A student, who had just concluded a thirty-day zazen [sitting meditation] retreat with two enthusiastic dharma [Buddhist teaching] pals, asked Suzuki Roshi how to maintain the extraordinary state of mind he'd attained.
"Concentrate on your breathing, and it will go away," Suzuki said.
*David Chadwick, Ed. Zen Is Right Here.
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The Way includes everything you think and feel; included are all experiences. Some of this may appear spiritual or holy or enlightened. Some may appear unspiritual or sinful or illusory. Welcome it, look at it - this, of course, does not mean indulging it.
Still, something belongs until it does not belong. This means until whatever needs to happen for it to be gone happens.
Some 'unenlightened' feelings and thoughts will never entirely go away. If you tend toward impatience, you may always experience that sometimes, but it will pass more quickly. If you tend to get angry easily, the same as with impatience. Also, the anger will become less and less intense.
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All emotions and thinking tone down in the spiritual life. The former highs are less high, the past lows less low. First, however, the truth of all that has to be admitted in from the basement of consciousness: what is called in psychology "the shadow." One can, then, see how thought and feeling reinforce each other - neither stands alone.
Silence provides the space for this healing transformation. As the mind chatter slows down, the repression softens. Thankfully, the unloading of the unconsciousness does not happen all at once.
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Suzuki Roshi was teaching the student an important lesson: all experiences are fleeting. Running from high to high, even spiritual highs, is counterproductive, a form of egocentricity, and blocks the healing that comes with gracefully offering to all within a welcoming presence. We are the host to what arises from within us.
When this wisdom of impermanence becomes real to us, we do not cling to what we call positive or negative. With whatever it carries in its current, we become the space for the river of life to flow through. The river of life flows with all things, pleasant and unpleasant, what we see as sacred and sinful.
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Models of spiritual beings as perfect are not accurate, and they mislead and can discourage people on the Way. Such are projections of an unrealistic aspiration to transcend the human condition.
Spirituality is the heightening of humanness, not transcending it to be a rare saint or enlightened being. In fact, the person mature in the Way has no wish to be seen as either saintly or enlightened apart from being a human being with other human beings. We are all fish in the same pond and cannot escape; so, we need to enjoy the pond and the other fish living there with us.
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Yes, we are all potentially becoming more spiritual by realizing our Source and identity and living a life of virtue and kindness, rather than the ego always looking at itself in the mirror. Yet, we find becoming more awakened spiritually means becoming more human and more in love with the ordinary folk we belong with on this shared journey here.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photographs.
*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.
