reality.Clarifying our beliefs is not about analyzing or eradicating or changing them. It’s about seeing clearly what they are (not what they’re about).Thought-labeling is a precise tool that can help in two ways. First, it breaks our identification with our thinking, allowing us to learn to see our thoughts as just thoughts. Second, it allows us to know what we’re thinking. Let’s say you’re sitting in meditation, trying to be aware of the breath, and you notice that you’re thinking about what a busy day you have ahead of you. To thought-label, you would simply repeat this thought to yourself, saying, “Having a thought that I have too much to do.” It’s like having a parrot on your shoulder, stating the thoughts verbatim as they arise in the mind.The first time I met Joko Beck was in a formal interview at a retreat, and I was anxious about how to relate to a famous Zen teacher. I sat down and told her my name. She asked me, “Where are you from?” I immediately froze in fear; I thought she was asking me the ultimate Zen question. When I answered “I don’t know,” she burst out laughing. She meant “Where did I live?”! I had come in with so many assumptions—about what Zen was, what a famous Zen teacher would be like, who I was supposed to be—and it never occurred to me to inspect these pictures. Because I had not yet learned the value of labeling thoughts, I bought into my pictures as uninspected truths. Since then I have seen time and again how crucial this basic practice of thought-labeling can be in clarifying the countless layers of illusions that silently run our lives.To get a taste of this, become aware right now. What do you feel in your body? Where are your strongest sensations? Pick one sensation: specifically how does it feel? What is its texture? Now become aware of the environment. Are there any sounds? How does the air feel on your skin? Notice how unfamiliar this experiencing of the physical reality of the present moment may be to you. Notice the sense of presence that comes upon leaving the mental world and entering the physical experience of the moment. This experiencing is only possible when we are not caught in thinking.
To get a taste of the Three-by-Three, try this: first bring awareness to the sensations of the breath. Be sure you are feeling the physical quality of the breath, not just the thought of the breath. Now add to awareness the feeling of the air on your skin. Feel the temperature and the texture of the air. Now, while maintaining awareness of the breath and the air, expand your awareness to include the feeling of presence in your posture. Hold these three components—the breath, the air, and the posture—in awareness for three full breaths.For example, when I used to awaken in the early morning hours to unending anxious thoughts, the specific thought contents were not the issue. The thoughts were arising from the need to get control, to avoid the fear of chaos. So I would say, “Having a believed thought: things are out of control; I’ve got to get control.” This specific thought never actually went through my mind. I made it up to summarize and simplify the mental jumble. Identifying and labeling the process allowed me to return to the physical reality of the moment. When we are caught in thinking, our ability to experience the truth of the moment eludes us. The more we observe and come to know ourselves with clarity, the more we can see through our thought patterns, thereby entering the experiential world of the present moment.In this example, through the practice of experiencing, we could still feel some anxiety but not be anxious. We identify not so much with “me” or “my anxiety” but with the wider container of awareness that we are calling the witness. From this increased spaciousness, there is a stillness within which we can experience what’s going on. Our awareness is like the sky, and all the contents of awareness—thoughts, emotions, states of mind—are passing clouds. As we experience our emotions, we come to understand that they are not as dense and substantial as they appear. This thing we call an emotion is just a complex of thoughts and sensations, and like a cloud, it has no substantial reality. But the only way to make this understanding real is through the practice of experiencing itself, whereby we bring awareness to the physical reality of the moment.
The Buddha said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”
“What do you mean?” railed the farmer. “You’re supposed to be a great teacher!”
The Buddha replied, “Sir, it’s like this. All human beings have eighty-three problems. It’s a fact of life. Sure, a few problems may go away now and then, but soon enough others will arise. So we’ll always have eighty-three problems.”
The farmer responded indignantly, “Then what’s the good of all your teaching?”
The Buddha replied, “My teaching can’t help with the eighty-three problems, but perhaps it can help with the eighty-fourth problem.”
“What’s that?” asked the farmer.
