Mind Full to Mindful

by Om Swami

  The Zen Menu

  Awakening

  Enlightened Living

  The First Zen Transmission

  The Legend of Bodhidharma

  Life Is a Flower

  Four Forms of Zen Meditation

  Your First Step in Zen (Zazen)

  Wall Gazing

  The Zen Tea Ritual (Chado)

  Kinhin and Sleep Meditation

  Four Teachings of Zen Sutra

  The Nature of All Things

  The Raging Storm

  The Illusion of Suffering

  The Perfection of Wisdom

  Four Aspects of Zen

  The Temple of Life

  Emotional Hygiene and Cleansing (Osoji)

  Zen Speech

  A Philosophy of Life

  Four Virtues of a Zen Practitioner

  Compassion

  Humility

  Discipline

  Forgiveness

  Four Principles of Zen

  The Zen Way

  Sit Quietly

  Care for Your Body

  Learn to Handle Pain

  Practice Non-Violence

  List of Illustrations

  Notes

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Om Swami

  Copyright

  They looked at the calm and radiance on Buddha’s face and couldn’t help but talk to him.

  ‘Are you God?’ They asked.

  ‘No,’ replied Buddha.

  ‘Are you a celestial being?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who are you then?’

  ‘I am awake.’

  Awakening

  Some folk singers were on their way to perform at a village fair. They were about to cross a river and didn’t notice Buddha1who lay there emaciated, almost lifeless.

  ‘You are always tinkering your veena (lute),’ one of the bards chastised his companion who was fixing the strings of his lute.‘Either you make the strings so tight they snap or you make them so loose that they are out of tune. Only if you leave them the way they are supposed to be, will you be able to produce melodious music.’

  These words fell upon Buddha’s ears. He had what we call Satori2 in Zen, an instant realization; his first flash of awakening. He understood and said to himself, ‘I have been too hard on myself. While in my father’s palace I lived a life of luxury, an almost debauched life, and now I have gone to the other extreme of depriving my body and mind of even basic nutrition and care.’

  This was not the way to progress on the path to awakening, he realized. That while life might be full of suffering, it had to be lived with grace and gratitude.

  Living a graceful life that has meaning and happiness is an art anyone can master. Essentially, that is what Zen is about: a state free of conditioning so that the mind can rest and rejoice, so it may go with the flow of life without the anxiety to always get somewhere. Life is here. Now. Though it is easier said than done, it is possible.

  This is awakening in a nutshell: to have a graceful response to everything life throws at you without losing your sense of serenity and inner calm.

  Life and our emotions needn’t be as serious an affair as we have made it out to be. To be enlightened is to take things lightly (though not for granted), to laugh away the whims and irritabilities of life. We tend to take ourselves too seriously, making that the root cause of most of our agony.

  When our mind that is full of conditioning starts to empty itself by way of mindfulness and a natural awareness, a sort of calm rises to the brim of our consciousness. What if we could do away with our conditioning and have a mind that would not be so quick to judge everything around us? While our ability to make quick judgements has an evolutionary basis and allows our mind to do more by going back to the patterns it knows, this ability is also the cause of most of our emotional and mental suffering. Whenever something doesn’t fit in our conceptual reference, we struggle to cope with it.

  Unlike other forms of meditation where you go through rigorous practices to tame your mind, in Zen, I don’t have to go anywhere. Everything I need to be happy is here. I don’t have to concentrate or build my concentration. Not all meditation means sitting down in one rigid posture. Walking, eating, doing the dishes, everything we do in life can be done in a manner that it turns into meditation. The way a child lives merrily, or at least freely, from one moment to another, a Zen practitioner aims to be mindful of the ‘natural’ flow of life, the nature of things.

  When Buddha, the first practitioner of Zen, practised intense meditation for six years, he went through a number of experiences and he dabbled in many systems of spirituality under various teachers. He also tried the path of complete self-abnegation, where he would not even eat for days at a stretch, surviving only on his own body residues. But then, one day, when the words of the folk singer fell on his ears, he realized that this was not the way to progress.

