WEEKLY CORONA LOCKDOWN LETTER – 15 APRIL 2020
Dear Locked-down Sat-down Turned-around friends
This is our second Poplar Grove Lockdown Letter. As you know by now, your technological dinosaur teachers here offer little in the way of virtual retreat practice, Zooms and Skypes. We can only present our practice as it is here and welcome you to try it out for yourselves - and we thank those who are presenting something different.
Our lockdown Zen practice is the same as our practice at any other time; we sit zazen amidst life as it unfolds, whatever it is, and we allow this reality to become us. The only difference now is that the conditions in which we practise - those of the Covid-19 lockdown - are no longer what we are accustomed to. The weather has moved and, like any other change, this brings with it new anxieties, angers and dislikes, unexpected togetherness and inspiration, humour and weariness. All this is – to use the wonderful words of the late Kosho Uchiyama – ‘the scenery of our life.’ The scenery of our life changes constantly. Our internal life of thought and emotion is also part of the scenery; it too comes and goes, appearing and disappearing.
(Photograph: Siyabonga of Distilled Photography)
Last week we began to look at some of the chants we do at Poplar Grove, beginning with the chant of the Three Refuges. Today we can investigate the Heart Sutra, which we chant each morning on retreat. The title of the sutra is, in English, ‘
The Great Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra’ (in Sanskrit, the
Maha Prajna Paramita Sutra). Here, too, I have been deeply inspired by Uchiyama Roshi in his commentary on the writings of the mediaeval Japanese Zen teacher Dogen Zenji. The word ‘
Great (Maha)’ in the title is not some imagined greatness or superlative that is opposed to ordinariness or mundanity but something beyond all concepts of measurement or comparison. And the same applies to the other words in the title. Thus, ‘
Wisdom (Prajna)’ is not wisdom as opposed to stupidity or delusion, nor is it any opinion or debate about what wisdom is; it is the natural intelligence that is already present when attachment to concepts and mental distinctions falls away, the natural functioning of life itself in this very moment. This is of crucial importance. And the same applies to ‘
Paramita (Perfection)’ – not perfection as opposed to imperfection but something beyond any duality, beyond any imagined state of being. It is something that arises only in what the tradition calls ‘Great Ignorance’ or ‘Don’t-Know’, which is what is left when we stop running after or chasing away our thoughts/emotions. It is an unknowing which can only be experienced when we live out this moment itself, beyond any ideas about it. To know this for ourselves, we have to become fools and simpletons. Our clever opinions and fine distinctions will not help us here.
And this is the opportunity of our zazen. In our sitting we experience all kinds of thoughts and emotions and sensations (the scenery). This is natural. It is part of human life itself. But the moment we attach to the content of our thinking and feeling (by following the storyline, justifying, debating, fixing, resisting, blaming…..), we lose that intimate experience of aliveness-in-this-moment. Instead, we are dragged about by our attachment-self – what is traditionally known as the state of ‘picking and choosing.’ It is necessary to be very clear about this. In zazen all kinds of mental/emotional activity will naturally arise; that is not a problem if we see this as the scenery of our life, the scenery of our meditation, and allow it to arise and pass. But if we plummet down the rabbit-hole (no disrespect to rabbits) of our thinkings and feelings then we are separated from the reality of our life.
People write to us a lot about the difficult emotions they are experiencing at this time; wanting to justify them, analyze them or get rid of them. The emotions and their accompanying thoughts are not an interruption of our zazen if we allow them to come and go; but when we entertain or reject them, we are lost to the immediacy of this moment and those things will grow a life of their own inside of us, throwing us off balance, constantly justifying themselves to us. And in the meantime, the sun rises behind our backs and sets in front of our eyes. Zazen is the practice of aliveness itself but, to the extent that we are captured by this inner monologue, we are lost to it. Finding such a stable and spacious perspective in these palpably uncertain times is necessary for our sanity.
Of course, one common form of scenery during zazen is an endless self-observation and commentary on how our meditation is going. This is not zazen; it is thinking about zazen. As long as we remember that this is simply passing scenery, we can let it go. And, from there, we can use our intelligence in a way that is the very embodiment of the Perfection of Great Wisdom itself. In this way we attain the sutra and the tradition.
This lockdown and this situation of imminent threat is all around us. It is this life itself, this
just this is it. Saying this is it sounds trite and obvious;
attaining this is it is our life’s work. How will we wake up in this time? How will we use it to change our lives and the lives of others, of our society and our culture? This is our koan, the question of our life. Like the koan of zazen, it will not be answered by more thinking but by going beyond that into Perfect Wisdom itself, into the palpable vitality of our life. And from there into action. Wherever this may lead us, our way is to start from the reality of zazen itself, from life on the far side of thought, from the elegance of selflessness.
With great affection and respect to you all in these astonishing times.
Antony Dae Chong and Margie Tae Ja, Osho
Poplar Grove Zendo, 15 April 2020