“The eighty-fourth problem is that we don’t want to have any problems.”Resistance comes in many forms: not wanting to sit in meditation, choosing to spin off into our mental world, suppressing or avoiding emotional pain, finding fault with ourselves and our lives. No matter what form it takes, resistance brings no peace. Whatever we resist we actually strengthen, because we solidify it, empowering it to stay in our life.This reminds me of a story Pema Chödrön tells about a childhood friend who had recurring nightmares in which ferocious monsters would chase her through a house. Whenever she would close a door behind her, the monsters would open it and frighten her. Pema asked her what the monsters looked like, but she realized that she never really looked at them. However, the next time she had the nightmare, just as she was about to open a door to avoid being caught by the monsters, she was somehow able to stop running, turn around, and look at them. Although they were huge, with horrible features, they didn’t attack; they just jumped up and down. As she looked even closer, these three-dimensional colored monsters began to shrink into two-dimensional black-and-white shapes. Then she awoke, never to have that nightmare again.When I was finally ready to stop running away from my fears, Joko Beck gave me a practice tool that’s proved invaluable in working with unwanted experiences. The practice is to ask the question “What is this?” This question is really a Zen koan, because there is no way the answer can come from thinking about your experience. It can only come from actually experiencing it. In fact, the answer is the experience of the present moment itself. In Pema’s story, for example, when the friend turns around to look at the monsters, she is essentially asking, “What is this?”Whether resistance manifests as seeking distractions, spacing out, fantasizing, planning, or sleeping—what is it? What is it that blocks awareness in the present moment? Take a minute right now to simply be here. Feel any resistance to residing in the moment. Ask, “What is this?” How does the resistance feel in your body? What is its essence? Where is it located? What is its texture? Does it have a voice?Again ask the question “What is this?” Try to stay with the experience of it. If you drift away, come back and ask the question again. Stay with the resistance. Go deeper. Is it physical discomfort you’re resisting? Is it emotional discomfort? Can you bring to it the light touch of awareness? Can you stay with it for just one more breath? Can you enter into the willingness to experience the “whatness” of this resistance?Nevertheless, in living the practice life, our only real option is to persevere in including all of our experience, because our only other option is to keep pushing life away, with all the suffering that that entails.
Meditation practice can be divided into three parts. These three are not really separate and distinct; they are a continuum. For purposes of description, however, we will look at these three aspects of sitting as if they were separate entities.So this first aspect of sitting—being-in-the-body—simple as it sounds, is actually very difficult. Why? Because we don’t want to be here. A strong part of us prefers the self-centered dream of plans and fantasies. That’s what makes this practice so difficult: the constant, unromantic, nonexotic struggle just to be here. As we sit in wide-open awareness, however, as the body/mind gradually settles down, we can begin to enter the silence, in which passing thoughts no longer hook us. We enter the silence not by trying to enter, but through the constant soft effort to be present, allowing life to just be.We come to see that these emotional reactions—which we often fear and prefer to avoid—amount to little more than believed thoughts and strong or unpleasant physical sensations. We can see that when we are willing to experience them with precision and curiosity, we no longer have to fear them or push them away. Thus our belief systems become clarified.Our efforts to be in the body, and to label and experience, will inevitably “fail” at times. We will have periods of aspiration and effort, followed by dry spells and apathy. Ups and downs in practice are predictable and inevitable. That we seize these ups and downs as opportunities to judge ourselves as failures or as superstars is the problem. The countermeasure is always to simply persevere—to attend to one more breath, to label one more thought, to experience one more sensation, to enter just one more time into the heartspace. We can then experience for ourselves that it is ultimately possible to work with everything. It may not be possible today, but it is possible. In fact, it may take years of work in all three aspects of sitting practice for this understanding to become real to us.
Wanting to find the right answer, the student pulls out all his Zen books to read and study. When he returns to see the teacher, he’s almost strutting, he’s so sure he knows the answer to this question. Seeing the state he’s in, the teacher asks, “What’s the basic human problem?” And the student says, “There is no problem!” He’s so happy with his answer. The teacher just stares at him and says, “Then what are you doing here?” In that moment the student instantly deflates. His shoulders drop; his head drops; he feels totally humiliated. Peering at him, the teacher asks, “What are you experiencing right now?” The student, without even looking up, says, “I just feel like crawling into a hole.” At this point the teacher says to him, “If you can fully experience this feeling, then you’ll understand the basic human problem.”For example, suppose we’ve made the decision, very early on, that no one can be trusted. At some point long after making this decision, we find a partner who is pretty trustworthy, someone who demonstrates time and time again how trustworthy he is. But one time our partner does something that suggests that he can’t be trusted. With deadly aim we hone in on this instance, saying, “See! I knew you could never be trusted! No one can ever be trusted!” This single experience far outweighs all our positive experiences with our partner, because it’s what we’ve been expecting to see. This is how the decisions that we’ve made literally shape our experience. They don’t just reflect our experience; they color what we take in.We can come to see—to experience—that we are not broken, that we were never broken, and that we don’t need to be fixed. This is the essence of the practice life: continuing to see through the crippling boundaries that we ourselves maintain with our blind belief in the solid reality of our substitute life.
