The Simplest, Most Adequate Way

So to be a human being is to be a Buddha. Buddha nature is just another name for human nature, our true human nature. Thus even though you do not do anything, you are actually doing something. You are expressing yourself. You are expressing your true nature. Your eyes will express; your voice will express; your demeanor will express. The most important thing is to express your true nature in the simplest, most adequate way and to appreciate it in the smallest existence. - Shunryu Suzuki in "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind."

Day 294. Peak Experience! Two new followers! Gassho, and Welcome! I had a really good day. Took a walk with my son through the rich autumn colors adorning our neighborhood. Bade him farewell when he left to spend the holiday in Portland. Took the same walk through even richer autumn colors (the hues deepened in the slanting afternoon sun) with Chylene. As I gazed lovingly at a particularly vibrant maple, it occurred to me that I usually feel a melancholy longing in the face of such beauty. Today, I just breathed into the moment and effortlessly absorbed the loveliness. I felt immense gratitude, but no longing. Gassho to my practice for the astonishing gift of the capacity for fully BEING in such moments. What a spectacular way to inhabit my life.

When I read the words of Suzuki Roshi, I experience a remarkable sense of peace and calm. Last night, as I revisited the phrase, ". . . express your true nature in the simplest, most adequate way . . ." I almost wept with relief. A wise and compassionate teacher was giving me permission to release my hold on gaining, on comparing, on competing, on achieving, on the compulsion to replay the exhausting role of "hero child" I had assumed (been assigned?) in my family. "The simplest, most adequate way." I have been repeating it as a mantra. Simple and Adequate. That is enough? The world won't spin off its axis if I fall short of perfection and excess? I won't spontaneously implode if I relinquish my Quest for Best? Social ostracism will not be swift and absolute if I succumb to ordinariness?

The longer I sit, the more absurd the causes of my suffering grow. I generate them myself. When I dwell in the world grounded in Big Mind and Compassion, my anger, anxiety, and fear are replaced by equanimity and joy. For me, zazen is becoming a vehicle through which I pierce the haze of distortion disguised as unhappiness and pervasive suffering and grasp the Fact of Human Existence: Our true nature is to express ourselves in accordance with Reality. Since original reality is Perfection Itself, there is nothing to do other than be who we already are.

How can we muck up something so simple? Sometimes I feel aghast at the layers of illusion I wrap around the initial perfection of my being. I worry and fret and effort and form attachments and bumble continually into the futility of my preferred version of the indefatigable constant of actual Reality. Wow! How I contribute to my own suffering! I wish I would stop! Oops - there goes another one. Attachments are EVERYWHERE . . . . .

As I near the end of my tenth month of daily sitting, I am amazed at the plot twists of my endeavor. I rarely think of "the book" and "the movie," and only mention it here because I just watched a commercial for the newly released "Eat, Pray, Love" DVD. The substantial storehouse of feelings and opinions formerly engulfing the act of getting my butt on the cushion have been centrifuged to the bare essential of, "I will sit there. Every day. For forty minutes. Period." For that is my true nature. Expressed in the simplest, most adequate way.

Gassho,
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