From Hunger to Breath

There is a division in the surf group. Yes, it's not all perfection over here -- just very close to it. ;) The division exists between those of us who can surf every day, or several days during the week, and those of us who wish we could. Those who can go every day are improving so much -- it's so amazing to see what beautiful and graceful surfing can be accomplished in such a short time with daily, or near daily, practice. There is no substitute for time in the water. For those of us like me, a hostage of capitalism, I can't reliably go during the week. I can occasionally, and could do more during the week, but my job starts at 8 am. There is this ache to be in the water more often, to be a part of the awe-inspiring beauty and peacefulness of the ocean, but there is also a pull to achieve, to get better, to keep up with those improving. Letting go of this pull toward achievement -- a goal orientation -- and move to a process orientation has been the theme of the past few weeks as I integrate the lessons of retreat into my daily life.

January Sunrise, The Point, Newport Beach

My sisters who go surfing every day have a daily practice in surfing like I have in meditation. Buddhists have a saying, "Don't confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself." This is to say that words obscure as much as they reveal; that book learning and dharma talks can only take you so far. That there is no substitute for time on the cushion, actual experience meditating. Knowing how to meditate is as far away from the experience of meditation (it's not what you think) as knowing about surfing is from surfing itself. I have cultivated a lovely sitting meditation practice. I have my zabuton, zafus, and several pillows tucked between my bed and the window. I have made a sutra book with poems and quotes and vows that inspire me to feel that sense of peace I felt on that Sedona hillside. I will sometimes replay the video I took of that view before settling into meditation if I cannot recapture the feeling I felt there. A little ritual to start my day, or sometimes put space between my work day and evening, that is simply peaceful. I breathe and sit. That's the only thing I do.

I would love to have a daily surfing practice. Just like there is no substitute for time on the cushion, there is no substitute for time in the water. My sisters often take lessons to get specific feedback, and we're pretty good at giving each other feedback. Some of us are wonderfully lucky to go to surf camps around the world to get even more focused practice for an extended period of time, and then bring those lessons back to the group and to our home waters. When I am in the water, I don't really have a goal, per se. Yes, by the end of this year, Year 3, I would like to be able to surf down the line instead of straight into shore, but it's this loose focus -- like someday, I'd also love to live in Italy. A nice dream, but not a real, hardened objective. If it happens, great, if not, there is no failure. There is only the beautiful joy of continuing to try. Getting out on the water is the only thing I want to do. Breathe and sit on my board, gently rocked by the waves.

I am beginning to better apply this way of being to my life on land, but it sure is slippery. My tendency toward perfection, toward all or nothing thinking, toward achievement of a goal, is so strong, so insidious, so deep and automatic, I'm barely aware of it. I wrote about relaxing into trust a little over a year ago. On the water, I can totally do this. In a huge way, surfing is teaching me to lose the goals, relax, and just enjoy the ride. Just being out on the ocean is enough. And since the retreat a couple of weeks ago, I have relaxed in my normal life a whole lot more than before. To a large extent over the past month, all urgency for anything to be different than what it is left, and I was able to settle into my daily life. I can still feel that feeling much of the time at work. There is a peacefulness, an acceptance, a patience that I have never felt before, and it's still here, but it's fading.

As I have settled back into life, the ratio of peacefulness to pressing has reversed. As I again feel the lack of money in my bank account, the urgency to find a new job reclaims some mental and emotional space. Underneath the surface level of my awareness over the past week, I have felt a strain. I did a silent retreat with a new teacher the other weekend, Matthew Brensilver. It was lovely, and he said something very important, "The desperate mind never gets what it wants." That strain I feel building contains echoes of desperation.

