MY OWN WALKING - Journal August 2022

In the wake of rifling through differing perceptions on the purpose of meditation practice in my last journal blog. As is often the case,  I stumbled upon related paragraphs in my early morning reading of The Mumonkan. A collection of Zen koans I've been bamboozling my frail consciousness with before I'm fully and perfectly awake. 

One thing that has become very noticeable in these moments before dawn, is a heightened receptivity to many things, which includes words, and their ability to communicate unsought for insightful flowerings. I don't know about you, but my mind is a much more tenderly receptive thing in the hours leading up to sunrise. Words tumble into it and, in an apparently random manner, some of them land on fertile soil, and some do not. But the right words and the right ideas touch the surface just when they are needed, or I am open to hearing them. Is this an example of the universe responding receptively to my contribution? As an old Chinese saying goes:-

'In order to sound the depth of water, a measure is needed; in order to test a man, words are needed.'

The universe responds a bit like a computer algorithm. You know the one that notices you've recently bought a pair of shoes and then bombards you with adverts from other sites selling shoes. Almost as if its trying to say, you really should shop around more, you missed these beauties.

One quotation reputedly is from Bodhidharma. Now I say reputedly because its not at all clear who he was, if indeed he was at all, or even one singular person. He maybe some fictionalised composite. The same has been said of Lao Tsu, and on occasions with far less justification The Buddha. At some point historical records become few and feeble. Anyway, Bodhidharma, he got a mention in this commentary. Its a pithy few sentences that lay out the impossible nature of spiritual practice, and yet you just have to keep trying eternally.

' The Incomparable Truth of the Buddhas can only be attained by eternally striving, practicing what cannot be practiced, and bearing the unbearable. How can you, with your little virtue, little wisdom, and with your easy and self- conceited mind, dare to aspire to attain the true teaching? Is it only so much labour lost?'

There are two bits of this that jump out. The first is 'practicing what cannot be practiced' the second is 'Is it only so much labour lost?' Because if what you are practicing cannot ever achieve what you think its supposed to, then does that not seem like its a waste of time and effort? Or is there something in the devoting of oneself to the apparent complete futility of an endeavour? Are your labours ever truly lost or in vain? The amount of your labouring maybe of little consequence. But, the amount of futility, well, that is inexhaustible.

Buddhism has many supposedly futile concepts such as the Bodhisattva Ideal - that you can save all sentient beings from suffering. If that is not practicing something that cannot be practiced I don't know what is. Yet it is noble and heroic because of the greatness of its futility. Simply through doing a 'practice that cannot be practiced' it wrong foots linear progressive mindsets and any goal fetish we may hold to. We become this Buddhist version of The Holy Fool, saving all sentient beings with a broken teaspoon.

There is an analogy from a Zen master that I'm finding reassuring, that goes as follows.

'To try to find a man on an uninhabited island may prove fruitless. Once, however, it is definitely established that there is no man there, the island comes into the discoverer's possession. This is international law. It is the universal law effective through the ages. The whole universe now comes into his possession.'

A fruitless activity, of a man searching for another man on an uninhabited island. Never finding his purpose in a place that is purposeless. Until he exhausts himself with the search, not the practice, but his need for it to have a purpose. Only then, once he recognises and lets go of his search with a purpose, do things effortlessly fall into his possession. However, should we mistakenly start embracing its futility or purposelessness as our way forward, here is a salutary koan from the Mumonkan - Shuzan & The Staff.

'Master Suzan held up his staff, and showing it to the assembled disciples said "You monks, if you call this a staff, you are committed to the name. If you call it not a staff, you negate the fact. Tell me, you monks, what do you call it?"

In the commentary on this by Shibayama Roshi , he states

'Unless he is reborn, breaking through this barrier, he cannot be really free in living his actual everyday life. To be a free master, of Absolute Subjectivity, he is required in this koan to transcend the contradiction of committing himself to the name and negating the fact.'

Is there a staff or is there no staff? Is there someone else on this uninhabited island or not? Is there a purpose to meditation practice or isn't there?  Is life meaningful or futile? Beyond such dichotomies, is a state referred to here as - Absolute Subjectivity. An enigmatic phrase with an aura of intuitive suggestibility surrounding it, evading conscious grasp.  These are the words that are currently testing my depth, well, mostly the lack of it.