One of our sangha members recently brought up the term spiritual bypass, so it may be a good time to renew our awareness of what it points to in practice. We can fall into spiritual bypass when we turn away from our experience by thinking we “should” rise above it all. This is a common misunderstanding that leads to a deadening of experience. Zen practice supports us, instead, to turn toward our experience directly; toward the vitality that comes from opening more completely to all of experience.
In practice we don’t turn away, rise above, separate from what is going on, according to whether we like it or don’t like it. Rather we are present to all the varieties of our internal states, so that we can know ourselves and what this life is. We investigate and participate in what makes up our life.
Practice is all-inclusive – challenging us to be free of picking and choosing, to be present and aware in the totality of our sensations, perceptions, thoughts, energies, meanings, impressions, states of mind and body. Not choosing what to include or reject, but rather including the whole shebang. And seeing into the essential nature of all and everything, down to the very subtleties of material and immaterial emergent experience. This a lively practice that liberates us from fear and rigidity.
With palms together.