  From then on, Buddha decided that he would feed himself well. Being kind to ourselves as well as travelling on a spiritual path can go hand-in-hand. For the next few months, he started eating proper meals. His body, which had become little more than a skeleton, started to regain its energy, sinews and even a bit of flesh.

  Then one day, tired of not making significant progress, Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree and made a promise to himself: ‘I am not getting up till I am Awakened.’

  After he gained the realization he was seeking, he got up. Even though I have used the word ‘gained’, enlightenment is not something you gain or attain, it is something you become. A common misconception is that when Buddha attained enlightenment, something changed in his body or he was overcome by a miracle, or he suddenly became somebody from the other world. That there were rainbows in the sky and flower petals fell on him. I doubt any of that really happened. In fact, I am convinced that nothing as fantastical as that occurred. Instead, something infinitely more powerful and useful happened: Buddha got up with a new perspective. A fresh perspective on life; a different take on how he ought to lead his life and how he ought to help others in the process.

  When he was walking – this is a famous story I have told many a time – he was stopped by two wandering sadhus. They asked him, ‘Who are you? We see this extraordinary radiance on your face and we feel drawn towards you. Your energy is irresistible. Who are you? Are you God?’

  And Buddha said, ‘No, I am not God. There is no God.’

  ‘Well, are you some celestial being then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You must be a Gandharva (a heavenly being) then. Look at your graceful limbs, and look at your gait.’

  ‘No, I am not a Gandharva.’

  ‘Well, are you a saint?’

  ‘No, I am not a saint either.’

  ‘This can’t be right,’ they contended. ‘There is great difference between you and us. There must be some explanation. Look at you and look at us. We look like man gos sucked dry and thrown by the side of the road, whereas you look so attractive, so beautiful. Your inner beauty is shining through – it’s exuding from you.’

  ‘I never said that there is no difference between you and me,’ Buddha spoke calmly like a murmuring river, ‘There is a tiny difference. You are sleeping and I am awake. You sleep through your whole lives, and I am aware of each passing moment.’

  With that, Buddha walked away. And legend has it that they joined the sangha and became his disciples. Buddha asked them to shave their heads and don ochre. The word Buddha in Sanskrit means jagrita, awake. This book, however, beyond the first few chapters, is not about Buddha or his story. Instead, it is about you, me and our story. The story of our life; the story of our mind. Walk with me.

  Shakyamuni Buddha always carried his begging bowl and w
ore his robe. A lot of people think, ‘Why didn’t he just sit back and enjoy?’ Enlightenment isn’t something you have; it’s something you are, something you do.3

  Enlightened Living

  Buddha was so charismatic and graceful that wherever he went to spread his message (which was mostly only in certain areas of north India), people would want to follow him. They realized that to be like him, they would have to follow him, his ways, his mannerisms, his mind and his gestures.

  One day, as he walked, soon after his transformational experience under the Bodhi Tree, Buddha came to a river where some children were playing. One of those children was a young girl named Nandabala. She saw Buddha and instantly realized that he was not an ordinary monk. Here was someone unique. She ran up to him and offered what she had with her: a little tangerine.

  ‘Please accept this from me,’she said. Nandabala was only nine years old at the time. Buddha, in his grace, accepted the tangerine and blessed her.

  Nandabala said, ‘I am sure that there is more you can tell us. Every word falling from your lips is like divine nectar. We want to hear more. Will you give us a discourse? And this is my dakshina (offerings made to a teacher) in advance. I am offering you my gratitude in advance. Would you give us a discourse, deliver us a sermon?’

  Buddha asked her to gather all the children so his first discourse was to them. Many of these children assembled there and Buddha asked them, ‘Do you all have tangerines for yourselves?’He noticed everybody was holding one. This discourse was later documented, six years after his passing.

