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From Shinei…

What is a thought? What is it made of? Is it true?

In Zen practice, we emphasize releasing the story and touching our experience directly, before concept.

A thought about something is like a painting of a glass of water. It is not water and will never satisfy our thirst the way water does. However the painting has its own reality, although it is not real water, it is a real painting; square, colored, shiny, flat, smooth to the touch.

The meaning of a thought or belief could never be true or really satisfying since it is a mere symbolic representation of a real appearance. Yet, it is temporarily true in its appearance just like any sound, touch, feeling, taste or smell. We can investigate the direct experience of a thought. Can we find its location? What is it made of? Where do we feel it in the body? Is it stable? Is it flexible? Optional? Is there someone that thinks thoughts or do they just appear on their own? Do we choose our thoughts? If thoughts and concepts disappear, is there any fear? Of course these are all thoughts too! Hopefully they are pointing us to direct inquiry, direct investigation of what it is we call ‘thought’. This transparent phenomenon that seems to cause us so much stress! How interesting!

 How often in a day do you just stop? Not to rest, not to turn around, but just to stop to experience stopping. This is a wonderful Zen practice to pepper the day with. Stop. Physically. Experience the stillness that is so much more apparent when you have been moving and then just STOP. To be spotted by the moment. There’s always this place for you right here. And an instant where there is no seeking invites the unexpected.

Always going somewhere is walking within a rail. Eyes forward, mind into thought, often the mind’s eye is miles away, blocking the avenue of the senses. When you STOP you find your home right here, emerging in the happening world. This sound. This scent. Just this. What is this?

Why leave behind the seat in your own home to wander in vain though the dusty realms of other lands? If you make one misstep, you stumble past what is right in front of you. ~Dogen Zenji

Soten and I just returned from a trip wandering the dusty lands of Peru. We helped lead a three week Amazon Rainforest immersion, Zen retreat, and plant medicine intensive. One of the realizations some people had during this retreat was that the powerful explosive experience that they had traveled across the world to obtain was not actually what they most deeply wanted. What they actually wanted was healing and the simple happiness of a sane and healthy heart-mind that was at home with itself. It is true that intense and unique experiences and healing modalities like foreign travel, meditation retreats, and plant medicines, can and do often have the capacity to open us up. However, it is perhaps even more true that all we really need to do is recognize the fact that we are already whole and complete and that, that which we have always longed for is and always will be exactly right here.

We will never find our happiness in experience. We only find happiness is the end of seeking a particular experience and settling into that which is right in front of us. As long as we think it is somewhere else we will never find it. It is enough just to be alive, to sit, to walk, to breathe, to hear, to see color, to feel, to think. If our travels and interesting experiences don’t help us to appreciate the fundamental peace and joy of simply being what is, then we should question whether or not they are worth it.

Impermanence is one of the unalterable marks of conditioned existence. Let’s just call it change. It’s an awareness practice that’s always at hand. We can appreciate how different each moment is from the moment before. Conditions change and condition what follows. Sometimes the differences are minute, sometimes profound. Whether it’s the temperature, or sounds that we hear at this moment, or the daily flow of tasks to be done, or a mood that comes on us unexpectedly when we get a phone call or text. Each moment brings change, so in practice we’re paying attention to it.

Some changes may not matter to us, like if a new neighbor moves in down the block. Some changes matter a great deal, like if we receive a diagnosis that’ll affect the quality of life of someone we love, or our own. Impermanence is so much the fiber of our experience that we don’t even note it most of the time. Except when we like it or don’t like it. When it undermines our own plans. To take a close look at impermanence is one ordinary way to help develop equanimity. Being steeped in a steady awareness of change can help us maintain our balance during times of enormous change.