Kill Your Self

by Dogo Barry Graham

  I talk to a man who feels that way. He wants to become enlightened, because he’ll be better then. I tell him, “The coin lost in the river is found in the river.” He keeps that with him, during his seated meditation and during his days and nights.

  He comes back to see me. I ask him, “What does an unenlightened person do when his mother dies?”

  “He grieves.”

  “So what does an enlightened person do when his mother dies?”

  “He grieves.”

  We smile at each other. The coin lost in the river is found in the river.

  JUST SEE WHAT HAPPENS

  I once heard a Zen teacher say, when asked about correct meditation posture, “What you do with the body is less important than what you do with the mind.”

  I think this is misguided. I would not only say the opposite, I would go further and say that there’s no need to do anything with the mind, other than observe it. Just sit still for a half-hour and see what happens. When impulses to move arise, observe them and don’t do anything about them. When thoughts and emotions and stories arise, observe them and don’t do anything about them—and that includes trying to fight them or ignore them. Just be still, and, without making judgments, see what happens.

  Zen students will tell me something they don’t like about other people, or, more often, about themselves, and then ask me, “What can I do about that?”

  I ask them, “Why do you have to do something about it?”

  All you have to do is see it, without adding your own preferences, your own story, to it. When you can do that, you may find that the problem is solved—because there never was a problem other than the one you made up based on how you felt about what was going on.

  DEMON

  A Zen student asked me if demons exist.

  I said yes. If you want to see one, look in a mirror. If you look in the mirror and can’t see a demon, you’re not looking closely. If you can’t see an angel, you’re not looking closely. If you can’t see Hitler and can’t see the Buddha, if you can’t see a hundred billion galaxies, you’re not looking closely.

  NO OBSTACLES

  Much has been written about obstacles to meditation and how to overcome them. At the Zen Center one evening, I asked my students to give examples of obstacles to their meditation.

  Responses included: desire for control, ideas of gaining something, preferences, restlessness.

  I told them that these are not obstacles. They don’t hinder the practice, and they don’t help the practice—they are the practice. Whatever is happening, life as it is, is Zen practice.

  When we feel the desire for control, and we try not to feel it, that’s more desire for control. The same is true for any other supposed “obstacle.” Zen practice is not about getting rid of it, but just seeing it, seeing it without believing any of the stories that arise around it.

  EAT THE FINGER

  Accept all offers.

  — Susan Murphy

  There is a story of a Japanese Zen monk who was out doing begging practice. When doing this, monks wear large conical hats that come down past their eyes, so they can’t make eye contact with the people they approach. That way, no one gets to think, “I hope that monk is impressed with me because I put so much in the bowl,” or “I hope that monk doesn’t think I’m a cheapskate because I’m broke and didn’t put much in the bowl...”

  So the monk walked up to some people who had leprosy, but he didn’t know that because he couldn’t really see them. One of the people he approached tried to put something in the bowl, but his rotted finger dropped off and fell into the bowl. The monk thanked him, and ate the finger.

  We find freedom when we accept whatever is given with profound gratitude. A delicious meal—bow in thanks. A rotted finger—bow in thanks. Life is easy and pleasant—bow in thanks. Life is hard and unpleasant—bow in thanks.

  Why be thankful for hardship? Because it’s our teacher. People who are kind to us are our teachers, and people who try to hurt us are our teachers. Ease and adversity both teach us. I read that the writer Anne Lamott had a picture of George W. Bush on her altar, because she understood the importance of feeling compassion for such a cruel man. She understood that Bush was her teacher.

  This is the practice, moment-to-moment, day-to-day. Running from nothing, turning away from nothing, taking care of everything.

  MEDITATION ISN’T ENTERTAINMENT (EXCEPT WHEN IT IS)

  A friend of mine was told by his teacher to change his way of meditating. My friend wasn’t happy about it, because he enjoyed the way he was doing it before, and didn’t like the way his teacher told him to do it now.

  I told him his teacher had given him a precious gift.

  A Zen student talked to me about his recent experience with koan practice. He’d had an opening experience while passing his first koan, but was struggling with his second koan, and feeling disheartened. “It’s like koans are ruining my zazen,” he said.

  I told him that was a good thing. The zazen that can be ruined isn’t really zazen.

  Both of these men have the same complaint: they think there’s something wrong with their meditation when it’s not pleasurable or peaceful. They don’t like it when it’s painful, frustrating or boring. But pleasure isn’t happiness, and comfort isn’t peace. Happiness and peace aren’t dependent upon situational or sensory experience. Meditative practice is the practice of being with things as they are, with yourself as you are. Pleasurable feelings that come up when you sit are fine. Miserable feelings that come up when you sit are fine. They don’t add to or subtract from the happiness and peace that are always present, that have no causation and so no cessation.

  People beginning a Zen practice often make the mistake of judging their meditation. They talk about a “good” meditation (mind and body calm, quiet, focused) or a “bad” meditation (agitated, noisy mind and uncomfortable body).

