Why did the bystander lay his hair on the path? Hair is very personal. It is a statement of who we think we are. Hair has human warmth, human scent. To lay our hair down for someone to walk on is an act of extreme humility. There is the story in the Bible of the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus with costly perfume that she had been saving for his burial. She used her long hair to dry his feet. To use our hair as a foot towel, to lay down our hair for someone to walk on—what acts of deep humility and love!
The Buddha lay down his long hair, cutting it off when he stepped out of palace life, surrendered his future as a king, and began the spiritual search. This is what our practice is fundamentally about, home-leaving. It means to leave the safe, secure “home” we have constructed for ourselves, woven together out of the myths about our family of origin and mistaken ideas about what we need to survive and be safe. It doesn’t mean to break off ties to our biological family, our spouse and children. It means to take off the blinders and the binders.
No one is truly content being a bystander. We want to walk the path ourselves, feel the lovely ache of stretched muscles in our own body-mind. We want to be able hear the truth of Dharma spoken by all creations, everywhere, not just in temples on Sunday. We want to live and speak the truth ourselves, the truth of the Dharma that we have realized as our very life. Only then will our restlessness cease and will we find true contentment. Every day, every minute we must summon the energy, let go of that which is static. Step out!
A Guide for the Journey
The example of bodhisattvas like Jizo or Kannon can inspire us, but to make significant progress a living human guide is needed. Shodo Harada Roshi said that a Zen teacher is like someone who teaches you to rock climb. To a beginner, the mountain looks like a sheer rock face, impossible to climb. The experienced climber can show you where there are hand- and toe holds and chimneys to use to find your way up. The teacher can show you how to use the tools of practice. A teacher helps you climb safely, knows when you need an assist or belay, when you should climb hard, and when you need to rest. The teacher encourages you when you are backing uncertainly over the edge of a precipice, scared/exhilarated about stepping out into thin air and rappelling down. In Zen practice this is called the step “off the top of a hundred-foot pole.”
The teacher says, “Start right there, that place in front of you that you’re gripping so hard. Let go of it.” “Who, me?” we say. “Holding on? I’m not holding on to anything!” “That ledge you’re standing on, that’s the one you have to step off,” says the teacher.
The ledge could be almost anything. It’s any position we are stuck to, any judgment. It is technique we’ve developed to get our way and feel safe, by bullying, by whining, by being cute, by making people laugh, by being a smart aleck, by hiding.
A journey of a thousand miles actually begins with one step into empty space. This is not a metaphor. A young couple came to me to plan their wedding ceremony. As often happens, plans for the wedding had flushed a few problems out of their hiding place in the herbaceous border. In a recent argument over the invitations, Jane had declared that maybe she didn’t want to get married after all. She had sent for college catalogs for schools back East. Maybe she’d go to graduate school instead. Noah was completely baffled but supportive. If she wanted out, he’d help her face her parents with the news and share in paying back the four thousand dollars already spent on the event.
We began to tease out what was going on. Jane had just graduated from college a few weeks before. She had no clear direction in her life at this time, no plans for a job or graduate school. Her mother had taken firm control over the wedding, controverting every one of the young bride’s wishes. Jane had wanted the men in the wedding party to wear pale green linen pants. Her mother had promptly bought dark green wool pants. And so on. Jane said she didn’t really want to go to graduate school on the East Coast but suddenly and somewhat inexplicably found herself sending for the catalogs.
What was going on? The common theme was stepping forward into uncertainty. No structure of school or job. Moving into adult married life, she wanted to be out from under her mother’s control but panicked at the thought of becoming subservient to her husband’s life. She had grabbed at graduate school as structure. I asked, “Can you just wait in uncertainty for awhile? Can you move deliberately into the spaciousness of the unknown without clutching at anything? Jane moaned. “I’ve heard you give Dharma talks about stepping out into emptiness before, but I didn’t know it would be like this!”
Correct. One of the ways I know I am on the path is that what occurs, what teaches, what cracks, what opens up, is never what I expected it to be. The ego cannot foresee its own demise.
When we do let go of some chunk of who we think we are and step out into the unknown, we feel naked. We are afraid—of the emptiness. The teacher’s words (and hopefully his or her life) encourages us to take this step, which we already know we must take, to taste freedom. The teacher says, “It’s beautiful up here. You can see forever. It’s worth the climb. You can do it!”
Jizo Bodhisattva is often portrayed with one foot raised slightly, as if to take a step. This is the awareness of mind and body we seek, not dragging or holding on to anything, poised for what life calls us to do in this moment.
The next point is very important. The teacher must be alive. As Jiyu Kennett Roshi said, “It’s easy to practice with a dead teacher.” I add, “Or a teacher three thousand miles away.” In the Zen tradition we insist upon “face to face.” Even that is often not enough. People can hide things from teachers for years when their only encounters are in dokusan (private interviews). We do not want to reveal our hidden ugly, pitiful, selfish parts. A teacher must be living with you for a goodly piece of continuous time to feel your energetic blocks, to watch how you react to uncomfortable situations and difficult people. Our ego’s project is to shape the world so we are not uncomfortable or revealed. The teacher’s job is the opposite, to make us sit through our discomfort and be revealed completely. The teacher has radar to detect each layer of “invisible” (or so we like to think) protective shield we have erected over the years. Next the teacher helps us to see it and deconstruct it, reassuring us as it comes down.
