'The walking of the Blue Mountains is swifter than the wind, but human beings in the mountains do not sense or know it. Being in the mountains describes the opening of flowers in the real world. People out of the mountains never sense it and never know it, do not see, and do not hear this concrete fact.
If we doubt the walking of the mountains, we also do not yet know our own walking. It is not that we do not have our own walking, but we do not yet know and have not yet clarified our own walking. When we know our own walking, then we will surely also know the walking of the Blue Mountains.'
DOGEN
Three years ago when I resigned from the Triratna Order was a big moment for me, a cathartic decision that had been long in the gestation. Over my many years of involvement it was as though I was a fuse box where one by one the main switches overloaded and tripped. There was now insufficient electricity, few connections live, hardly any energy coming through, I was burnt out, frazzled, done to a crisp.
When you leave any organisation - what next? - is a not unreasonable question to be at the forefront of ones mind. In a sense once you have been a practicing Buddhist you will remain a Buddhist to some degree. Its a bit like riding a bike, you can't forget what you've learnt. My training in Triratna means the way I interpret the world and my experience of it, will still tend to be cast in the language and viewpoints of that spiritual tradition. Whatever I encounter processed through this learnt paradigm.
For six months after resigning I chose to do nothing to answer the question - what next? Then tentatively I thought I'd try Zen. My love of Dogen made it obvious that I should explore this approach. Over the last two years I've tried two Zen groups, The Order of Buddhist Contemplatives and Stonewater Zen. Each time I have had a honeymoon period, where I get a bit over excited, think this is exactly what I'm looking for, and recognise something in it that was absent from my involvement in Triratna. There is also familiarising oneself with a whole new viewpoint, and their way of describing it. But as I went further in my engagement with both groups I began to feel this frustration bubbling up, an anger even. I began to feel critical and dismissive. A pattern to my responses was emerging. Did I fundamentally just not want this?
I knew I was looking for a new Sangha to practice within. I know nothing is perfect. Letting go of my friends and connections within the Triratna Sangha was hard. The need of a supportive context for practice, a Sangha, is a very Triratna way of approaching things. Kalyana Mitrata being so central to the spiritual life within it. I've recently seen that this desire for Sangha is distorting my vision of what it is I should be doing. Its not a Sangha, but a break from all the loyalty and commitment to an organisation that being an active Sangha member requires. I need to feel free to do whatever the hell I want, free of spiritual commitments or traditions.
One of the things Reverend Leoma at the Zen Priory taught was never to take emotional responses at face value. Always take an interest in what lies beneath them. So I've sat with and reflected on the nature of my frustration. On the surface it seems as though my frustration was with Zen, but beneath that was an older more amorphous frustration with Buddhism, but beneath that was the disgruntled form of frustration with myself as a Buddhist practitioner.
After nearly thirty years of practice where had all that effort got me? The practice I've done, the rituals, the dharma talks I've listened to, the books I've read. I have my sour moments of ennui when the dharma appears to be more and more of exactly the same. The last thing I need right now is yet more dharma input. What I already know is not reaching me, still missing its essential point, constantly. But then anyone who is not enlightened is just not getting it are they? What I found beneath all of this was spiritual despair. Ultimately I was profoundly disappointed in myself. And beneath that was?
A fear in the end. The fear of having wasted my life, and not just on spiritual practice. To die with maybe just a few Buddhist frills to decorate my overall level of spiritual ignorance. Yet had I really been completely squandering this precious opportunity? There are many sorts of views at play here, grasping for meaning and purpose, for insights and enlightenment, for a quantifiable achievable goals, to feel better about myself. My spiritual wiring at present, is just a bit more fucked than usual.
The consequence of these realisations is that I've felt quite down. Its like a form of bereavement, or grieving. Churning me up good and proper. Leaving Triratna, deciding to gradually cease using my old order name, and now these revelations. It is all part of the process of letting go, of disrobing, taking off what no longer serves any use Where there is loss, there will be periods of mourning. This hurts nonetheless. Its also humbling, the not knowing, the continuing state of spiritual ignorance. What should I do? Should I do anything? What does any of this mean or signify? Wait, I urge myself, just wait awhile. Jump to no premature conclusions. And so I am waiting.
So far I believe I should steer clear of involving myself in religious organisations, traditions and structured approaches. Its not that they are inherently wrong, none of the zen groups I've tried are invalid. I just can't do that right now. I have to feel at liberty, rightly or wrongly, to make my own imaginative choices and connections. All the enjoyable bits in my engagement with Triratna were about discovering those connections, most often through the devising of an elaborate ritual. Creating the emotional equivalents to the teachings, as Sangharakshita puts it. The baroque, involved and passionate nature of those rituals really ought to have alerted me sooner, that at heart I am no Zen practitioner. It is Dogen's richly imaginative poetic nature that I find inspiring. Whilst I might imagine myself as a monastic,with a Zen focused practice, its not long before I also find it the most desiccated of asceticisms. But, hey! I gave Zen a go.
I have chosen this path that I'm now walking. I do not yet understand what its purpose is. Until I do, I cannot fully own my own walking. But facing the right way, being receptive to the sun rising on the horizon and heading off with no goal in mind, this is what I must do now. Whilst it will feel lonely at times travelling this road with little Kalyana Mitrata - this is where I start.
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