Zen Mind

(This class is based on the teachings of Shunryu Suzki-Roshi. The full teaching this refers to is the previous article posted, together with questions and answers. You can link to it here )

A small slip of paper fell out of my files this weekend, and I remembered it from past meditations. But this time the words felt as if they had a different or deeper meaning for me.

I think Zen can be like poetry. You can read a poem and it means something to you. Then you can read it again some time later and the meaning seems to have changed. We read things depending on how our mind feels at that time. Which is what we say in our philosophy: 'we don't see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.'

On the 1st of March, 1970, Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi sat down to lecture a a visiting class and on the slip of paper I found I had written the words he used. He said:

“I CAME THIS MORNING without preparing anything to say.

But I wanted to share the feeling we have right here, right now. Sharing the feeling right here, right now is the fundamental or basic thing for Zen practice."

What Suzuki-Roshi is saying is that our practice is about connecting to how we are feeling right here, right now. That’s what we also mean when we say “When you sit, everything sits with you."

I find that a good illustration or a reminder that our meditation practice is not about throwing ourselves away and becoming a shiny, improved, new version of our self. It's about making friends with who we are already. Accepting and being friendly with who we are right here, right now.

But usually our mind is filled with things. Thoughts about what we are doing, where we are going, grocery shopping or the cost of something. A news event, a sale, a situation, a person. So it is almost impossible to connect to the actual feeling we have inside. We are covering it up, glossing over our actual feelings, and not noticing where we are right now. We don't sit still enough, so we can't connect to our Zen mind.

Suzuki-Roshi: "That is how our life goes. On and on and on and on, endlessly, We have too much in our mind. So we cannot connect with what we are feeling. Connect to our feeling with people, with things, with trees, or with mountains. Even though we are right in the middle of the woods, still we cannot appreciate the feeling of the woods."

We might be in the middle of nature, but often we are not really there or present, because we cannot fully appreciate nature if our mind is full of other things.

Originally Buddha attained enlightenment after he gave up everything, even studying. For over 6 years, Buddha studied under many different teachers, and investigated many different philosophies in the search for meaning. He tried everything from self-indulgence to self-mortification and extreme fasting.

Eventually he lost his interest in such things. He was ill from lack of food. He was tired. Tired of human suffering, of studying so many things, of the effort. Tired because he felt as if he was getting caught up in the cerebral part of it all. His mind was so full of details, he felt he was caught up in all the details.

So he gave up everything, found a middle way, and sat under a tree. And that's where it is said he attained enlightenment. But, as Suzuki-Roshi says: "it might be better to say that's where he forgot everything. He had nothing in his mind."

That is our Zen mind.