Intimacy is not something to discuss—intimacy is activity itself.
*Dainin Katagiri. Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time.
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A student of Suzuki Roshi spoke to the Teacher -
"What is the most important thing for me to do?" I asked Suzuki Sensei. I really wanted to do this practice. I wanted answers. "Just get up," Suzuki said.
As time passed, my practice matured, and I felt good about it. So I went to Suzuki again. "Now what is the most important thing for me to do?" I asked. "Just get up," he said.
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The spiritual supermarket can convince you there is some big secret to spirituality. Your ego can tell you the same. Certainly, getting out of bed or from a chair and being spiritual have nothing in common, so thinks the ego. You can go to workshop after workshop, retreat after retreat, and buy book after book after book, and not see what is looking out your eyes.
This accumulation is spiritual materialism, also called spiritual consumerism. A particular brand of spirituality or religion offers us something to get by our efforts. No pain, no gain! An unusual, abnormal experience becomes a commodity to pursue and flaunt. But there is nothing to get or get to.
Spirituality leaves us with empty hands. After all the trying, we get nothing—which is to say there is no getting. The ego is humiliated to realize it cannot win the blue ribbon in spiritual achievement and present itself as a gold standard of excellence to its peers. The ego wanted to be a saint, a shaman, a mystic, or an enlightened buddha and found out there has never been an ego to become anything. How disappointing!
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We often make simple matters complex while missing the obvious. Spirituality is waking up to the obvious. Where is the obvious? Feet touching the floor is the obvious.
One significant challenge in any spiritual path is to accept how simple spirituality is. Hopefully, we will see it is both challenging and simple.
So, Suzuki Roshi compared Zen to getting up. You are in bed, and it is time to get up, and you get up. Or you are in a chair and get up. Zen is that simple. Life is that simple. There is nothing here to call a friend about, saying, "Hi! You won't believe it! I got up from bed."
All one needs in the moment of getting up is getting up. When you are happy, you are happy. When sad, sad. When angry, angry. When kind, kind. When rain falls on your head, rain is falling on your head. It is all life happening, and you are happening with it. You and rain falling on your head is encountering. Your head and rain meeting is intimacy happening. Rain and your head act together.
You do not need to complicate getting up. Just get up. You do not need to make getting up a spiritual, mystical, or esoteric experience. Getting up does not have to be special, unlike not being special. Getting up is getting up. Nothing more is needed than this when getting up. When washing dishes, no more is needed, and likewise with laughing, blowing your nose, or walking down the sidewalk or along a forest path.
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If your eyes are open, meeting Christ can be a mug of coffee and a cookie with a friend at a local cafe. If your eyes are open, you can see Buddha at the grocery store. It is all about the eyes. Do you see? If so, you see there is nowhere else to look. Nowhere else to look means getting out of bed is intimacy itself, intimacy being intimacy.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024
*Anecdote of Suzuki Roshi in David Chadwick, Ed. Zen Is Right Now: More Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki.
