The Resumption of True Nature

While you are continuing this practice, week after week, year after year, your experience will become deeper and deeper, and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life. The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture. Do not think about anything. Just remain on your cushion without expecting anything. Then eventually you will resume your own true nature. That is to say, your own true nature resumes itself. - Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

Day 302. Wow. December. Hard to believe. February of this year sometimes feels a heartbeat away, and sometimes a lifetime ago. Like I've traveled around the cosmos, and like I never left my cushion. Like everything has changed, and nothing has budged. Like I'm a totally new person, and like I am the quintessential original me. Zen is so weird.

Sometimes I indulge my ego the teeniest bit and actually read the advertisements that pop up when I first go to my blog site. The ones giving advice on how to fancy up the appearance of my blog, how to increase readership, etc. I hog tie my ego with a good strong toss of my lasso, and never consider actually implementing any of the suggestions. Besides, I know what it would take to increase my readership. I would need to write blogs with titles such as "Zen and the Art of Multiple Orgasms." Or "Using Zen to Predict the Stock Market," or "Buddhist Principles for Effective Government." But no. I shall stick to my modest descriptions of chronic cushion sitting. Gassho to the brave troopers and fellow cushion sitters who continue to read this stuff.

Speaking of modest descriptions, I have one for tonight. I am attempting to be increasingly mindful both on AND off my cushion. Like Suzuki Roshi points out, as zazen practice continues, it will begin to cover everything I do in my ordinary life. Today, I walked home for lunch to enjoy the sunshine and soak up a little dose of Vitamin D. On my way back to work (may I remind you, the total trek takes about 5 1/2 minutes), a few profound moments of zen descended upon me. I was on the sidewalk along Berry Road when I abruptly barged into the here-and-now. With my entire being. It was, literally, Just This! I felt my feet alternating between contact with the pavement and suspension in the air. I saw the leafless branches of recently disrobed trees gently swaying against a backdrop of feathery white streaks of cloud. I heard the vibrating purr of a scooter as it pulled out of the parking lot and headed north on Berry. The south breeze whispered across my cheek bones. Nothing more, and nothing less. Just This.

"Is this my own true nature?" my brain casually wondered. The thought vanished, and I felt the vastness of an emptied mind. Through some miracle of thoughtless, wordless awareness, "non-me" sensed that my own true nature -- the true nature of All -- had just resumed itself. Marvelous! Miraculous! Enlightenment in my office parking lot!

There is nothing more to say. I walked into the building and saw my next client. Had a tiny, flickering thought that went something like, "That was kinda cool," and a passing sense of poignancy that, so far, I don't dwell within my true nature for very long periods of time. Which saddens me a little, because True Nature ROCKS! That's okay. It is always there for (non) me. For all of us. Ready to resume itself.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc