The Pins & Needles of Zen Practice (guest post from John Pappas)

Nate over at the Precious Metal blog had a brain-bubble about having a blog swap for some Buddhist bloggers. The plan was for any interested Buddhist bloggers to throw their names in for a random drawing of which blog they will guest write on as well as who would be featured on their blog. I was extremely fortunate to have opportunity to post over here at 21awake, a blog that I follow and respect, as well as having Marcus from Marcus’ Journal post over at my site, Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt.

Anyway, Rohan offered the topic of “what surprised me about the results of my Zen practice”. This topic is a difficult one to approach since I have been struggling over posting about this for a few months now. I hope to avoid the trap that many people fall into when they discuss spiritual pursuits.  It is very easy to fall into metaphysical analysis or analogy rather than examining the actual results.  So I hope that this description of mine stays firmly footed in the “real” and grounded effects of my Zen practice, but don’t expect too much.

It started with my wife’s pregnancy.   The upcoming birth of my daughter (now 16 months old) and the need to find a new, higher paying (and higher stress) job to support us led to my revitalization of my Zen practice – a practice largely left discarded since I graduated college and one that was largely a nightstand approach (a few Buddha books beside the bed). I realized that I needed to prepare for this change and the standard mental “get psyched” preparations would not cut it. I was worried and scared.  I needed to deal with me in this moment before I could ever be the person that would be able to care for and handle these new responsibilities. If you require the full story of what proved to be the impetus to restarting my practice go here for the complete and unflattering story.

Explosive vs. Intense

One of the most salient aspects of Zen practice as well as one of the most surprising was the effect on my emotional outlook. For the most part I am (or was?) a stubborn, over-reacting and explosive person. This was one of the main reasons for restarting my practice – to control the emotions that I know I have. The surprising part was how, in the beginning, I expected to “control” this aspect of my personality. Rather than gaining any amount of conscious control over my emotions; my explosiveness just began to dissipate slowly as my practice progressed. This isn’t to say that I am not an intense person- I am, but my predilection towards exploding emotionally just began to cease gradually.

The expectation I had at the onset of my practice was that I would gain a more complete understanding of myself and why I act and think the way I do.  I expected increased introspection would lead to an eventual understanding of my self and then control over it.  It was all very psychological and grounded in a self-help mentality.

I didn’t gain anything through my practice, least of all control over my emotions.  What I did experience was a gradual change in how I reacted to my environments.  But even that assumes some amount of control.  I never mentally control myself.  My self is just not as controlling.

I still get frustrated and annoyed by the daily grind of life but those moments pass by now rather than fester. Moments are moments and I engage with them in their own turn. I don’t reject or indulge in my emotional experience but nor do I assume to understand the nature of my mind or the origins of my emotions.  I just don’t let myself get intimidated or bound by them.

The best description would be an intense engagement of the moment.  That present moment includes my environments, my self and those around me.  Ordinarily, I think I ignored the “myself” part of that equation and assumed that it wasn’t part of my environment.

Feeling Gratitude

I feel engaged with my practice (it is part of the moment, after all). Rather than sitting back and allowing my practice to unfold before me; I strive towards it every moment I can. Far from being a “marshmallow on a cushion” my practice is a focused activity that stretches between my marriage, raising my daughter, chopping wood, doing dishes, living in the middle of no-where, writing reports/memos, blogging and the 84,000 other subtle gestures that I partake in everyday. This was surprising to me after being filled with the ideal of “Zen™” being soft and unfocused like a cheap glamour-shot taken at the Mall – A practice full of incense and bowing and chanting.

So I was surprised that Zen practice existed outside of the Zendo and off of the cushion but was equally surprised that I could gain such a feeling of gratitude by engaging in the practices that I thought to be mere “cultural baggage”.  Those idealized aspects that I listed about (incense, bowing and chanting) were initially rejected because I didn’t see the purpose behind them.  For me, starting out, practice was meditation and meditation was practice.  Everything else was rejected.

Well, either rejecting or indulging in those aspects of practice is equally worthless.  They need to be seen as just practice.  Meditation, chanting or bowing; dishes, wood-chopping or typing is all of the same matter – mindfulness and gratitude.

Meditation still kicks my ass

I never expected it to be easy (mentally or physically) but I did expect it to ease up a bit after a few years of practice. But here we are, still aching and working through each session; every day at home and every weekend at the zendo.

Each session humbles me and makes me take a few steps back. Before I get cocky, I get a sense of humor. I laugh when my legs fall asleep during a zazen session forcing me to stumble around and then only to settle back down to another session with a case of pins and needles that would bring Zeus to tears. I get to laugh when I have horrible gas during a group sitting or mess up the chants horribly (I will hit samadhi when I can pronounce Avalokitsvhara in front of a group of people). I laughed when I set my hair on fire while opening the altar (as did everyone else).

Basically, it’s still hard.  I don’t float on clouds when I mediate.  Nor am I light as a feather.  Nor do I become as gentle as a stream.  I don’t escape anything when I sit.  I sit to engage it.  It brings up some bad shit but I would rather see it and engage it than ignore it and place my head in the sand.

This is why I still see meditation as necessary to my ongoing practice and not as something to master.

Dharma Gates are Endless and full of sharp spiky things

I should end this with the biggest surprise of Zen practice – It isn’t all pretty. This is hard work and it brought up plenty of negative stuff to the surface. Like placing alcohol on a zit, it brings up the gross stuff. I have to deal with aspects of my personality that are still present.  That is the most painful part. I am working on the small things now during my practice and in time I’ll bang out some of the bigger ones. But in this moment and in this life I attend to those things that hang out in front of me.

Sometimes I think that I focus on the mundane too much and that it is denigrating my practice but then as I was sitting one day my daughter came in, sat on my lap, snuggled in and sat quietly with me for a moment. At that point, I realized that sitting did affect all sentient beings…little by little and bit by bit…the most surprise aspect of Zen.

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