Saying For Today: We cannot enjoy the mind of peace in recreating the mind of suffering by trying to escape the mind of suffering. There is no escape, thankfully. No escape is our hope for peace.
'Sunset Over The Hill'
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Shunryu Suzuki -
I don't know anything about consciousness. I just try to teach my students how to hear the birds sing.
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some ways, unwise, offer escape from life the Way offers inscape into life within your life, you discover Life - where else could it be?
A student returned to Shunryu Suzuki's meditation center in San Francisco. The student had come from a private 30-day intensive meditation sit (i.e., in Soto Zen a sesshin). He asked Suzuki how to maintain the state of mind he attained in the month away. Suzuki replied, "Concentrate on your breathing, and it will go away."
This advice is a good insight into the value of living in a so-called altered state, including attaining such in meditation or through drugs. It comes, it goes. Bye! Do not even look in the rearview mirror - keep going.
So, the needy, grasping ego will not like what Suzuki says. That ego wants the teacher to assist her in sustaining an artificial life, an escape life.
Yet, to escape into a so-called altered state of mind is to find oneself in the same prison cell from which one sought escape from. We cannot enjoy the mind of peace in recreating the mind of suffering by trying to escape the mind of suffering. There is no escape, thankfully. No escape is our hope for peace.
So, one who keeps seeking a spiritual bypass, that person will recreate her suffering. Her suffering manifests in demand for something special - extra-sensory - to happen in her mind. She wants to have visions, hear voices, meet spiritual masters, channel dead saints, ... all of which leads to suffering.
So, extra-sensory she wants, for sensory is not appealing enough for her. A wise guide will steer her away from this futile attempt at flight - "Concentrate on your breathing, and it will go away."
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We may experience in meditation so-called altered states of consciousness. When they come, we should relate with them as merely another event in the mind-body continuum.
People seek altered states, ironically, to escape the altered state they are living in. When you enjoy the mind of peace, you feel no need for these so-called altered states.
The altered state of consciousness is our usual state. Why? It is altered. It is not natural. Our usual mind is not one of peace; it is the mind of conflict. Buddhists refer to this as "suffering." Hence, it is odd that persons living in an altered state would seek an escape to an altered state.
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An Arthur Deikman started attending meditation sits at Suzuki's zendo. He had started meditating in the woods in his 30s and had an extraordinary experience that left an indelible print on his life. So, he began researching meditation. One day, Deikman spoke to Suzuki, saying he seemed to have more clarity, vividness, and intrinsic value in his experience through the meditation. He could not define it, but he decided he had gotten a glimpse of what Zen points to. Suzuki said, "That might be the case."
Deikman became discouraged, experiencing these "higher" states and seeing he could do nothing to retain it. He inquired of Suzuki what was the use, then? Suzuki laughed and said, "That's right, no use. All these states come and go, but if you continue, you find there's something underneath." "You can't have it, because in the act of having it, it's gone," answered Deikman. "Yes, that's right," Suzuki said. Deikman recalled what Suzuki told him the first time the two spoke: "I don't know anything about consciousness. I just try to teach my students how to hear the birds sing."
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Say you are in the hospital after surgery, you are there. You do not need to run off to another scene. You do not say to the nurse, "Oh! I just had major surgery. But I prefer to be at the cinema. I heard there is a fun movie there that will cheer me up. It sounds much better than being in this place. So, bye." No. The actual reality is present; we are not present to it. So, we allow the Way to work on us. We do not need flight into a spiritualized fantasy. We need to stay in the hospital until we no longer need to be in the hospital. Yet, if we keep with the Way, we find we keep going to the hospital. We may stay in the hospital, never leaving. Who knows? So, if we fully experience being at the hospital rather than running off to the cinema, something comes up that we had not seen before. Then, we can leave the hospital, or, perhaps not.
Then, the birds sing, and you hear them without the static of the mind of discord. So, you feel peace everywhere, for you are at-peace... not in an altered state but in our natural peace. The natural state is that underneath our habitual ego-constructed reality, so it is wise to stay where you are and keep with the inner work until you see what is right there under your feet.
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Last, to speak of "state" can be misleading. "State" suggests a static condition. Suzuki implies the fluid state of consciousness in telling the student just to breathe, and it will go away. He is humorously teaching the fleeting nature of all states of mind. So, that "underneath" is not a state of mind. Hence, we come to something authentic, something solid, that undergirds all the flux on the surface. We can call this many different things. What is it? It is what it is.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
*Suzuki Roshi material in David Chadwick. Crooked Cucumber.