  But these are not different. The calm, quiet, focused state is simply what happened that time, so it’s what you observed. The agitation, noise and discomfort are simply what happened that time, and so that’s what you observed.

  If you tell yourself a story about how this meditation is good or bad, how you like it or how you don’t, you’re no longer sitting in meditation. You’re back in conceptual thinking, separate from what you’re doing.

  What’s so good about being calm, quiet and focused? What’s wrong with agitation, noise and discomfort? The differences are only in opinion, in story.

  Just pay attention to whatever is, neither fighting it nor attaching to it. Just be aware. Just sit.

  THE SPACE IN BETWEEN

  In 1998 I attended a workshop by Frank Ostaseski, founding director of San Francisco’s Zen Hospice. It was called “A Compassionate Companion,” and was about how to care for people who are dying.

  He told a story about a woman in the hospice who was breathing painfully. He noticed that it hurt her to inhale and exhale, but that she didn’t seem to be in pain between inhaling and exhaling, so he suggested that she try to stay in the space in between as much as possible.

  I heard this not as a story about death, but about life. The woman was dying (we all are), but she wasn’t dead. She was breathing, and suffering, and seeking not to suffer. Even though she was suffering, there was a space empty of suffering.

  We don’t have to be on our death-bed before we find the space in between. Whatever life brings us, we are conditioned to behave in a reactive, defensive, angry, self-centered way —but there is a space in between the event and our reaction. It is a place without a story, without a view of self and other. It is the space in between delusions. With meditative practice, we can spend more time in that space, until it becomes our home.

  GO HOME

  I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

  — Samuel Beckett

  What do you see when you turn out the light?

  I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine.

  — The Beatles

  I tell my Z
en students that they have to enter the forest at its darkest part, and that until they do they will never know peace. I tell them they’ll know the darkest part when they see it, and that it’s different for everyone. It’s not the part you look at and think, “Well, that’s terrifying, but, okay... I’ll go in there.” It’s the part you look at and you freeze, and you think, “I can’t.”

  That place you’re so afraid to enter, that seems so dark, is your own heart. For as long as you avoid going there, you live separate from your heart. You live a life of homelessness, no matter how secure the walls around you and the roof over you.

  I was almost too frightened to go there, and absolutely too frightened not to go there. When I entered the forest at its darkest place, I found that it wasn’t dark at all. It was a place of light and warmth, and it only seemed dark at first because my eyes were closed. When I opened my eyes, I saw that I was home.

  GAP

  I had a Zen student who had a medical condition that caused pain in one of her arms. One morning, as the sangha was about to sit zazen together, she told me that the pain was particularly bad, and asked me if she could pay attention to the pain rather than her breath.

  “Okay,” I said. “Just be present and observe the pain.”

  “Can I silently recite something to myself?”

  “Like what?”

  “How about if I recite, ‘As I breathe out, I relax my arm?’ Is that okay?”

  “No,” I said. “Just be present and observe the pain without judgment.”

  Her desire to recite the statement is symptomatic of a common error that is often taught or encouraged by misguided teachers. Visualizations, affirmations, stories we tell ourselves—all encourage and reinforce a dualism. If you’re telling yourself that you’re doing something (”As I breathe out, I relax my arm”), you’re separate from the thing that you’re doing. You’re not present with the feeling in your arm—instead, you’re narrating a story about it. Worse, you’re narrating a story about you.

  If you know you’re doing something, there’s an immediate dualism. There’s the person who knows, and there’s the thing that is known. So, again, there’s separation. There’s alienation.

  Close the gap. Pay attention. No separate being to breathe out, and no arm to relax. No longer locked inside the bag of skin and ego. The entire universe inside you, and you inside the entire universe.

  This is not to say that there’s something wrong with reciting or chanting. I recite a grace every time I’m about to eat. But I don’t recite it while eating. That would be messy, and would separate me from the experience of eating. It’s the same with every other attempt we might make to narrate the present moment instead of living it.

  NO RIGHTEOUS ANGER

  A Zen student asked me if anger is always self-centered. I answered, “Yes.”

  Anger is always a cover for pain or fear. I see an animal being abused, and feel an awful sadness—for about a second. Then anger appears, and I want to hurt the person who hurt the animal—because it is easier to feel that way than to just be with the sadness. The anger gives a sense of escape and a sense of control.

  Someone says or does something that hurts me. For about a second, there is just the hurt, the sadness. Then anger appears, and I want to retaliate. The sense of escape, the sense of control, of being able to do something about it.

  Anger can only exist when there is a self-centered desire for things to be other than they are. When I see that I don’t have to do anything about the sadness or the hurt, and relax into the sadness or hurt, without clinging and without pushing away, there is no anger. Drop the self-centered story, and what’s there is just life as it is. And with that acceptance comes the clarity necessary to take care of what needs to be taken care of, to treat the source of the pain and fear.

