Naturalness
1
I was talking with Sensei recently about the particulars of leading zazen, and he tuned me into something awesome:
the difference between the question, “Why do we do this practice?” asked before zazen, which the practice leader should not entertain,
and the question, “Why did we do that practice???” asked after zazen, which the practice leader should entertain in the most entertaining way possible.
2
A friend-of-a-friend who has done a lot of broad and roving intellectual study of Buddhism — and a not insignificant amount of meditation, though little in any one modality — asked me once if I was “still doing shikantaza” in my sitting practice. His tone sounded somewhat impatient, perhaps with the idea that anyone would stick with something so simple for any significant period of time.
My “don’t reify concepts” Zen training kicked in, and I responded elliptically at first, but then I realized he wasn’t asking something lofty. He was asking what I do when I sit. He didn’t want to be subjected to my elaboration of protective negative space around Zen practice, how “just sitting” is an ideal that is only pointing, how all doing anything is shikan doing that thing. He wanted to know what was intentionally happening when I was sitting there.
So I said, “If you mean sitting there staring at the wall, trying to have a completely blank mind, no, I’m not. I’m counting down 100 exhales and then sitting there until I feel like getting up. That’s all there is to it.” He was still like, “Wow, that seems boring,” but oh well.
3
Every day, I give thanks to my Soto Zen lineage ancestors for training me to have Dharma conversation with anyone, in plain language, free from elaboration.
That isn’t what they taught me.
It’s how they taught me.
4
After years of working my practice into my bones by holding it like The Thing I Must Always Do in All Contexts, I feel like I’m finally cracking through the ice into some more fluid way of being that adjusts to context.
For instance, sitting practice is for when the spirit needs to sit still. Wearing a kippah is for when the spirit in my head needs to be contained. Eating is for when the spirit is hungry. Sleeping is for when the spirit is tired. That sort of thing.
Some might say The Practice™ in the former sense is good actually, and that what it refers to is the binding, unifying awareness you need to cultivate in order to monitor what the spirit needs between contexts.
I’d say that sounds like a leftover superego monitoring concept from an inflexible context. Imagining that kind of consistency only reminds me of times when I wasn’t noticing the reality of my context because I was trying mentally to connect it to all the other ones.
How can something so strict — that’s such a struggle against every tendency around it — be the natural approach?
The word “natural” has long called to me as one of the most important English words for practice instructions.
I’m not trained or very educated in Vajrayana Buddhism, but I am repeatedly impressed by the way particularly Dzogchen teachings — even in translation — seem to close this gap of “just be natural” that is clearly behind the instructions in my lineages, but which is seemingly quite difficult to put into words naturally without sounding like you’re saying nothing, which is more my team’s style. Enjoy this passage shared by the great @Ogmin:
“When you are feeling delighted, depressed, attached, or angry, you should just rest in naturalness, which is the state of empty awareness. Naturalness, again, means the unfabricated, the real. At this time, both the object that is grasped outwardly and the mind that inwardly fixates are spontaneously freed without any place or object.”
This post bowled me over because it floated by at a time when I had just been holding that word “naturalness” in my notes waiting for something to say about it. And even then, all I could do was just hold it and continue ripening. It’s taken months to write this, which is extremely atypical of me. But of course, I couldn’t force it. I had to let it happen naturally. And now what I have to say about naturalness has finally come to fruition.
Don’t get the wrong idea about naturalness.
In a lot of Dharma contexts I’ve been in, “naturalness” might be taken as a synonym for “balance,” and “balance” might give rise to thoughts of “50/50.”
I ask you: Is this gentleman or is he not “in balance”?
And isn’t nature like that? Is that not how growth occurs? Until death occurs? The balance thrown off, the creature falling to the ground and throwing off another dynamic cycle around an unstable balance?
To keep this semantic dance going, it’s the difference between adjustment and control.
Zen is not control. Common mistake.
Practicing proper adjustments makes them more likely to arise naturally later.
Practicing improper adjustments — or no adjustments — ditto.
The whole “practice” thing is not a choice about whether to practice or not. You have no control over responding from practice. Practice correctly or incorrectly, that’s what you practiced.
The response from practice includes the response of practicing, as well as what to practice. You have (what feels like) (some) control over the conditions for practice to arise. Use that wisely to set yourself up to practice correctly, naturally, and you’re more likely to respond correctly later.
Best you can do.
All this is provisional. Contextual. That’s all “correct” and “incorrect” mean. You get any more persnickety than that, and you’re careening down Theology Boulevard with no brakes trying to figure out if Hitler had buddha nature or whatever.
Want to know if your practice is “correct” or “incorrect” enough? Ask someone who has to spend time with you.
If you tend to respond to every situation the same way — to bring your standard words and movements and reactions you have cultivated by practicing it everywhere and on everything — what do you expect they’ll say?
If you tend to meet every situation with wonder — to openly, curiously figure out how to respond — to meet not just the moment but everyone in it with you — what do you expect they’ll say then?