  It should be noted that the philosophy of Zen says that if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him, because Zen believes that you must not idolize anybody. For when you idolize someone, you hinder your growth. Having said that, the tradition of the guru-disciple relationship is as alive in Zen as in any Eastern school of thought.

  Buddha in his first teaching said to Nandabala, other children and the two sadhus who had just become his disciples. He said:

  When you children peel a tangerine, you can eat it with awareness or without awareness. Anything you do in life – there are two ways to do it. You can either do it with awareness or without awareness. When you do it with awareness you are awake; when you do it without awareness, you are sleeping. Most of our reactions are without awareness. What does it mean to eat a tangerine in awareness? When you are eating the tangerine, you are aware that you are eating the tangerine. This is called being in the present moment.4

  Maintaining awareness of the present moment requires doing one thing at a time so as to focus on your chief activity. Multitasking is the nemesis of mindfulness. If I am eating food and not thinking about other things and not watching the TV, not on a phone call, not sending a text message while I am eating, then I am actually aware I am eating my meal. As Buddha said, ‘You fully experience its lovely fragrance and sweet taste. When you peel the tangerine, you know that you are peeling it; when you remove a segment and you put it in your mouth, you know you are removing a segment and putting it in your mouth.’

  This comes only when you slow down a bit. Imagine peeling an orange, removing a segment, putting it in your mouth and biting down onto it. Its juices bursting in your mouth and hitting your taste buds; your mouth feels alive with the tangy flavour. This is called eating with awareness.

  Nearly everybody is rushing to get somewhere. And when they get to their destination, they don’t like where they are. You see how there is so much road rage. People drive rash and honk hard, and then they reach, say their workplace, they don’t want to be at there. They hate it. There is tension; there are arguments. They go home to stress. But they don’t want to be at home either. Yet on the road, they drive as if they can’t wait to get there. This is complete recklessness and an absence of consciousness. It is the opposite of Buddha, the opposite of mindfulness, anti-awareness.

  Imagine if you could simply do and focus on whatever it is that you are doing in the moment. This does not mean you need more time; it simply means that you do whatever you are doing with complete awareness.

  Buddha continued speaking on the art of awareness:

  The tangerine Nandabala offered me had nine segments. I ate each morsel, in awareness, and saw how precious and wonderful it was. I did not forget the tangerine, and thus the tangerine became something very real to me. If the tangerine is real, the person eating it is real. That is what it means to eat a tangerine in awareness.5

  Millions of us climb stairs everyday and yet if you ask them how many stairs they climbed, they wouldn’t have a clue. This is just about how mindful we are. Zen is breaking the automaticity of our actions and infusing them with mindfulness. Everything we do then becomes meditation, leading to greater peace.

  Zen is when your mind is just quiet. It’s not chattering; not rambling, not talking to you or anybody else; not thinking about the past, not thinking about the future. That is when your mind is perfectly, 100 per cent silent. Then you gain incredible insight into the nature of things, into the nature of your own life. Your mind starts serving and not ruling you. It would come only when you summon it and not barge into your life and your actions. This is what good meditation does to a meditator. Surely, we need to think to perform numerous tasks throughout the day, you might say. I agree. But there’s a difference between your mind thinking on an intended line of thought versus endlessly blabbering. Zen is having your mind in tune with your intentions, actions and speech.

  Of all the different forms of meditation that I have tried, the easiest is Zen. After doing a few retreats with the other kinds of meditation, which is concentrative meditation, I realized that people were finding it difficult to intensify their practice. That’s why I thought I would introduce the methodof Zen to you.

  Continuing Buddha’s first discourse:

  Your mind is not chasing after thoughts of yesterday and tomorrow, but is dwelling fully in the present moment, children.

