NOTHING IS BORING
Love’s the only engine of survival
— Leonard Cohen
No matter how thrilling an activity seems to be, do it for a while and you will become bored. No matter how desirable something seems to be before you have it, you will become bored with it once you have had it for a while. It does not become boring—how could it?—it is you that becomes bored.
This is because you never really paid attention to the activity or thing in itself. Instead, you thought that activity or that thing would make your life better, would save you from the mundane, would make you happy, and it did not. It could not.
Conversely, when something seems to be boring, just do it and keep doing it, paying attention to it. You will not remain bored. The boredom was something created by your self, your ego, because you saw that this activity could not make you happy. The boredom is only a story the self tells itself. Let go of that story, stop thinking in terms of what you want to do and what you don’t want to do—pay attention to life as it is, and the heart opens. When the heart is open, everything is perfect in and of itself, and there are no distinctions between exotic and commonplace, beautiful and ugly, sacred and profane.
THE CERTAINTY OF SUN AND MOON
Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.
— Dogen
A friend lost a family member. In the time since then, she has tried to distract herself from the pain using some of the standard methods—alcohol, compulsive sex, career ambition, various kinds of personal drama. None of it works for long, and so there are times when the loss catches up with her, and she becomes depressed.
Her boyfriend does not know how to deal with her depression, and tends to pull away at those times. He says it is because it is hard for him to see her in that state. “I like it when we have fun, when I can make you laugh,” he told her when she talked to him about it.
It might seem at first that his reaction is one of love—he likes to see her happy and hates to see her sad. But such a reaction is entirely self-centered. It is about his own preferences, his own comfort. It excludes her, the suchness of her life, and comes instead from how he wants her to be rather than how she is.
And my friend does the same. Her sister has a boyfriend who responds to his girlfriend’s grief with compassion, accepting her as she is in each moment. My friend envies her sister, resenting that her sister has what she does not—someone who is supportive and loving, someone who is there for her during the most painful times. My friend does not realize that her reaction is the same as that of her boyfriend—she makes everything about herself, and so, instead of being happy for her sister, she reacts with anger about her own perceived lack.
Such a view is both materialistic and solipsistic, and guarantees that we will suffer. And we all do it—until we learn to pay attention to our lives as they are.
Loss, pain and sadness come with the certainty of sun and moon. To have something is to be sure of losing it, because we can keep nothing, including the self we attach to. But our suffering does not come from loss or pain or sadness. It comes from our addiction to ego, to a narrative with ourselves as the protagonist. It comes not from how things are, but from a fantasy about how they ought to be.
And so it goes on: my friend’s boyfriend suffers because he wishes she could be laughing all the time; my friend suffers because she wishes her boyfriend could be there for her during her depression; her sister suffers because she wishes her sister could be happy for her.
No matter how fortunate our circumstances, when we make things about ourselves, our own preferences, we are in hell. We separate from each other, from who we are, from the entire universe. We create a state of alienation, a place where we are always alone.
Hell has only one gate. The way we get out is the same way we came in. Ego brought us in, and letting go of ego will let us leave. Respond to things as they are, rather than as we would prefer them to be, and suffering stops. Experience sadness as sadness, without comparison. Experience pleasure as pleasure, without comparison. And when we do that, we find that one is not better than the other. Both are perfect in the moment of their rising, perfect in the moment of their falling.
This acceptance does not in any way mean giving up or becoming apathetic. The opposite is true; only when we accept life as it is, here and now, can we nurture it with compassion and gratitude, and make the very best of what we are offered.
BEING RIGHT
Most arguments seem to have less to do with solving a problem than with trying to be right.
I don’t like being right—because if I’m right, someone else is wrong. If I win, someone else loses. And when there is a person who is right and a person who is wrong, when there is a winner and a loser, the relationship (whether it’s a personal or professional or community relationship) suffers.
When we let go of knowing, of believing, of being right, we disarm the source of our suffering. Next time you insist that you know something, that what you believe is right, that you are right, consider this question: What can you do with being right? Can you eat it? Can you have sex with it? Does the bank recognize it as legal tender? If not, then what is it? What is being right? And who is it that’s right?
ON THE JOB
The day I started the job, I met Jane, who had founded the company 20 years earlier, and had just sold it. I had been hired by the new owner. Jane had agreed to stay on as a manager for a while, and, early on my first morning there, most of my co-workers warned me about her. They told me she had run off several writers who just couldn’t stand her attitude, that she was impatient and controlling and had a foul temper.
They were right. But that wasn’t a problem.
Jane and I got along wonderfully. It really freaked people out, because they’d never seen anyone get along with her, let alone enjoy working with her. I did, and I still miss her.
