Reading this morning from James Ishmael Ford, Buddhist teacher and Unitarian Universalist minister, on the unpredictability and nonlinear nature of the spiritual path, the words stand out, ringing true to my own experience: Still, things are happening.
*The Intimate Way of Zen: Effort, Surrender, and Awakening on the Spiritual Journey.
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When you plant a seed, you trust the seed, soil, and environment. You do not keep checking to see the growth. You might tend it, aiding its maturation, as in watering or fertilizing, but you do not hover over it.
If you walk by a seedling one day and do not see any growth from the prior days, you do not despair and pull it up. You may not see growth over many days. And, based on rising conditions, some days, the survival of the seedling may not appear promising to you. Still, from planting a seed to its full maturation, the whole process entails trust. Your trust and the process are not separate. You know something is always happening. You see very little of what happens, still you trust all those hidden happenings.
What are you trusting when you do not detect progress on the spiritual path? On those days when you appear to be a spiritual flop? As Ford says, something is happening. In fact, rarely do we see progress. Most often, we see progress after the progress. We look back and see, for example, we are more kind, patient, or caring. Trust in the something is happening serves to anchor us in our commitment to spiritual practice. We keep cultivating the heart garden.
Today, I sat and meditated, tempted to stop after a short time. I rarely cut short a meditation time or am tempted to. I continued and finally felt a settling within arise. The mind chattered much of the time. Also, the chronic pain in my shoulder was intense due partly to the wet weather. Afterward, however, after forty minutes, the bell sounded, and I opened my eyes following a time of reverent bowing. I felt how much the time in silence had brought calm and a sense of refreshment. The strongest impression of connection to something ineffable came during the silent bowing with folded hands in reverence.
During this meditation session, thought arose about the usual experience in the silence - like this morning. Most people would say my meditation time is often a stint in boredom. So, why do I do it? I am not entirely sure. I can say I have learned to trust the practice. I am drawn for some reason to it. And, if I did not trust it, I would find something easier and more pleasing. There are many more more pleasing things I could do. Yet, I find the apparently boring practice satisfying in a way that attracts me to the uneventfulness, yet richness, of sitting silently in the quiet. I look forward to the practice in all its monotonous humdrum.
Meditation, and the whole spiritual path, can feel like an assault on the ego. This not-pleasing the small self is a skillful means inviting the heart-of-hearts to show itself progressively, so then our true self gains influence. Our true self, step-by-step, becomes the center from which we live. We grow in wisdom and compassion.
This progressive emergence happens through the cultivating inspiration of the practice. We continue in this nurturance, for we trust something is happening even when we see no evidence of anything happening that would appear to validate our practice. We do our part, and we accept that is all we can do, and we come to peace with that spiritual principle.
We relax in this trust, devoting ourselves day-by-day to the usually quite ordinary, plain experience of the Way. Yet, in time, this uneventfulness becomes quite remarkable. One cannot describe how wonderfully attractive and fulfilling the humdrum yet subtly powerful spiritual practice can be. Simply put, one seems to fall in love with the practice. Yes, that is one way of speaking of this odd and wonderful daily ritual of practicing the Way.