He also quoted from Mark Epstein's Thoughts Without a Thinker, "The usual psychodynamic foundation for the self experience is that of hunger not breath. When this is the case, the body is experienced as an alien entity that has to be kept satisfied, the way an anxious mother might experience a new baby. When awareness is shifted from appetite to breath the anxieties about not being enough are automatically attenuated. Just as a nursing mother learns to trust that her body will respond to her infant with milk, so meditators who shift to a breath-based foundation learn to surrender into the ebb and flow of their own breath. It requires a settling down or relaxing into one's own body." Epstein then quotes Michael Eigen, "The sense of self based on a normal experience of breathing is an unpressured sense of self which is not easily stampeded. For the sense of self structured by appetite, time is an irritant. The self structured by an awareness of breathing can take its time going from moment to moment, just as breathing usually does. It does not run after or get ahead of time but, instead, seems simply to move with it."

Breathing. Just breathing. Relaxing into the breath. The opposite of desperation. I have noticed this week that I am continuing to try to push to get a result -- in both the job hunt and in therapy -- trying to achieve a goal, when I can really just relax and continue to practice. I don't actually need a new job now, and I can continue to apply. And in therapy, I don't actually need to be fixed or healed, and I can continue to work on my stuff. I can continue to enjoy this time and this place -- not even call it waiting, just living. There is no failure. There is only the beautiful joy of continuing to try. I have a better sense now of what this means and can redirect my energies toward that, but it's like turning around one of those gigantic cargo ships I see in the distance from Blackies. It's going to take some time to turn this sucker around. As usual, I turn to my wisdom teachers to give me a better idea of how to make this move from hunger to breath as I continue to practice in therapy, on the cushion, on land, and in the water.

In an old talk from Jack Kornfield he said, "The mystery of life is not a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. Light and dark and joy and sorrow are what it is. And when you experience it, when you open, this tremendous joy comes. This is from Alice Walker. She said, 'One day I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was. You all know that one. And then it came to me, that feeling of being a part of everything, not separate at all, and I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I ran all around the house. I just knew what it was. In fact, when it happens, you just can't miss it. There is a kind of opening that can come to us.' What we're asked to do here is a very deep thing, which isn't to change ourselves, but to give ourselves to our life, to practice with continuity and care, bowing, opening.”

He said, "the oneness, life force, comes through us all like breath through a woodwind instrument. When we have a lot of defenses, delusions, we play a particular tune, usually full of sour notes, off key. When we clear out our stuff, the music becomes sweeter, more in tune with nature, more out of tune with the deluded world. You begin to play with a different orchestra."

To give myself to life. To relax into the flow of it. Jack said, “What we are asked to do is to bow to what is here just now, to honor the truth of it. As Thoreau said, when a dog runs at you, you whistle for him. What's here is what's here.” The Taoists have a concept called wu wei, which also attempts to explain this way of being: effortless action. It's about aligning with the natural order of things. Not quite non-doing, but doing without so much willfulness. Brensilver said, "A lot of dharma practice is preparing our heart to love well. Not making things happen, not engineering things, but preparing our heart to love well." Rumi wrote, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” The more stuff I clear out, I am getting in alignment with life itself and there is an ease which replaces the urgency. A flow with life itself.

In a beautiful article written by Kaira Jewel Lingo for Tricycle, she writes, "Often people would ask [Thich Nhat Hanh] what to do when facing big life decisions, like which career path to take, whether to separate from or stay with their partner, or whether to ordain as a monastic. Thay would often say, 'Don’t try to figure out the answer by thinking about it.' In thinking over a question again and again, we do not generally arrive at real wisdom, but we easily tire ourselves out and get even more confused or anxious."

Can confirm. I can talk myself into and out of anything. My mind is of no help here. I've written about the Three Tenets many times before and it seems my learning about this idea is deepening. BTG spoke about a talk he heard from Eve Marko in which she said, "What needs to be done?" Look around, get out of your own head and be present to what is, and what needs to be done will arise on its own -- it will reveal itself. I have seen this method work. As remove our preconceived notions, our assumptions, biases and ego, and we pay attention to what is actually happening around us -- not what we'd like to happen or what we think should happen -- stuff happens on its own. Life unfolds. There's plenty to do without forcing any agenda or creating new problems born of our own reactions to things.