  OBSERVING

  Someone who recently began a Zen practice asked me for advice on strengthening her practice. This is what I told her:

  As you go through your day, get in the habit of observing the interior with the same detachment with which you observe the exterior. When your boss or your co-worker is doing or saying something, you don’t identify with what they’re doing or saying, because you know they’re not you. In the same way, notice whatever reactions, thoughts, emotions you’re having, but don’t identify with them. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re you. Just see it, see what’s going on, without holding on and making a self-centered story out of it. If what you see happening is that you’re making a self-centered story, just observe “I’m making a self-centered story,” and don’t hold on to it.

  WHAT DO YOU WANT?

  I talk to quite a few people who think, after they’ve practiced for a while, that they’ve let go of self-centered view. They think they have, but they haven’t. When I realize that is when they tell me how frustrated they are that other people don’t see that in them and aren’t responding in the same way.

  A Zen student asked me, “What do you do when you’ve let go of self-centered view, you’re not making things about yourself, but everybody else is and they’re messing things up for you?” So how have you let go of self-centered view when you’re expecting life to now give you what you want? And we can kid ourselves that that’s not what we’re thinking, but for most of us deep down, that’s still what’s going on.

  We think karma is this cosmic system of punishment and reward and if you let go of self-centered view, the world will do what you want, life will give you what you want. You’ll be happy now, right?

  The truth is, when you do let go of self-centered view, when you stop attaching to outcomes, when you stop making things about yourself, it can drive other people absolutely crazy. Misery really does love company. And when you refuse to get caught up in your own dramas anymore, or in other people’s dramas, it can make other people crazy, because we find comfort in our drama.

  You might think that people will find you a calming presence if you’re not feeding the drama. No, they’ll hate you. If you’re not attaching to self-centered view, and other people are, they’re going to be very, very uncomfortable with that.

  When you first stop attaching to self-centered view, or you first try to stop attaching to it, it’s frightening because that’s the ground you’ve been standing on your whole life. We have all experienced how comforting and reassuring pain and drama and violence actually are. Not necessarily physical violence, but the violent way that most of us live our lives.

  Look at how polarized every aspect of American society seems to be. Look at any political debate and see how polarized it is. The people you disagree with are bad people and if they don’t have the same label that you have, then there can be no common ground. All violence arises from that. We do it on a political level, on a societal level and on a personal level—and we like it. We like to say we don’t, but we really do. It’s what we’re conditioned to do and it’s what we’re conditioned to like.

  If you examine what you think of as the most angry and dramatic behavior of your life, you’ll realize, when you look at it carefully, that you liked it. That’s why you did it. It was comforting. It was reassuring. It’s why so many people stay in miserable relationships. They might be miserable, but it’s a familiar misery and so it’s comforting.

  When you stop doing that, when you stop playing that game, at first it’s terrifying. You’ve got no ground to stand on. You don’t know what to do. When other people experience that change in you, it’s going to scare them. They’re not going to like it. And that’s when you realize that you haven’t let go of self-centered view. Your new belief is, “I’m not controlled by my ego anymore. I’m not looking to get back something from life. I’m not self-centered anymore. Therefore, people are going to like me, admire me, and want me around, and life is going to be kind to me, and I’m going to get my way.” Me, me, me, me, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme.

  And people can tell. You might be able to con yourself. Actually, it’s easier to con yourself on this level, tha
n it is to con other people. You might buy into your own story that you’re not self-centered anymore. And other people might think they buy into it. They might believe it intellectually because you’re wearing a Zen robe or whatever, but on a visceral level they can tell that you’re faking it. They can tell that it’s not real. Because you still want something from them. You want them to realize that you’re not self-centered anymore and that they should be like you. Then you’d be happy. If only they would be like you. If only they would, like you, stop being self-centered, then you would be happy. We’ve all had that feeling. And it doesn’t work.

  Somebody who’s genuinely let go of self-centered view speaks and acts only out of compassion. And even when they speak painful truths, people still come back to them; even if someone stomps away in a rage, they usually come back. Why? Because the person who didn’t get their way can tell that this wasn’t about them, that this wasn’t an attack on them. There was no mean-spiritedness there. The person didn’t want something from them.

  In your interactions, no matter how compassionate you think you’re being, stop and ask yourself, “What do I want here? Do I want something from this person?” In almost every case you’ll find that you do. It might be hidden deep. It might be gross or it might be subtle. But it’s usually there. There’s something you want.

  When you want something, but you think you’re no longer attaching to self-centered view, you become far more obnoxious than you were when you were just brutishly self-centered, when your attitude was, “To hell with you, give me what I want. Do what I want.” Because now, you still have that attitude, but what you’ve buried it under now is a kind of piousness, a sanctimoniousness. “I don’t have a self-centered view. Therefore, since I’m not self-centered or arrogant, I’m better than you. Do what I want because I’m right and you’re wrong.”