  The tangerine is truly present in your life. Living in mindful awareness means living in the present moment. Your mind and body dwelling in the very here and now. A person who practises mindfulness can see things in the tangerine that others are unable to see.6

  When you get a hand on mindfulness and begin to put it to use in your daily life, I promise you that you will change forever (for the better). You will see things in life you were unable to see earlier. The beauty, bliss, adequacy – the completeness of life will come to you effortlessly. Every tiny thing of beauty is magnified for the one who is aware. Because life is full of beauty for anyone who eats their tangerine with awareness.

  Gradually, during the course of Buddha’s life, his teachings gained enormous popularity, because he rejected all dogmas: they needed no rituals; they were just pure wisdom, stripped of all mumbo jumbo.7And then he imparted the first Zen teaching.

  A single flower blooms, and throughout the world it is spring.

  The First Zen Transmission

  One day, Buddha was having a quiet moment with his monks when a man approached him and said, ‘Can you please impart me the greatest wisdom in the fewest possible words?’

  Buddha recognized this man’s presence and his question, and acknowledged it with a gentle smile, maintaining his silence.

  After waiting for a few minutes, the visitor bowed before Buddha and said, ‘Thank you very much. I have received the message. I shall take your leave now.’

  Shariputra, one of the more rebellious monks who never hesitated to pose questions to Buddha, asked him as soon as the visitor left, ‘How could this man thank you and gain something that we could not see?’

  ‘Shariputra,’ Buddha replied, ‘a good horse runs even at the shadow of a whip. This man was ready.’

  Shariputra, however, still did not understand. When Buddha rose from his seat and left to rest for the afternoon, he checked with all the other monks if any of them understood. Apparently, none of them had. They decided to get together and request for great wisdom in the evening discourse.

&
nbsp; They asked Buddha, ‘Can you also impart us some knowledge, some wisdom, some insight – never mind with the fewest possible words – without saying anything at all? Maybe one of us is also ready.’

  Buddha just lifted a flower that was beside him, and held it in his hands for a few minutes. He did not say anything. He simply looked at the flower, unblinkingly. This was what Buddha did to impart the greatest wisdom, the greatest way of meditation, the greatest insight – without saying anything. He just stared at the flower, then raised his eyes and smiled. Nobody else smiled except Mahakashyapa, one of his disciples. This was Buddha’s first documented transmission of Zen. This is where it all started.

  Mahakashyapa smiled because he understood what Buddha was trying to tell him, with a flower, with silence.

  Anything I or anyone else says will be an interpretation of that. Have you ever wondered why we offer flowers in worship? It’s not just for colour and fragrance. If it were just for that, we could offer many other beautiful things. We could smear our deity in beautiful colours; we could spray him with perfumes and scents. But why flowers? There is a very real and beautiful reason behind it. You see, a flower is a living thing. It has life and with time it withers.

  Buddha clarified further, addressing all his monks but looking at Mahakashyapa, ‘Everything is there, Mahakashyapa. Everything is just there. Nothing needs to be done. All you have to do is enjoy the beauty of this flower, with the mindfulness that this flower is not going to last forever – this will one day wither.’

  An easy and beautiful way to experience Zen is to keep a flower at your desk at work, and perhaps one on your dining table and in your bedroom too. Don’t water it. Don’t replace it every day, either. Replace it only when it withers.

  Japanese texts say that the first Zen sutra uttered by Buddha was Hana Wahraku, Ben Koku Na Haru which means that a single flower blooms, and throughout the world it is spring.

  A flower in Zen is referred to as Buddha because he was born under flowers. He even died on flowers and lived on flowers. His devotees truly loved him more than they loved their own lives. He gained his enlightenment under a tree of flowers. Your mind can also be compared to one. When your mind blooms, the whole world is in spring. When it experiences autumn, no matter how much beauty there is in the external world, all feels lacklustre. Everything is doomed and in gloom. Therefore, Zen says, let me simply focus on my mind. Because if I keep my mind in a state of bloom, the world is automatically beautiful.