Kaira Jewel continued, "These deeper life questions can’t be resolved at the level of the mind but must be entrusted to a different, deeper part of our consciousness.... But waiting for the answer to arise can be challenging at times, because we may really want to know the answer. We may find ourselves feeling deeply insecure and fearful if we don’t know what to do, which path to choose. We worry we will make the wrong choice, and we catastrophize about what will happen if we take this or that direction. It’s hard to find our way if we continue to feed this worry and fear. We can recognize that we are not helping the situation and stop. Returning to this moment, anchoring ourselves in our body, we will find the solidity of the home inside of us, which is capable of helping us find our way, if only we let it, and if we can let go of trying to figure out the future in our heads."

I'm reminded of Cheri Huber and June Shriver's quote, “BE SUSPICIOUS of any voice, inside or outside, that says there is something wrong with you. This voice does not like you and is not helpful. It is possible that with the awareness that you have been unkind toward someone [including yourself], you might realize, in a gentle sort of way, “I don’t want to do that. It doesn’t feel very good.” And it’s not that you’re a bad person, or even that you shouldn’t be that way; it’s just that you don’t want to be unkind because it hurts your heart. When you are open to that awareness, you won’t need to try to be different, for in that gentle approach you will already have changed.”

A gentler approach sounds really good. That unkind voice exists in the mind. I've spent a great deal of time catastrophizing and criticizing myself from the place of mind. Gentle sounds great, actually. There is no actual pressure to do anything, be anything, achieve anything -- any pressure exists in my own head. I can breathe and sit and relax, accepting things just as they are.

There is no failure. There is only the beautiful joy of continuing to try.

Kaira Jewel mentions Alan Watts’s book The Wisdom of Insecurity. She writes, "[The book] points out that when we are clear and sure about what we are doing, we are less open to the many other possibilities available. But when we let ourselves hang out in the space of not-knowing, there is enormous potential and life could unfold in innumerable ways. So rather than avoid and fear this place of uncertainty, we can embrace it and all its gifts. What I found on these long silent retreats was not an answer to my dilemma of whether to disrobe or continue as a nun but rather the ability to dwell more and more comfortably in the condition of not-knowing."

So, I've been hanging out here in the condition of not-knowing for going on 3 years, and my little ego is tired. Tired of being desperate for a change. Tired of being fearful, catastrophizing. It might finally be willing to give up its goal orientation, its need to control things -- its strain and pressure to control things it cannot actually control -- and learn this lesson. Perhaps finally ready to let go of being that desperate person Brensilver referenced. "We don't practice for prizes," he said. Whether in my job hunt or in therapy, I may or may not get a job, and I may or may not ever "be healed" -- but I can keep doing what I can do each day to deal with what comes up. Has there ever been anything else I could do? Of course not, yet the illusion of control hangs on. Brensilver said, "We're really not making things happen. We're creating conditions where beautiful accidents, lovely coincidences, are more likely." By our daily practice, we notice how things change -- we don't actually change most of them. Things mostly change on their own.

So I will continue to practice shikantaza, the Zen word for "just sitting." Just sitting isn't really just sitting, but it also is. (Hello, Zennies.) Lewis Richmond does a beautiful job of trying to explain this in an article for Lion's Roar. He calls it more of a "just awareness," being with whatever arises. "Dogen So means that we’re not trying to stop our thinking, but we’re also not paying particular attention to it or trying to do anything with it. Instead there’s a kind of deep acceptance or tolerance about everything. Thus we come to rest not in the track of our thinking, but in that which thinks. But who or what is that? We are back to some deep ineffable question at the root of our existence, our just-awareness." Brensilver described the Buddhist notion of no self as "experiencing ourselves as a wave of sensory flow, rising and falling, empty and impermanent." When I know myself to be something not so solid, and definitely not permanent, then I can relax more into that flow of life. Let it flow right through me, as me.

Richmond speaks of a childlike awareness, "...Gautama recalled a time when, as a child, he sat under a tree and spontaneously felt ease and joy. Remembering this moment, Gautama sat down under a tree again—the Bodhi Tree—and reentered the natural childlike state of pure awareness. And that was the practice that led to his enlightenment.... A young child doesn’t think much about gaining something, about being different or better. The child just rests in her immediate experience. That’s the point of another of Dogen’s zazen instructions: 'Do not desire to become a buddha.' Don’t try to get somewhere, to do something. Instead, be like a little child—naturally joyous, naturally aware."

I'm reminded of Nancy Mujo Baker in Opening to Oneness, "If we can really cultivate that feeling, that spirit, it helps to change the world. We can undergo a complete change of perspective and discover, even in a relative way, what it’s like to include that which we are wanting to exclude, split off, or put down. When we see that the universe is One Body, that there is no such thing as exclusion or inclusion, then we begin to know and love things just as they are.” I hear echoes in Richard Rohr's Eager to Love, “Only by continually choosing a philosophy of “less” that is willing to wait for God’s “more” will we grow and transform, since we have then learned to be taught by smallness and ordinariness. We will practically experience this as a growth in willingness and a surrendering of willfulness. This is another aspect of incorporating the negative, which then ends up not being negative at all but just a positive appreciation for what is.” Jack spoke so beautifully, “What part of yourself have you not accepted? Have you not felt, have you not allowed and loved? It's your practice, that's it.”

Everyone says the same stuff when you dig deep into the heart of things.

What am I lacking? Nothing. What else do I need to achieve? Really? Little Miss/Dr. Two Masters Degrees and a PhD? Where'd that get you? Nowhere. The lesson of the Mindful Self-Compassion retreat was that I am fine just as I am and everything is ok as it is. Nothing needs to be fixed. That feeling, the enormous relief of that idea, gave me such peace. All urgency left. I sat for two hours just looking at a beautiful view. Just be here now. Maybe we give that a try, for real, keep returning to that, and see what happens. Trying not trying.

The ultimate authority on shikantaza would be Uchiyama Roshi in Opening the Hand of Thought, "The essential matter here is the attitude of just striving to wake up regardless of the conditions you are in. It is not about arriving at some state where all thoughts have disappeared. To calmly sit amidst these cause-and-effect relationships without being carried away by them is shikantaza. Like the weather, there are all sorts of conditions in our personal lives: clear days, cloudy days, rainy ones, and stormy ones. These are all waves produced by the power of nature and are not things over which we have control. No matter how much we fight against these waves, there is no way we can make a cloudy day clear up. Cloudy days are cloudy; clear days are clear. It is only natural that thoughts come and go and that psychological and physiological conditions fluctuate accordingly. All of this is the very reality and manifestation of life. Seeing all of this as the scenery of life, without being pulled apart by it—this is the stability of human life, this is settling down in our life.”

"Opening the hand of thought." I imagine a fist, gripping control tightly, white knuckled. Opening the hand of thought is literally that hand releasing its grip. Try it now. Make a fist, squeeze it hard. And then let it go. How's that feel?

Settling down. Effortless action. Joining the flow of life. Accepting everything as it is. Nothing needs to be fixed. Joyous. Aware. At ease. These are the new goals: no goals, just practice. Connecting to this new way of being every day. Just sitting. On land and in the water. There is no failure.

Uchiyama Roshi again, "What is most crucial is to remember to pursue the way of the self selflessly, not for any profit. [No practicing for prizes.] Because we concretely are universal self, there is no particular value in talking about it. Yet if we don’t make every effort to manifest it, just knowing about it is useless. To concretize the eternal, that is the task before us. Even if we have a cup of cool, clean water sitting right in front of us, if we don’t actually drink it, it won’t slake our thirst. The expression of universal self is a practice that is eternal, but to the extent that we don’t walk it ourselves, it won’t be realized, it won’t be our path. May this—the actualization of our universal self—be all our life work." Time on the cushion. Time in the water. No other way. Don't confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself.

Jack again, “For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river. Unbearable pain becomes its own cure. Travel far enough into sorrow, and tears turn into sighing. When, after heavy rain, the storm clouds disperse, is it not that they've wept themselves clear to the end? In impermanence is the possibility of new birth, creativity, a whole new visioning of life.” And he takes wisdom from the sight of a duck on the ocean, "Now we are ready to look at something pretty special. It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf as he cuddles in the swells. There's a big heaving in the Atlantic today, and he is part of it. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves because he rests in the ocean. Probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is, and neither do you, but he realizes it. And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it. He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity, which it is." Sitting. Surfing. The moon itself.

Rohr mentioned that St. Francis called everyone to look at the spiritual teaching of water. He wrote that a beautiful metaphor for "our humble returning to source" is "the natural descent and ready evaporation of water itself. No wonder that Francis called her 'Sister Water, so useful, lowly, precious, and fair!' Water always and forever seeks the lower, and even the lowest, place. We must let water be our teacher here. Water, as you know, is the one single universal element necessary for all life. Teresa of Ávila felt that water in all its qualities and movements was the most perfect metaphor for the entire spiritual journey. I would agree with her.” Lower. Less. The opposite of achieving which is all about more.

There are those who will never understand this idea. They are caught in striving, have bought the capitalist, materialist message that we must earn, buy, achieve, produce in order to be a worthwhile human being. People in my past thought I was crazy for quitting my job -- thought I should keep a good job that sacrificed my ethics rather than throw myself out into the world again with a "lower" position. Since the retreat, even though I am stressed about money, I have also realized that I have built a beautiful life here in SoCal. Lovely friends, helping people, and I get to surf, teach meditation, and enjoy my life with few expectations for what it should be or what I should be. It's incredibly freeing. It's FUN. Most of the time, I'm having fun. My massive and never-ending goals evaporated; my position in life at a "lower" status; I'm released from earning my place in the world. Earning my worthiness. I just am.

Flowing, aligning, breathing, accepting. Sitting on my cushion, sitting on my surfboard, land and sea, this is the only goal I need to accomplish. The goal is having no goal. Brensilver said, "The first invitation is to relax -- to stop doing, to stop exerting control over experience moment by moment, to cease expressing our willfulness in relation to this moment." Moving away from hunger and toward breath -- the generosity, interdependence, and automaticity of breath. I am becoming a breath-based human, learning to relax in the moment, actually surrendering to the moment. Brensilver described one definition of enlightenment as "all about freedom: happiness independent of conditions." My desperate attempts at control haven't worked anyway. My fears are often realized, and I deal with them. I'm still here and doing alright. As I trust myself more, my ability to relax with what happens deepens. As Brensilver said, "I'm going to love because the alternatives are not tenable." I've tried the alternatives -- they are stressful and lonely. No more practicing for prizes. There is only the beautiful joy of continuing to try.

Jack ended that lovely talk with this Zen story.

"Venerable Ones, says Zen Master Rinzai, what are you running about desperately seeking everywhere, getting fallen arches from your ceaseless wanderings?

Followers of the Way, Venerable Ones, there's talk of a way to be practiced and the Dharma to be realized. Tell me then, what Dharma is to be realized and what way is to be practiced? At this moment, what do you lack for your functioning?

And what do you need to restore by all this training? Young students, not understanding anything, put their faith in wild fox spirits and so get entangled in random talk and fancies, such as that of the law, the theory, how the practice must tally, guard against the evil actions, and so on to attain enlightenment. Such and other discourses are as frequent as April showers.

An old master said, if you meet a man of the way on the road, do not stand in the way. Therefore it is said, if one tries to attain this way, one cannot walk the way. Ten thousand wild fancies arise, chasing each other in the head.

'When the sword of wisdom flashes, there is nothing at all. Even before the light shines, darkness is already bright. And because of that, another old master said, the ordinary heart, that is the way.'"

My ordinary heart is enough. Believe that and anything is possible.