Much of the ego’s working is unconscious and therefore inaccessible to us. As Jung said, “The unconscious is unconscious.” A person who is observing from the outside and who has done at least part of the dirty and thrilling job of dismantling themselves is the only person who can help you do the job fully. Teachers know the rat holes where the ego hides out squeaking. They have compassion because they know how frightening nakedness is. They have strength when you need it because they know the difference between whining and deep sobs.
Although the teacher entices us from the front and pushes us from behind, each person has to do the climb alone. We would never be satisfied with a slide show of lovely views from the mountaintop, or with someone else’s description of their rock climb. In fact it would be very boring.
Have you ever tried to recount to a friend who does not meditate, the highlights of your recent meditation retreat? “For the first day I sat still for eight hours and followed my breath. My breaths were pretty short. I couldn’t hold my attention on the breath for more than two breaths. By the second day my breaths got a little longer. Some were short and some were long. I was able to follow them better, once in a while for five breaths in a row. Then I . . .”
“Really?” your non meditating friend replies, looking at you a bit askance. “And you paid money for this?”
The climb, the following of the breaths, is only interesting and satisfying to the person who is actually doing it. The true joy is in the doing of it, facing our fears, our boredom, our deep and petty emotions, and continuing to go on. Our happiness is in feeling the body and mind become still, in the taste of simple food well earned by a day’s work, and in the touch of a breeze on the face and sounds of the forest and earth during nighttime meditation.
It is in each step that we find our pleasure. Each step, marked by the sound of Jizo’s pilgrim staff. Tap. Tap. Tap. Here. Here. Here.
Fellow Pilgrims
My companions
Trekking
The six realms—
I recognize my father!
There is my mother!
Dōgen Zenji
After being born into separateness, at some point we realize this isn’t all. Something’s missing. The grown-ups don’t have it all figured out. They’re fooling themselves into thinking they’re happy, and now they’re trying to fool me. At that point we actively step out on the pilgrimage road. It’s up to us to start out alone. Then help begins to flow toward us, including the necessary guides and supplies for the journey.
If our parents are spiritual seekers, they may assist us. One of the clearest childhood memories is calling down the stairs after I had gone to bed, asking my mother, who had gone down to the living room after tucking me in, questions about the nature of God. Was God a man or a woman? How old? Present always or not? The questions were asked in a casual afterthought way, but I remember holding my breath until I heard by the directness and care and weight of her response that these were very important questions to her too.
The answers didn’t matter so much; I don’t even remember if she gave me any answers. Knowing my mother, probably not. What mattered was the understanding that flowed between us, up and down those dark stairs, that this was the most important thing. Here is where two human beings could truly meet, in that great questioning. A pilgrim recognizes a pilgrim.
Pilgrims are found everywhere. Among Jews, Christians, Hindus, agnostics, Muslims; among the poor, the homeless, the dying, the white or blue collar, children or the elderly—it does not matter. A pilgrim recognizes a pilgrim.
On a recent plane trip I was seated next to an older man who had a warm feeling to him. He wore clean Western clothes and a cowboy hat, but he looked like these were his real clothes, not ordered from the Coldwater Canyon catalog. We talked about a house he was building, which led to a church he had built in Latin America, which led to my favorite topic, spiritual life. It was an easy, gentle ramble through spiritual experiences and findings. We agreed that the spiritual search is the underpinning of all other activity, and that spiritual truth is revealed to us to the degree we are willing to use it in our life for others. Only as we finished the conversation and turned to our books did we clarify our traditions. He was Mormon and I was a Zen Buddhist. At that point it made not a ripple of difference. A pilgrim recognizes a pilgrim.
This is always true, once we have been seized by the great question and set out on the quest. Our antennae are up. We recognize someone who also knows they have been seized by the scruff of the neck. There is a look, a humor, a determination. They have been pierced through by the sharp pointed staff of that great question, and being pierced, no way to pull it out.
We can let ourselves be tortured by its point, a point that can never be covered over by soft wrappings, fur coats, leather seat covers or down comforters, a point whose needling pain can never be dulled completely by alcohol or drugs. We can be made miserable by the heart-piercing wound that can never be healed by human embraces or insertion of body parts into body orifices. We can try to hide the staff or run away from the staff that has penetrated us through and through, but we are like a knight with a lance protruding fore and aft. It will keep tripping us and others up.
Or we can acknowledge that great question, and use it as a staff—to support us as we set out on the pilgrimage, to help us cross rivers when the current is so swift it pushes and pulls at our legs, knocking us off balance. We can plant the staff down here and now, regain our balance, and move on.
When we have plumbed ourselves to the bottom of our minds, and have seen through its most silly, superficial and pitiful aspects, down to that which is fundamental and unadorned, then no one else is a mystery. Everyone else is known, and thus a friend. Angry only because they are afraid. Afraid only because they are ignorant and confused. Everyone else is also—a pilgrim.
