The Practice & the Life, or Whatever

Only a few weeks into the one-year practice period, the rhythm of my life in Santa Cruz was punctuated by a trip to Florida for a family reunion and the celebration of multiple birthdays. Too many activities had to be squeezed into a week that seemed to comprise a continuous round of breakfasts, lunches, dinners out, barbeques, shopping, visits to this person and that, and even a museum. Different agendas, different sets of priorities, different personal preferences—expressed in Spanish, English or a combination of the two—led to a series of decisions-by-committee, all of them unsatisfactory to one or more parties. Reasonable compromises were arrived at in the end, but the process was, to put it charitably, irksome.

You will not be surprised to learn that it occurred to me more than once that the whole week was a test of my patience, humanity, and skill in social relations. Where, I asked myself, does

Zen fit into all this? We often talk about integrating our practice with daily life, or “practicing with” our families, jobs, and assorted travails. But how, exactly, do we do that?

When we speak, as we often do, of applying Zen to the daily round (or grind, as the case may be) we assume that we have a clear sense of what our practice is, and what aspects of it might be useful in quotidian situations. Do we, really? Zazen, we are told, is not a method at all. If so, there must be something else in Zen that we can apply to the constantly accelerating, highly stressful process that we continue to call “everyday life” as though next year will be just like this one. There are the precepts, of course, to serve as guidelines for conduct, and there is “the mindfulness thing,” as I’ve come to think of it, features of mainstream Buddhism that the authors of Zen found it useful to retain as part of the movement’s literary and technical scaffolding. There is a lot to be unpacked in this topic, and I will set myself to that task when I can. In the meantime, I would very much like to know the thoughts of my fellow students.

During the first meeting of the group, when we briefly discussed the term “detachment” as used in the Pali texts, it was thought that “non-attachment” better conveyed the sense of the desired state of mind. There is a fine line to be negotiated in our dealings with others. To the extent that I am committed to the bodhisattva’s way of life—a way of constantly renewed aspiration—I will strive to respond to every situation with skill and compassion. I must be sensitive to the needs of others. I must retain the capacity to view changing relations with empathy for all, and from multiple perspectives, while at the same time stepping out of the usual narrative of my life, with its constant assertions of  personal priorities. I must be at once fully present and as free as possible from the constraints of ignorance, craving and aversion. As an immediate, practical consequence of my efforts to embody those criteria, I am not allowed to withdraw into a Never Never Land of aloof “spirituality” or self-alienation. A tall order!

The rhetoric of non-duality, so much in favor with teachers of Zen, does not help us to get our bearings on this slippery ground. Even so, I cannot help noting that in the very act of asking how we can carry over our practice into our daily lives, or harmonize our lives with our practice, we drive a conceptual wedge between Zen and Daily Life. Let me paraphrase Sakimura Roshi’s words.

“Maybe you think that by doing zazen you can improve your life. Sure, after a while you may see some changes, some benefits. But that is not the right understanding of our practice. Except for zazen, you have no life!”