January 19, 2009
Improve your daily Zen meditation practice
My friend and Kabbalistic healer, Jason Shulman, tells one of my favorite Zen meditation stories.
He was on a Zen meditation retreat, a sesshin.
At this point in his daily Zen meditation practice he had come to the conclusion that the purpose of Zen was to not have any thoughts.
So, during his meditation retreat, as he faced a white blank wall and sat in the lotus position on his meditation cushion and placed his hands in the appropriate mudra, any time a thought would start to arise it was as if he would beat it down with a mental hammer.
He fought with tooth and nail to stay attentive so that any time any thought made the barest peep above the surface, he would be able to beat down with the effort of his attention.
He kept this up for the first five days of the retreat, spending more and more energy to be alert to the arising of a thought so that he could pull it out by the roots and throw it onto the ground and stomp on it.
At about four in the morning on the last day of Zen retreat his teacher called him in for an interview, for dokusan.
"What is your practice?" the teacher asked.
"Shikantaza. Just sitting," he replied, as if saying the words was like lifting weights.
"And how your practice going?" the teacher asked.
"Teacher," he answered with more strain in his voice, "I have had no thoughts for six days."
The teacher looked at him and could sense what Jason had been putting himself through during his daily zen meditation for the last week.
"Come with me," the teacher said and he led Jason outside of the meditation hall into the darkness of the early morning.
"Look up at the stars," he said to Jason.
"Zen," the teacher said, "is about being kind to yourself."
And he left Jason to finally relax and enjoy the beautiful starlit morning.
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Comments on Improve your daily Zen meditation practice »
This reminds me of a friend who attended when the Dalai Lama addressed Oxford students. My friend complained that there was no profundity in the address, that he had listened to a gentle homily, that he could sum up the speech in the words 'be kind'–my friend is young and 'be kind' is simply not good enough.
With luck, my friend will remember that homily when he needs it.
This reminds me of a Vipassana meditation retreat I attended, where someone started crying. The teacher told her to relax and be kind and gentle to herself. After that, everyone seemed to be gentler to themselves and the whole atmosphere was more relaxed.
The key to meditation, indeed to life itself, seems to be kind, not just to others but starting with ourselves.