STUDENT: Don’t we need goals of some kind in order to have a process at all, to accomplish anything?
JOKO: What do you mean by a process?
STUDENT: A process is doing something.
JOKO : Is awareness a doing? There is a difference between doing something—for example, “I’m going to become a nice person”—and simple awareness of what I’m doing. Suppose that I’m gossiping. The gossiping is doing something, but the awareness of it is not a doing, not a making something happen. The basis of doing is a thought that things should be different than they are.
Instead of saying to myself, “I have to become a nicer person” and trying to do that, I should simply be aware of what I’m doing—for example, noticing that every time I meet a certain person I cut her off. When I’ve seen myself doing that a hundred times, something happens. The pattern drops away, and I’m a nicer person, though I’m not acting on the sentence “I should be a nicer person.” Awareness has no sentences, no thoughts in that sense; it’s simply awareness. This is what sitting is: not getting caught in our minds, not getting caught in the effort to get somewhere, to become a buddha.
STUDENT : It seems like a paradox. At one level, our minds are actively doing something, and at another level, we’re being aware of what our minds are doing. What’s the point of awareness?
JOKO : In ordinary thinking, the mind always has an objective, something it’s going to get. If we’re caught in that wanting, then our awareness of reality is gone. We’ve substituted a personal dream for awareness. Awareness doesn’t move, doesn’t bury itself in dreams; it just stays as it is.
At first, the distinction between ordinary thinking and awareness seems subtle and elusive. As we practice, however, the distinction gradually becomes clearer: we begin to notice more and more how our thoughts are occupied with trying to get somewhere and how we become caught in them so that we fail to notice what’s really present in our lives.
STUDENT: It seems as if we’re either noticing what’s happening or getting stuck in the content of our thoughts.
JOKO : Right. There’s nothing wrong with a thought per se; it’s just an energy blip. But when we are caught in the content, the words of that thought, then we’ve made it into our personal domain, and we want to hold onto it.
STUDENT : Holding onto the thought involves a belief. Last night, as I was traveling somewhere, my mind was full of thoughts and feelings. I believed I was practicing: I knew I was angry, I knew I was tense, I knew I was rushing, and my clue was that I was getting madder and madder and more upset. Suddenly I said to myself, “What is practice right now?” And a thousand flashlights shone on what was happening in my mind. From a completely impersonal perspective, there was still the same stuff—anger, rushing, physical tension—but it had nothing to do with me. It was almost like watching a roach on the kitchen floor.
JOKO : And as we begin watching the thoughts and feelings, they begin to dissolve. They can’t maintain themselves without our belief in them.
STUDENT : When we get so caught up in our thoughts, our world narrows. We haven’t got a perspective on the whole. When we bring our awareness to our thoughts, the narrowness widens, and the restrictive thoughts begin to fall away.
JOKO: Yes. If our lives are not changing as we practice, then there’s something wrong with what we’re doing.
STUDENT: When we get caught in our thoughts, we generate anxiety, don’t we?
JOKO : Yes. Anxiety is always a gap between the way things are and the way we think they ought to be. Anxiety is something that stretches between the real and unreal. Our human desire is to avoid what’s real and instead to be with our ideas about the world: “I’m terrible.” “You’re terrible.” “You’re wonderful.” The idea is separated from reality, and anxiety is the gap between the idea and the reality that things are just as they are. When we cease to believe in the object that we’ve created—which is off to one side of reality, so to speak—things snap back to the center. That’s what being centered means. The anxiety then fades out.
STUDENT: I seem to get very uptight about trying to hold onto awareness.
JOKO : If you’re trying to hold onto awareness, that’s a thought. We use a word like awareness, and then people make it into something special. If we’re not thinking (try it for just ten seconds: just stop thinking), our bodies relax, and we can hear and notice everything that’s going on. In the minute we stop thinking, we’re aware. Awareness is not something we have to try to be; it’s an absence of something. What is it an absence of?
STUDENT : Aren’t we just changing what we’re aware of? Didn’t we decide that we’re always aware? My premise is that life is always awareness; we’re always aware of something. When we sit (in a way it’s a paradox), we have an objective in sitting: we are refocusing our awareness, perhaps sharpening it on something.
JOKO : No, that makes awareness into doing something. Awareness is like rising heat on a summer’s day: the clouds in the sky just disappear. When we are aware, the unreal just disappears; we don’t have to do anything.
STUDENT: Is there more awareness after sesshin than before?
JOKO : No; the difference is that we’re not blocking it. Awareness is what we are. But we block it with self-centered thinking: with dreaming, with fantasizing, with whatever it is we want to do. Trying to be aware is just ordinary thinking, not awareness. All we have to do is to be aware of our self-centered thoughts. Finally they drift away, and we’re just here. Although one could say that we’re doing something, awareness is not a thing or a person. Awareness is our life when we’re not doing something else.
STUDENT: Simple awareness lacks everything else. Awareness lacks space, time, everything.
JOKO : Right, awareness has no space, time, or identity—and yet it’s who we are. The minute we talk about it, it’s gone. In terms of practice, we don’t have to try to be aware. What we have to do is to watch our thoughts. We should not try to be aware; we’re always aware unless we’re caught in our self-centered thinking. That’s the point of labeling our thoughts.
STUDENT: So sometimes we’re aware and we just don’t notice it.
JOKO: Right.
STUDENT : Perhaps the difference between ordinary thoughts that we believe and awareness is that a believed thought is not held in awareness; it’s not recognized as just being a thought.
JOKO : Right. It’s not seen as just the energy fragment it is. We take it for real, and we believe in it; then it begins to run the show, instead of awareness running the show, which is what should be.
STUDENT : I usually notice awareness more sharply when I haven’t been aware. For example: I suddenly realize that I’m at work and I don’t know how I got there—and I wake up.
JOKO : Except for a buddha, everybody drifts in and out of awareness. But the longer we practice, the greater the percentage of our lives that is lived in awareness. I doubt that anyone ever lives totally in awareness.
STUDENT: You say “the longer we practice,” but really do you mean the consistency with which we bring the attention to the present?
JOKO : Yes. It’s possible to sit for twenty years and still have no idea what sitting is about. But if we’re sitting and practicing with our whole lives, then definitely the amount of awareness increases. I used to spend half of my life daydreaming. It was “pleasant.”
STUDENT : For years, my sitting practice consisted of first tuning out the environment, then tuning out my body, and then reciting Mu over and over again. I was totally aware of nothing.
JOKO : Yes, that’s a form of concentrated practice that for some produces quick and dramatic effects that are pleasing. It doesn’t do much for one’s life. Mu does not have to be practiced in that way, however.
STUDENT : When I focus on awareness, I seem to notice more pain in my body. But if I just space out, I have no problem with pain; I just don’t feel it. Then I wake up and become aware—
and there’s the pain, again. Why does the pain go away when I
space out?
JOKO : Well, our dreams are powerful narcotics. That’s why we like them so much. Our dreams and fantasies are addictive, just like addictive substances.
STUDENT: Isn’t there separation from reality involved if we feel pain?
JOKO: Not if we totally feel it.
STUDENT : If I really become the pain, the pain just fades away. But as soon as I have a thought about it, I suffer. When I notice the pain and have the thought that it’s painful, the suffering remains. But if I simply notice it as a strong sensation, the suffering disappears.
JOKO : When we can see the pain as just a steady sensation with many little variations, it becomes interesting and even beautiful. But if we approach it with the thought that we’re going to make it go away, that’s just another way of seeking after buddhahood.
STUDENT : When I begin to sit, I usually become aware of being very tense, with a tight pain in my body. I feel it as just outside of my awareness. For years, people would say to me, “You’re so tense.” I’d say, “I’m not tense.” Now I realize that my tension was just unexperienced, but there. I used my thoughts to block awareness of it. The tension and pain were there, just unexperienced.
JOKO : Are the tension and pain real? Something is there, but what is it? One night recently I was walking along the ocean with the moonlight shining on the water. I could see a shimmer of light on the ocean, but was the moonlight really there? Did the ocean really have anything on it? What is that color? Is it real or not? Neither is quite correct. From my perspective, the moonlight was on the water. But if I had been closer to the surface, I wouldn’t see any moonlight on the water. I would just see whatever I would see at that point. There is no such thing as moonlight literally on the water. As for clouds in the sky: if we are in a cloud, we call it fog. We likewise give a kind of false reality to our thoughts. It’s true that we always live within a certain perspective. Practice is about learning to live in that relative reality, enjoying it, but seeing it for what it is. Like the moonlight on the water, it’s there—from a certain relative perspective—and it’s not real, it’s not the absolute. Even the water itself has only relative reality. When there is no light on the water, we see the water as black. I’ve had dinner at a restaurant by the ocean and watched the water turn from blue to dark blue to darker purple, and finally it can’t be seen at all. What is real? In absolute terms, none of it is real. In terms of our practice, however, we must begin with our experience, with this meticulous work with awareness. We need to return to the reality of our lives. We have pains and aches, we have troubles, we like people or we don’t like them: this is the stuff of our lives. This is where our work with awareness begins.
Coming to Our Senses
We all desire wholeness. We want to be whole persons; we want a sense of completeness; we want to be at rest in our lives. We try to figure out this problem, to think our way to wholeness. The effort never works; we need a different approach.
Suppose we’re hiking in the mountains, and we sit down by a stream. What would it mean to be “whole” in this moment?
STUDENT: Being whole would mean feeling the air on my skin and hearing the sounds.
JOKO: Yes….
STUDENT: Thinking about myself.
JOKO: When we think about ourselves, we separate ourselves from our experience, and we’re no longer whole.
STUDENT: Feeling myself sitting on the ground, making contact with the leaves and soil. Observing myself thinking about myself.
