Recently I have been thinking about humility. I have noticed in the last couple of years how my memory is getting worse, and it never was that great. This means I find myself wanting to argue with someone who remembers something which I don’t believe happened, then seeing that it’s likely I just forgot it, and then apologizing. When I do this, I feel good and the other person generally feels good, and our relationship is strengthened rather than impaired. In my book, Zen in the Age of Anxiety, which will be available in bookstores in June, I talk about humility. Alan Watts used to say that one of the earth’s activities is, “to people.” Humility comes from the root word humus, which means earth or soil. Human beings came from the saltwater of the oceans and from the richness of the soil. Humus is aerated and moist because it’s not separate from the air and rain. It supports us, but not in the way we’re accustomed to. It’s a result of the the heating up and decomposing process of all manner of plant and animal life. When we allow ourselves to sink into the humus, beautiful wildflowers bloom where we are. There’s no security in being a wildflower. It feels much safer to be a polished stone, to look good to others and stand out in the world. Very little grows on a polished stone. Most of us have been stony for too many years. Try something different, and sink down into the earth. All the nourishment you need is there. With natural humility you to go all the way down into to the humus. You no longer stick up like you’re some big deal because you’ve got something that others don’t have. When you sink all the way into the ground you actually are a big deal—not because you are you, but because you are not you. You’ve touched the ground of all being, which is not a solid ground at all. It is aerated with all life. So instead of trying to be somebody special, natural humility allows you to be something much more. It allows you the freedom to be nobody in particular. Nobody to defend or uphold, nobody to judge good or bad, and no one in need of redemption.
1 Comment
My Japanese Zen meditation teachers emphasized the importance of not looking for results from meditation, but just continuing with it without evaluating its effectiveness. That said, there is a natural progression that takes place which generally has four stages: 1) What do I want to get from meditation? 2) What can I learn about myself? 3) What can I discover about my relationships and how can I deepen them? 4) Living wakefully from my own still center, the center of all life.
I have noticed over many years how often practitioners progress in this manner without even necessarily realizing it. Take Jerome for example, a mid-level manager at a health care organization. He was obsessed with hitting his quarterly targets, so he pushed his staff relentlessly and continually obsessed about everything related to his work. He feared being fired, or having to quit because of burnout from anxiety. His workaholic ethic no longer worked. But after his first year of daily meditation and retreat attendance, he complained that his anxiety had not diminished much. I pointed out how much he had learned about himself through his heightened awareness of his moods and reactivity. For the first time in his life, he was able to see his fear-based thinking, judgments, and beliefs WITHOUT criticizing himself or his staff. He had discovered how his high standards for himself and others limited his effectiveness. This meant that he had moved to the second stage of meditative awareness without even knowing it. During the next year or two of sitting accompanied by frequent meetings with a teacher, he began to see to see each time he wanted to jump in and control everything and everyone, and recognize these impulses so he could let them go without acting them out. As he got better at managing his own anxious induced impulses, his stress plummeted as did that of others in his office. His direct reports trusted him more and did better quality work. He had began to listen attentively rather than just being rigidly directive, ratcheting up his emotional intelligence as he began to experience his supervisees as allies. He had moved into third stage of meditative progress, building trust with those around him. For the first time, he was able to speak to others of his own fears and vulnerabilities openly. He spoke from his heart more, which inspired his team. With his work and home environment vastly improved he drifted away from our Zen Center, so I don’t know what happened after that. Others I have worked with have moved naturally into the fourth stage, however, tapping into, and learning to live wakefully from their own still centers, the still center of all life. This is what is referred to by Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen, as getting the dharma into “your skin, flesh, bone, and marrow.” My teacher Katagiri Roshi referred to this as developing “spiritual security.” It’s not that hard. All it requires is practice. In my last blog I mentioned that a meditation practice provides us with an opportunity to notice how dominated we can become by fear, especially when our external culture is so fear based, as ours seems to currently be.
