The changes that occur through spiritual practice are not really your business.
If you make them your business, you will try to change your life directly.
If you try to change your life directly, no matter how long you work at it, you will not satisfy yourself.
So, if you truly want to change your life, you should just form the routine of doing small things, day by day.
Then your life will be changed beyond your expectations.
If you practice continuously, day after day, you will become a peaceful, gentle, and harmonious person.
There is no explanation for this.
*Dainin Katagiri. You Have to Say Something: Manifesting Zen Insight.
* * *
Katagiri reminds us that spiritual growth is indirect. We never know how or where we are growing; the more our growth, the more intangible. We lean more and more into the I-don't-know. The path moves with us, and it gets more and more subtle.
Wise we are to be like the tomato plant. We plant a tomato seed. The seed grows into a plant, drawing from the environment within and outside itself. In time, one enjoys tasty tomatoes. The plant never tried to grow and did not plan to or think about producing anything, including its leaves. There was natural action from seed to tomato. This is what we mean by effortlessness in spirituality. In the contemplative Christian path, persons have spoken of this as holy indifference.
See, the tomato plant models a wise receptivity via passivity. Plants act from within their nature. They have all the innate intelligence needed to grow and produce tomatoes. They are not aggressive, pushing themselves to become fruit.
Yet, the indirectness includes other beings, like the soil, rain, sunshine, etc. This is a congregation of energies. We need to be aware of the many sources of influence and inspiration that affect our growth—promoting it, even enhancing it, or hindering it. The tomato seed will not flourish anywhere.
* * *
Katagiri says, "There is no explanation for this." When we receive a ripe tomato, we cannot say, "I know how you got here." No one can explain a tomato arriving. We can study actions leading to a tomato. We cannot include all the causes and conditions. The why remains inexplicable.
Likewise, spiritual growth is like 1 + 1 = 3. No one can say why. And some days, it seems you are going nowhere or backward, while other days, you seem right on course. You learn to walk without a map.
We do, however, notice changes. Fruit does arise. Fruit arises while other fruit is yet to emerge. We could say there is only fruiting. The fruit is all in the change together. We cannot separate the here and not-yet-here.
The fruit is in the seed, even before it. The seed did not appear from time and space but in time and space. The arising cannot be traced back unless we say zero or forward unless we say zero. Spiritual practice leads us to this zero, whatever you call it.
We are working within time with what is outside-time, and this challenges us, for appearance is in time and non-appearance not. For example, in spiritual growth, all the fruit is one fruit. When you look at the tomato plant and see fruit, you can see different tomatoes. You think those seen and those unborn are different. Yet, are they? In the subtle of spiritual development, the yet-to-be is in the present, while the present is in the yet-to-be. See,… no way to explain this.
To see one fruit is to see all fruit. Without the not-arisen, there would not be the has-arisen. They are all here, for this here is outside time, so outside appearance. You learn to trust this. The more you do, the more you relax into the process, not imposing the relative dimension onto the ultimate dimension. You do not deny the relative; you use the relative as part of the environment conducive to embodying the ultimate. You, however, do not restrict the ultimate by the relative; you cooperate in transforming your experience of the relative through the ultimate.
How does this change happen? "Day after day" practice, says Katagiri. Rather than your life including spiritual practice, your life becomes wholly spiritual practice.
* * *
Before you know you are practicing day-by-day, you may seem to avoid the Way and practice. We ripen when we ripen. Before you practice, practice is present, is acting. Day-by-day practice waits for you where you are. So, Alan Watts, in Buddhism the Religion of No-Religion, says, "Buddhism never hurries anyone." Read the Gospels in the Christian Scriptures; you will see Jesus never hurries anyone. You could be living in a mansion enjoying a sumptuous meal or asleep in a burning house, and Jesus will not hurry you. Buddha will let the house burn down on you. Yet, that is not the end. The Way and you continue together.
There is, therefore, no escape. You are one with the Way, so how can you escape? A student of Suzuki Roshi tells of a meeting with him.
It was my first sesshin and, before the first day was over, I was convinced I couldn't make it. My husband's turn for dokusan came that afternoon. He asked Suzuki Roshi to see me instead.
"This is all a mistake," I told Roshi. "I can't do this; I just came to be with my husband."
"There is no mistake," he insisted. "You may leave, of course, but there's no place to go."
*David Chadwick, Ed. Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki.
If you suffer by running away, this is preparation for practice; suffering and non-suffering are practice. If you run from the Way, that is the Way. How can you get off the Way?
You are being practiced before practicing and after. The Way works before you say "Yes," for in the "No" is "Yes," and in the "Yes" is "No. The Way and you "Yes" or "No" together.
The tomato plant is before the tomato plant, inhering in all that makes possible the manifestation of the plant. The tomato plant has nowhere to go, for it arises from nowhere.
* * *
Holiness is whollyness. Everything included. And even what seems to be steps back can be steps forward, while what we think are steps forward can be steps backward. The Way takes courage to walk, at least until the courage is not needed. If that arises, you keep walking. But we are wise not to assume we will never not need courage, at least sometimes, to put one step forward or backward, as the case may be. Often, it takes courage to let happen what can happen.
* * *
*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024.
*Quote of Katagiri put in verse form by this writer.