Before the first day was over, I found she was exactly as advertised. I was sitting at a computer, working, and she sat down next to me and began to explain how to use the program I was using.
“Thanks, I know how to use it,” I said. “It’s the one I use at home.”
She ignored what I’d said, and continued to explain how to use the program. I let her explain it, and, when she’d finished, I thanked her for her help.
When she left the room, my co-workers looked at me sympathetically, probably wondering how long it would take before I stomped out in tears like my predecessor had.
Jane came back a few minutes later. “Does that white truck right outside belong to you?” she asked me.
“Yeah, that’s mine,” I said.
“Don’t park it right outside. That’s for clients only. Park it across the way.”
This obviously wasn’t true. Most of the other employees had parked right outside, which is why I had parked there. “No problem,” I said. “Should I move it now?”
“No, that’s all right. Just don’t park it there tomorrow.”
“Sure. Thanks,” I said.
When she left the room again, a few co-workers approached me to commiserate. They seemed shocked when I said I didn’t mind Jane’s behavior at all.
Why should I mind? It wasn’t about me.
If my co-workers had told me in advance that Jane got along well with everyone, and was the most amiable boss they could ever imagine, and then she’d come to me and behaved the way she did, I might have been concerned—because, if that wasn’t her usual way, then maybe she had a problem with me. But that wasn’t what had happened; people had told me that she was difficult, and that turned out to be true. It wasn’t about anything she had against me—she was just the type of person who felt the need to assert dominance over her turf, and she wanted to flex her muscles and show the new guy who was boss. Fine with me; I was getting paid.
The people who’d walked out, slamming doors, or had burst into tears because of the way Jane talked to them, were angry over a fiction, a story they were making up about Jane and them. Th
ere was no Jane and them. It wasn’t about Jane and them, any more than what Jane ate for breakfast was about Jane and them. It was about Jane. For whatever reasons, that was just how she behaved.
Since I didn’t take things personally, didn’t react to her drill-sergeant routine, Jane didn’t feel that she had to keep doing it. I wasn’t fighting her, so she felt no need to conquer me. Very soon, I got to know things about Jane that most people who worked for her or worked with her never got to know—her warmth, her sense of humor, and her passion for her work. She truly loved what she did, and she was good at it. Like her or not (I did), agree with her or not (I rarely did), she was always worth listening to.
But, if I hadn’t been trained not to make things about myself, I would have felt pushed to defend something that isn’t real. I would have told Jane to blow it out her ass, and I would have quit the job before I had ever properly started it. While telling a story about me, I would have abandoned all the good things about the job, and come away with nothing but a story of my own victimhood.
HEARTBROKEN
In conversation, in movies, in popular song, we hear about heartbreak. Along with death, it is what most of us fear and try to avoid.
My heart is broken. It has been broken for as long as I can remember, and I hope it never heals. The break in my heart is where other beings can enter, and where compassion moves out into the world. Heartbreak is a teacher, to be bowed to in gratitude. When we are intimate with heartbreak, not fearing it or trying to escape, we become kind. When we are intimate with death, not fearing it or trying to escape, we pay attention, and then everything is luminous and sacred, and nothing is ever mundane.
TAKING CARE OF THE BODY OF THE BUDDHA
I’m often asked whether it’s necessary for a person practicing Zen to take care of their body, or whether neglect and abuse such as smoking, poor diet, alcohol or drug abuse, lack of exercise, really matter. Indeed, I’m sometimes asked if taking care of your health is not a sign of attachment and self-centeredness.
Such a view is dualistic. The body is the zendo. A messy, uncared-for zendo is no zendo at all, and the same applies to the body, because the difference, the separation you perceive, is illusory. If you meticulously clean and tidy the zendo, making sure the materials on the altar are just so, making sure the shoes are lined up neatly, making sure all the forms are followed, and at the same time neglect and abuse your body, you are missing the point.
The zendo must be cared for and maintained in order to provide a place for practice. The body must be cared for and maintained for the same reason, and so must the mind. A dirty, unkempt zendo can keep people from practice. If you neglect your health, you burden other people, and make it harder or impossible for yourself to practice.
Dusting the altar and washing the body are the same thing. Protecting the floors and the statues and the cushions in the zendo are exactly the same thing as nurturing and caring for the body. Neglect either, and the zendo becomes one more room, and the body only meat.
THE BODY OF THE BUDDHA, TOSSED IN THE GARBAGE
Things are altogether faithful. They follow the rules with precision. We owe them benevolence in return.