As you deepen and strengthen your sitting practice, fears, which you may not even know were present, may gradually show themselves. I have found over the years that it can be very healthy to bring an attitude of curiosity toward this type of experience. Being alert and curious allows fear to become your teacher. “Curiouser and curiouser,” cried Alice in Wonderland as she saw her body grow larger and larger and larger. “Curiouser and curiouser,” said my student Wendy, who had the courage to see the depth and breadth of the fear within as she persisted in her meditation practice. Wendy’s persistence in this process resulted in her coming to realize that none of her fears were absolutely true and most of them were memories from childhood or adolescence that were deeply buried in her psyche and body. I had another student who I will call Jethro who was about 6’6” and very gangly. He looked very placid during his sitting in the meditation hall day after day, but gradually he let me know that he lived in a frozen, fear-based state. He sat and walked with his shoulders slightly hunched, something he had learned as a kid to continually avoid drawing attention to his size and to help armor himself against verbal blows from other kids’ teasing. My support for him was very simple, helping him bring attention to all of the sensations in his shoulders. Jethro spent two years noticing and being curious about tightness, unease, or numbness in his shoulders and how these sensations manifested themselves in fear-based thought and emotion. Eventually, his shoulders relaxed and opened up. His sense of separation from the world around him diminished, and fear lost its grip. During the time Jethro worked with me he began and ended each sitting with the following loving-kindness practice: “May I find freedom from fear in my life. May I also help others find freedom from fear. May I meet the fear with the courage of the open heart, acting with decisiveness rather than divisiveness.” By doing this practice over and over and over, he not only let go of his fear, he liberated the natural happiness, which is the bedrock of our existence- his so-called Buddha Nature, or T.S. Eliot’s “still point of the turning world.” If Wendy and Jethro can do this, so can you! My root teacher, Suzuki Roshi, had two teachings which, when paired together, sum up the spirit of Buddhist meditation. The first one is “By washing silk many times it becomes white and soft enough to weave.” If we want our meditation practice to bear fruit, we need to have a daily practice that we both commit ourselves to and sustain regardless of how busy or hectic our lives are. Often it seems like we aren’t making progress. We may find ourselves chattering on and on every time we sit. But that’s par for the course. Gradually, all serious meditators become free from their addictive chatter by patiently letting the mind cleanse itself as we breathe… just as silk is cleansed by persistent washing. Then our mind loses its stiffness and becomes soft. Scientists call this tapping into the brain’s “neuroplasticity.”
Suzuki Roshi’s second teaching is, “By hitting iron when its hot, we make it strong and sharp, like a sword.” I stress the importance of retreat practice as my teachers did. Most of our retreats start early in the morning and go until quite late in the evening. We have a rigorous schedule of alternating sitting and walking meditation throughout the day. This can be quite difficult physically and mentally. Our state of mind and emotions may become quite agitated or “hot.” That heat actually helps us break open beyond the small, complaining self from which our addictive chatter arises. Sooner or later we even break through to the state of mind, “in which you do not stick to anything,” to use another quote from Suzuki. When we do this we find we have a strength and confidence that allows us to move through whatever difficulty we may face with a calmness which never leaves us. It’s quite wonderful! You haven’t heard from me for a while because I had an unexpected recurrence of Lyme Disease symptoms, from an original infection six or seven years ago. I was just bedridden for more than three weeks. After 20 days with no improvements, I thought I might never get better. So I did a quick review of my life and, feeling pretty good about it, readied myself to die, to let go of this body/mind forever. A couple of days after that my health suddenly improved just before it was time to go with my family on our annual trip to the Caribbean. Quite a pleasant outcome!
During the three days before I left, I met with several of our sangha members. I told the one about my experience and she said incredulously, “You were ready to die, without fear or anxiety?” I said, “Sure, I have been practicing dying to my worries and concerns on my cushion for more than 50 years. Little Tim is nothing more than a coagulation of these concerns. Meditation practice is a wonderful way to ready ourselves to let go of body/mind completely.” I think she believed me, but I am not sure. Another sangha member came into my room, sat down, and spoke in a hushed voice. “I felt a great stillness when I opened the door and looked at you. Thank you for that.” I replied, “You’re welcome, but if you felt a stillness, that means it’s within you as much as it’s within me, so thank yourself as well.” She looked puzzled, but of course it’s true. One of the last people I saw had just completed our silent retreat called Rohatsu, which we do the first week in December every year. I asked her how it had been for her. She looked at me intensely and said, “Do you remember Rohatsu last year, how I came in to see you for a meeting and cried and cried, feeling so helpless, discouraged, and alone?” She went on to say that this year it had been good, that she had been able to stay with the practice pretty well for the entire time that she meditated, and that a quiet confidence had developed within her since that meeting with me a year ago. She thanked me profusely for instilling that confidence in her. I said, “I didn’t instill anything in you. You tapped into your Buddha nature. That’s all.” I congratulated her as I would congratulate anyone who stays with their meditation long enough to develop a confidence in their ability to let their thoughts and feelings pass through them without judging them or getting stuck on them. Many people wondered how my own root teacher, Suzuki Roshi could be so calm and ordinary in the face of his very painful death from cancer. Here’s dharma teacher Lew Richmond’s response in the December issue of Lion’s Roar: “He was always ready to die. He was the embodiment of his own best teaching: Don’t stick to anything, even the truth. Each moment new. That was his dharma.” Maybe that’s my dharma, too. Anyway, it’s not that complicated. Little by little, we develop the capacity to appreciate what is. Then the division between life and death is not that big a deal. The best preparation for death is learn to die to our small selves on the cushion so we can open up to the wonder of being. That said, I am very happy to have a few, or possibly many more days/months/years to be in this body/mind with you! |
AuthorTim Burkett, Guiding Teacher Archives
April 2022
Categories |