The Noble Way of No Path

During the one-day retreat with Sharon Salzberg and Cheri Maples, they both explored the danger of feeling that peace or happiness are down the road for us, once we have practiced more. We believe that what we need is outside of ourselves, to be given to us by someone else or to be earned as a prize after lots of hard spiritual work. We think, "I'm not there yet," or, "I don't deserve it yet."

This is not a helpful way of thinking about progress, about making progress with our practice. Whatever we think we don't have is actually already within us. Cheri recalled Suzuki Roshi's famous quip, "All of you are perfect just as you are and you could use a little improvement." Personally, I know I live out of the "improvement" part of that truth, but not the "perfect" part. I don't believe it, deep down; I'm not there yet. And yet on an even deeper level, I'm already there. Buddha-nature is no respecter of persons.*  If you exist, then you've got it.

Sharon Salzberg said that she's heard Sylvia Boorstein speak of the Noble Eightfold Path as the Noble Eightfold Moment. Because the idea of a path can be misleading. Paths lead somewhere; we follow a path in order to get from one place to another. And we do want to get somewhere -- we want to become freer of suffering -- but the way to get there is to be here, where we are. The path is ennobling every moment we are on it. Sort of like M. C. Escher's impossible staircases. Wherever you think this path is going, you're already there.

It occurs to me it may be helpful to think instead of a Noble Eightfold Way. A way is a path, and it is also a method. "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way," as Mahatma Gandhi said.

* Acts 10:34, spoken by the apostle Peter (about God, not Buddha-nature). I didn't know that was the source, did you?

Commentary

Ever feel that your experience of the world has this texture?

An overlay of language, cluttering up everything. Even brushing one's teeth. (One of Thay's favorite meditation activities.)

Commentary. Unceasing commentary.

For me, it's sometimes brooding, a figuring-out of how I feel about something; sometimes it's chatty, interested in every little thing about life. Always, it's a drive to say something about something, to find just the right way that language can describe something.

I would like to find a way to direct, or at least to view, this commentary impulse so that it is useful for my writing, but not detrimental to mindfulness. Insofar as the introspective commentary adds to insight, I would like to keep it. Insofar as it is an annoying repetition of past scenes and well-rehearsed, petty opinions, then I would like to be done with it.

I know there is old, old habit energy at work here, originating in my younger years, perhaps even in past generations of my family. The habit of feeling that there was so much I could say, if only someone were listening. So much I could explain, if only someone asked. So much I could share, if only someone were curious. It is an energy that scared me at times, wondering if the flood of words, tomes' worth, might drive me mad, or if it already had. It is an energy that fires my writing and has brought me success and connection and much happiness.

There is a lot to ponder here.

Writing this out has brought me a bit of clarity about it all. Words put to skillful use, in this case. (I hope.)

My thanks to Francois-Marie Banier, whose photographs I happened upon. They touched me deeply.

Poetry Friday: Museum Vase

It all started with Suzuki Roshi.

At the Thursday morning zazen sit at the corner yoga studio yesterday, the facilitator, Linda, read a chapter from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. The passage started thusly:

We say our practice should be without gaining ideas, without any expectations, even of enlightenment. This does not mean, however, just to sit without any purpose. This practice free from gaining ideas is based on the Prajna Paramita Sutra. However, if you are not careful the sutra itself will give you a gaining idea. It says, "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." But if you attach to that statement, you are liable to be involved in dualistic ideas: here is you, form, and here is emptiness, which you are trying to realize through your form. So "form is emptiness, and emptiness is form" is still dualistic. But fortunately, our teaching goes on to say, "Form is form and emptiness is emptiness." Here there is no dualism.

    When you find it difficult to stop your mind while you are sitting and when you are still trying to stop your mind, this is the stage of "form is emptiness and emptiness is form." But while you are practicing in this dualistic way, more and more you will have oneness with your goal. And when your practice becomes effortless, you can stop your mind. This is the stage of "form is form and emptiness is emptiness."

Wow. "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" dualistic? Interesting. So interesting that I didn't even bother to try to stop my mind during the ensuing twenty minutes. Right away I knew I had my topic for this blog, and my typewriter mind got busy. The only thing that slowed it was my intense drowsiness. Eventually my focus was on keeping my eyes open and my body upright, and my mind faded in and out, meandering.

What persisted was an image of an urn or vase. A vessel, which had form, but also emptiness. Its emptiness is what gave it its form. As from the Tao Te Ching: "Pots are fashioned from clay/ but it's the hollow/ that makes a pot work ."*

Over the next twelve hours or so, phrases kept presenting themselves to me. "Wheat, oil, wine." "On old burdens." "Museum urn or vase or ..." "Still it dreams ... broods?" I knew it must be a poem that I had once memorized. Probably in high school: there was a certain sense-memory that came with the phrases, a chemical whiff of nervous excitement (boys) and a dim buzz (overhead fluorescent lights) that brought me back to that distant era. I kept thinking that the poem might be by Robert Graves, but Google proved that it wasn't.

Finally, finally, by searching on-line in a very particular way, I found the poem. It was "Museum Vase" by Robert Francis.

Museum Vase

It contains nothing.
We ask it
To contain nothing.

Having transcended use
It is endlessly
Content to be.

Still it broods
On old burdens --
Wheat, oil, wine.

Doing, being; form, emptiness. Interesting. (I wonder what I had to say about this poem when I was fifteen?)

Rising up from a depth of thirty-one years, a poem. A lotus in disguise? Maybe. Goodness knows that there is a lot of old muck down there.


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* From the translation by Red Pine. This word-by-word (or seal-by-word) diagram accompanied the passage where I found it on the website The Feminine Tao.

(1) mold (2) clay (3) thus (4) to create (5) a vessel

(6) as regards (7) its (8) not having

(9) has (10) a vessel (11) the same's (12) use