Why Do We Do This?

Shōbōgenzō

I was raised as an agnostic. "What you don't know won't hurt you" sums up my adolescent attitude. The only religious conversation I had with my father was at the dinner table one evening when I was young. It was about a simple prayer that I was told to pray before each meal: "God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for this food. Amen." I did what I was told. It eventually became more of a poem than a prayer for me. I liked the cadence of it, but that did not prevent me from wondering why I had to recite it. At the very least it was a constant reminder for me to be thankful.

After I prayed this prayer before dinner one evening, I asked my father: "Why do we do this?" Only now do I understand the wisdom not only of his response to my question, but of my parent's decision to have me continually pray (day after day) in the first place. He looked at me and said: "Fine. We won't pray anymore." I felt as if I successfully passed through some kind of initiation rite.

I lived as a spiritual materialist from my late youth to my early adulthood (monotheism). Curious George was my spirit animal growing up, so my monkey mind was on a mission to know. This heroic epistemological quest (the hero with a thousand questions) was a form of rebellion against my agnostic upbringing. It eventually led me (years later) to a YouTube video in which the interviewer asked C.G. Jung, at that late stage of his life, whether he now believed in God. Jung answered: "Now? Difficult to answer. I know. I don't need to believe. I know." I wanted to know like Jung. 

After ten years of wanting Jung's gnosis, my early agnostic roots got the very best of me. Curiously enough, it was Jung's Forward to D.T. Suzuki's book An Introduction To Zen Buddhism that woke me up out of my gnostic slumber. From here, it was only a small step for me to know what follows from the following syllogism: if to know God is to know the self, and if to know the self is to know there is no self that knows, then to know God is to know there is no self that knows (QED). Knowledge without a knower? "...no longer I..." (Galatians 2:20).

I took this best of steps at the worst of times in my life. I had finished a Ph.D and started an academic career. However, I could not find full-time academic work. It seems that white males who did work in the philosophy of mathematics were not sexy enough to hire at the time (this is not an instance of sour grapes: I was told as much by a close confidant who was on a hiring committee that decided my fate). All I could do was teach courses on a part-time basis for a fraction of a tenured salary. The struggle to make a living in the career of my choice, coupled with my maddening confusion over this "knowledge-without-a-knower" business, drove me to literally sit and do nothing.

During this time I read Philip Kapleau's The Three Pillars Of Zen. This introduced me to the practice of zazen (just sitting). I just sat on my own until I started sitting at a local Zen Center. This experience was instructive, but not long lived. My wife at the time was resentful toward me practicing Zen at the Center, and did not want me to practice there any longer. I had to make a choice. I was married with three children. Loving them was what mattered most. I wrote the Roshi at the Zen Center and said that I would not be sitting with the sangha any longer because of my situation at home. He wrote me back a very short letter that was to the point: "You are obviously not ready." He knew.

Not long after this my marriage ended in a very difficult divorce. The experience left me bankrupt (in every way). I was without hope. As I sat in this hopelessness I read Chögyam Trungpa's Crazy Wisdom and felt a hint of freedom. Like Padmasambhava, I too had explored sexuality and the marriage system and relating with a wife. This made me receptive to Trungpa's insight that to have no hope is to have no fear, and to have no fear is to be free: "The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there's no ground." This receptivity eventually led me to practice at a local Shambhala Center. However, this too did not last long. As I sat at the center, I was not unaware of the fact that I felt like something was missing.

As I sat in the foyer of the Shambhala Center one evening before a scheduled sitting, an older and seasoned member of the sangha noticed that I was wearing mala beads. He looked at me and asked: "Do you wear those for fashion or for practice?" This was no ordinary question. Without thinking I answered: "Both." He liked this answer.

I did not know who or what was speaking (speaking without a speaker), but at that moment I knew what I was missing: the Zen sitting style of cool boredom: "Zen practices are supposed to provide real boredom. You should be really cornered by them." (Chögyam Trungpa). His use of 'fashion' made me think of 'style.' At that moment style and practice became one, and I realized that practicing a Tibetan style of sitting had helped me determine what was ultimately best for me. After I finished sitting that evening I left the Shambhala Center and did not return. The manure of experience had served its purpose.

The Teacup & The Skullcap

Sitting within the Zen tradition grounded me in basic goodness, enjoyment, and ease. This is a commentary on my history, part of which consists in my discovery of Dōgen Zenji in the midst of my various life experiences (briefly described above). This feeling is therefore not fleeting, but founded upon and informed by Dōgen's demonstration of the dharma. His "Sōtō Zen" is the threadless red thread that gets read through the fabric of my life, providing wise guidance as the ensō of it is so continues beyond the point of death (Dōgen "died in the posture of zazen," as Hee-Jin Kim points out).

"On the great road of buddha ancestors there is always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. It forms the circle of the way and is never cut off. Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana, there is not a moment’s gap; continuous practice is the circle of the way. This being so, continuous practice is unstained, not forced by you or others. The power of this continuous practice confirms you as well as others. It means your practice affects the entire earth and the entire sky in the ten directions. Although not noticed by others or by yourself, it is so." (Dōgen Zenji)

Untitled (1965) - Kazuo Nakamura

Dōgen Zenji's words remind me of the wisdom behind my parent's decision to have me experience the continual practice of praying. There was a method to my parent's madness here (whether noticed on their part or not): it was only through this continual practice that I was ready and able to ask my father about its significance, and willing to hear the answer he gave me. And it is only now, after experiencing all of the methodological madness of my life up to this point, that I continue to sit (day after day) facing the gateless gate of the Great Matter and ask: Why do we do this?

Sources

Chögyam Trungpa. Crazy Wisdom. Shambhala. 2001.
Chögyam Trungpa. The Teacup And The Skullcup. Shambhala Publications. 2015

Dōgen Zenji. The Essential Dōgen. Shambhala. 2013.

Dōgen Zenji. Treasury Of The True Dharma Eye (ed. Kazuaki Tanahashi). Shambhala. 2012.

D.T. Suzuki. An Introduction To Zen Buddhism. Grove Press. 1964.

Hee-Jin Kim. Eihei Dogen: Mystical Realist. Wisdom Publications. 2000.

Philip Kapleau. The Three Pillars Of Zen. Anchor. 1989.
Stephen Batchelor. Buddhism Without Beliefs. Penguin Group. 1997.