— Robert Aitken
An empty frame sits in a garbage can. It is not broken; aside from the stains from the garbage, it is in perfect condition and looks new. The person who discarded it did so simply because they did not like the frame. I find this as offensive as killing or stealing—because such contempt for anything, animate or inanimate, is both killing and stealing.
It never occurred to the person to give it to someone who might want it, or donate it to the Goodwill store. The person, having no respect for the frame, has no respect for anything or anyone. No respect for others, so no self-respect.
This person is sometimes smug and cocky, sometimes depressed, but always unhappy. This person does not know why, but I do.
Do you treat things as being unworthy of respect, to be discarded and replaced at your whim? Do you consume and destroy, consume and destroy? Do things that displease you get thrown in the trash because you consider them to be trash?
Do you know why you are unhappy? I do.
BUDDHA MADE OF STONE, BUDDHA MADE OF SPACE
I had a Buddha statue that sat outside the front door of each of the different places I lived in for a few years. When I got home one night, it was gone.
My first reaction was to laugh, and then to feel a strange affection for the thief. Who was it? The tweaker neighbor? One of his many friends who came and went? And why the Buddha? Why not one of the porch ornaments from the people who lived downstairs? Did the person steal the statue because he was drawn to the image, or because he thought he could sell it (good luck—it wasn’t worth much)? Though there was a certain annoyance, I couldn’t help but feel glad that someone wanted it, whatever the reason, and I wished good things for whoever it ended up with.
As I stood looking at the spot next to the door where the statue had been, the tweaker neighbor emerged from the darkness behind me, shirtless.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, bro.” Twitch, twitch, twitch. “What’s up?”
“Have you seen the Buddha statue I had sitting here?”
“It wasn’t me, bro!”
I just looked at him and smiled and didn’t say anything. He twitched back into the hot darkness.
I looked at the empty spot by my door again, bowed to it and went into my apartment.
The thief took a statue from outside my door, but the Buddha is still there. He’s the empty space. He’s tweaking in the darkness outside, he’s sitting at my desk typing these words, and he’s reading them through your eyes.
BEING DEAD IS THE BEST WAY TO LIVE
A friend says that if it weren’t for the hurt it would cause to the people who love her, she would kill herself.
I tell her that instead of killing herself she should kill her self.
Look at the story of your life, as it has been and as it is now. What if you were to cut one character out of the story—yourself? What if you removed that character who desires and avoids, but your awareness remained? No holding on to desire or avoidance, just awareness? Would there be any problems in your life now? Were there really any problems in your past? What makes something a problem?
Pain, like pleasure, is a natural by-product of having a body and a mind—but suffering only arises from self-absorption. Remove your self (note the two separate words) and remain present yourself (one word) and you may find that there’s a joyful awareness—what one of my Zen students calls “a humming”— that pervades everything that happens, everything you like and everything you don’t like.
If you’re tired of the pain and frustration and all-pervasive dissatisfaction of your life, the skillful response is not to end your life, but rather to end your self—the source and cause of all your suffering. At the moment when you would pull the trigger of the gun, or cut your wrists, or swallow the pills, instead do nothing. Sit still, and decide that you have died.
So, now that you have died, who is there to suffer? Who is there to be afraid? To be anxious? To be angry? To be jealous, to be envious, to covet? To feel like a loser or a failure? When you kill your self, you free yourself. With no ego attached to outcomes, you can live at the service of all beings—which includes yourself.
But you can’t just make that decision, and then automatically live that way. You have to practice. You have to pay attention, every day. You have to do zazen, and when you get up off the cushion, you have to take the practice with you. In zazen, you experience that there is no self, that it is only a story. You experience that the Buddha you can name, the Buddha outside of you, is not the Buddha, just one more story, one more version of the self.
When you feel euphoric, just feel it. Just pay attention to it. When you feel despair, just feel it. Just pay attention to it. And then ask yourself, “Who is it? Who feels this?”
The question answers itself. There is no one there. And, ha
ving gotten rid of you, having killed the self, you can live a real life, a life of freedom. Grasping at nothing, you have everything.
Kill your self. And free yourself.
A REQUEST FROM THE AUTHOR
If you found this book helpful, please review it on Amazon and on any social media that you use. Thank you.
About the Author
Dogo Barry Graham Sensei, in addition to being a Zen teacher, is a novelist, reporter, columnist and poet. His novels include The Book of Man (chosen by the American Library Association as one of the best books of 1995), Before and When It All Comes Down to Dust. He has written for publications ranging from Harper's Magazine to Flaunt.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Dogo Sensei has traveled widely and has been based in the U.S. since 1995. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and is the Abbot of The Sitting Frog Zen Sangha. Readers are welcome to email him with practice questions at [email protected].
Read more at Dogo Barry Graham’s site.
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