The Purposes of Pilgrimage
There are many reasons to undertake a pilgrimage: to seek new teachers and new truths, to find freedom of religious expression, and to seek a cure.
Visiting Spiritual Teachers
There is a koan about a monk on pilgrimage, carrying his six-ringed staff, sharpening his understanding against a teacher’s whetstone.
Blue Cliff Record Case 31:
Mayoku Comes to Shōkei
Mayoku came to Master Shōkei’s monastery, carrying his six ringed pilgrim’s staff with him. He walked up to the teacher’s high seat where Shōkei was sitting, walked around seat three times, shook his staff, ringing the bells, stuck it in the ground, and stood up straight. Shōkei said, “Good.”
Mayoku then went on to the monastery where Master Nansen was in charge. Again he walked around the Master’s set, shook his staff, ringing the bells, stuck it in the ground and stood up straight. Nansen said, “Wrong.”
Mayoku objected. “Shōkei said, ‘Good,’ why do you say ‘Wrong’?” Nansen replied, “Shōkei is ‘good’ but you are wrong. You are blown about by the wind. That will lead to destruction.”
The young monk’s actions might sound quite brazen to us, like a young priest walking into a church where an old minister or priest is giving a sermon before the congregation, striding up to the pulpit, circling it three times, and standing in open challenge. But this was part of good Zen etiquette, a custom dating back to the time of the Buddha. The disciple circled the master’s seat three times keeping him to the right, bowed before him, and moved back to an inconspicuous seat to await instructions.
Mayoku has had fresh insight, perhaps a glimpse that his own body is the Buddha body. A genuine opening is very compelling and can cause people behave in peculiar ways. Mayoku stands boldly before Shōkei, who acknowledges this frisky puppy politely.
Then Mayoku picks up his staff, departs, and travels on to Nansen’s temple. By the time he arrives, the insight he is carrying is stale and Nansen is aware of it. No dragging bags of rotting garbage around my temple!
Harada Rohsi was asked if Zen training was different in these times. He said that the training is the same, but it takes much longer. This is, he said, because people have too many choices. They won’t settle down for the length of time it takes to do the work of radical transformation. There is a danger in visiting teacher after teacher. It can become a form of spiritual materialism, collecting Buddhist merit badges. “I’ve been to retreat with the great X and been blessed by the holy Y and had three empowerments from the great Z.” It is a defense of the ego against settling down to do the sometimes uncomfortable and dirty, sometimes pleasurable and pure, work that must be done. Zen is not a perfume to cover up the stink of our ego temporarily. Zen is the work of digging out and eradicating the source of the stink.
New Places, New Truth
Buddhist pilgrims often visit places of significance in the life of the Buddha: Limbini, where the Buddha was born: Bodgaya, where he was enlightened; Benares, where he gave his first teaching; and Kusinagara, where he died. It can be inspiring to visit old Buddhist sites and to feel the energy of many lives dedicated to practice in one place. Some places have an energy of great power and determination. Some are tranquil, soaked in silence.
That tranquillity can be palpable, even in the middle of a city. When I lived at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, we had periodic open houses, inviting the families of those in residential training to come visit, ask questions, and to poke around that place. This was to help dispel concerns that their child (who might be forty years old) was involved in a cult.
During one of these events I was giving a tour to someone’s relatives who were somewhat cool and skeptical. The Zen Center wasn’t a very impressive place physically. It consisted of several houses and apartment buildings clustered on a noisy block in the L.A. ghetto near Watts, with drug deals going down in the adjac
ent park, boom boxes blasting all night, and gunfire around the block most weekends. The zendo was a small remodeled house in need of paint. Inside most of the downstairs walls had been removed, and sitting cushions put down on the wood floor. As we entered, I expected the guests to take a quick peek and leave. But they stopped and looked around. Then one said in a hushed voice, “It’s so quiet in here.” The others nodded. “It’s like the silence is soaked in the walls.” We all stood there for a few minutes, relaxing in the oasis of quiet in the midst of chaos.
I was surprised that strangers could feel that silence. I realized then that our practice of zazen has a physical effect upon our surroundings. And that effect can radiate back to inspire and affect (infect?) others. Even when our motive in practice is to benefit ourselves, if undertaken properly, it will benefit others.
My husband and I experienced the benefits of pilgrimage when we first traveled to Japan. More than a decade before, we had each separately taken forks in the road that led away from conventional success. At age nineteen, my husband had dropped out of college to help build the fledgling Rochester Zen Center. At age thirty-three I had left a tenure-track job at the University of California School of Medicine to live and train at the young Zen Center of Los Angeles (ZCLA). After devoting our lives to Dharma training, we had decided to leave ZCLA to move to Oregon, to take up jobs in “the outside world,” and live as a single family, alone, not associated with a Zen community.
We left Los Angeles in great doubt about Buddhist practice in the West. Several Buddhist centers had been disrupted by the discovery of abuses of power by teachers. We were in a crisis of faith. If these were examples of the behavior of the most “enlightened” of the Buddhist teachers, what benefit did the practice have? Our relatives had wondered about this foreign religion for a long time. Maybe they were right.
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