JOKO: Yes, that’s awareness.
STUDENT: Seeing the stream, smelling the natural smells of the earth, feeling the sun on my back.
JOKO: Yes, these are also part of the experience.
STUDENT : Feeling what is not present. For example, when I’m in a peaceful place I may feel the absence of pain. That’s a good feeling: that there is no pain.
JOKO : That’s a kind of thinking that takes us away from awareness or wholeness. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s still extra. It’s as if, in the middle of appreciating a beautiful sunset, we say, “Oh, this is a beautiful sunset!” We have slightly removed ourselves.
While we’re sitting by the stream, we probably won’t be having sensations of taste. But suppose we’re eating Thanksgiving dinner: it’s surprising how few people actually taste the food they eat.
STUDENT: Sitting by a brook, sometimes it seems that I can almost feel the brook in my body.
JOKO : You may be talking not about a sensation, but about a very subtle thought, the kind that makes people write books about being with nature.
If we’re just sitting by the stream and sensing all there is to sense, it’s no big deal: we’re just sitting there. Suppose, however, that we begin to think about our troubles in life. We become absorbed in our thoughts, poring over how we feel about our problems and what we can do about them—and suddenly we’re oblivious to everything we were sensing a moment ago. We no longer see the water, smell the woods, feel our body. The sensations are gone. We have sacrificed our life in this moment in order to think about things that are not present, not real, here and now.
The next time you are eating Thanksgiving dinner—or any meal, for that matter—ask yourself whether you are truly tasting your food. For most of us, the experience of eating a meal is at best partial.
Without awareness of our sensations, we are not fully alive. Life is unsatisfactory for most people because they are absent from their experience much of the time. If we have been sitting for several years, we do it somewhat less. I don’t know anyone who is fully present all of the time, however.
We’re like the fish that is swimming about, looking for the great ocean of life, yet oblivious to its surroundings. Like the fish, we wonder about the meaning of life, not awake to the water all around us and the ocean that we are. The fish finally met a teacher who understood. The fish asked, “What is the great ocean?” And the teacher simply laughed. Why?
STUDENT: Because the fish was already in the ocean and just didn’t realize it.
JOKO : Yes. The ocean was its life. Separate a fish from water, and there is no life for the fish. Likewise, if we separate ourselves from our life, which is what we see, hear, touch, smell, and so on, we have lost touch with what we are.
Our life is always just this life. Our personal commentary on life—all the opinions we have about it—is the cause of our difficulties. We couldn’t be upset if we weren’t leaving out our life. If we weren’t leaving out the hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, the kinesthetic sense of just feeling our body, we couldn’t be upset. Why is that?
STUDENT: Because we’re in the present.
JOKO : Yes. We can’t be upset unless our mind takes us out of the present, into unreal thoughts. Whenever we’re upset, we’re literally out of it: we’ve left something out. We’re like a fish out of water. When we’re present, fully aware, we can’t have a thought such as “Oh, this is such a difficult life. It’s so meaningless!” If we do this, we’ve left something out. Just like that!
A good student recognizes when he or she has drifted away and returns to immediate experience. Sometimes we just shake our head and reestablish the basis of our life, the foundation in experience. Out of that foundation will come perfectly adequate thinking, action, creativity. It’s all born in this space of experiencing, just letting the senses be open.
When I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I liked to play Bach chorales on the piano. One that I particularly loved was called “In Thine Arms I Rest Me.” The translation goes on, “Foes who would molest me cannot find me here.” Though it is from the Christian tradition, which is often dualistic, this chorale is about being present and aware. There is a place of rest in our lives, a place where we must be if we are to function well. This place of resting—the arms of God, if you will—is simply here and now: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tast
ing our life as it is. We can even add thinking to the list, if we understand thinking as simply functional thinking rather than ego
thinking based on fear and attachment. Just thinking in the functional sense includes abstract thinking, creative thinking, or planning what we have to do today. Too often, however, we add nonfunctional, egobased thinking, which gets us in trouble and takes us from the arms of God.
A life that works rests on these six legs: the five senses plus functional thought. When our lives rest on these six supports, no problem or upset can reach us.
It’s one thing to hear a dharma talk on these truths, however, and another to live by them. The minute something upsets us, we fly into our heads and try to figure it out. We try to regain our safety by thinking. We ask how we can change ourselves or something outside ourselves—and we’re lost. To reestablish our lives on a secure foundation, we have to return to these six legs of reality, over and over and over again. That’s all the practice we need. If I have the faintest thought of irritability about anybody, the first thing I do is not to begin figuring out in my mind how to fix the situation, but simply to ask myself, “Can I really hear the cars in the alley?” When we fully establish one sense, such as hearing, we establish them all, since all are functioning in the present moment. Once we reestablish awareness, we see what to do about the situation. Action that arises out of awakened experience is nearly always satisfactory. It works.
Nothing Special: Living Zen Page 15