Striving and Not: Some (Non)-Thoughts on Kensho and Sitting

With the appropriately zennie joke of a title out of the way, I would just like to share a recurring “theme” of my recent zazening. And I share this with the typical grain of salt that always comes for a student. This is purely my own limited and small experience of things, but maybe it’s recognizable and of interest to others.

Practice, I suspect for everyone, goes up and down; it certainly does for me. There are moments of peace, moments of boredom, moments of just shut-the-hell-up-mind, moments of just sitting, moments of making a to-do list, of worry, of whatever. But even though things go up and down, I think that over time, as one sits and sitting sits itself, these hills and valleys, they don’t flatten out, but, well, it’s this: it’s not that the valleys aren’t so terrible, they still suck, but it’s like you’re okay with them sucking; and it’s not the hills are no longer great, they’re still pretty interesting and enjoyable, but you also know they won’t last. No need to hold onto either. No need to place too much energy in fighting one’s way out the valleys and equally no need to try to stay on the hilltops.

This isn’t Kensho, some seeing into and feeling like, I got it for a minute! (Though, personally, nothing wrong with that either, as long as one doesn’t constantly seek it or want it back or let one define oneself by it, etc). The problem with Kensho, to my mind, isn't the experience, it's all the stuff surrounding it that creates this great ego game of striving: I need to get Kensho or I need to transcend or I’ve had Kensho and let me explain it to you, etc. The hill and valley thing described above, to my mind, is practice-enlightenment; it is the settling of our practice into ourselves.

What is the settling of our practice into ourselves?

To me, it’s non-attachment. Which of course means it’s one of those basics, those fundamental little truths, the four noble ones, sitting us. So what does this have to do with the striving up in the title? It seems to this little mind that, given our current cultural condition, we have to strive in some ways. Likewise, biologically, we’re kind of made to strive. But Zen is always saying “Stop striving” and “nothing to get” and “nowhere to go”; the hill and valley stuff is all well and good, but I’ve still got to feed my kinds, myself, my animals, etc; how does one do this without striving? And it’s occurred to me that it’s not striving that is so bad (it is, in fact, necessary – think about it: if poets, artists, even athletes, even zen folk, didn’t strive to some degree, we wouldn’t have accomplished some of the interesting and worthwhile things we have (okay, granted, a lot of “negative” stuff has come from striving, too, but you get my point)). So, it’s not striving that is the problem. It’s being attached to a striving attitude. It’s okay to want to sit well, but it’s problematic to try to force yourself to sit well. What’s the difference? It’s okay to want to sit well, but non-attachment is when you don’t sit well, accepting that. On the other hand, it’s problematic when we perceive we’re not sitting well and then trying to force ourselves to sit better - that’s attachment, to our selves, our ideas, a concept or ideal we have in mind of what sitting should be.

Or consider a more practical and less zennie example: Say you want to become a doctor to help, I don’t know, elderly people with parkinson’s. You strive and strive, work hard, and all the while, through years of school and residencies, your aim is to become a doctor, and you want to be the perfect doctor, so you strive to do everything right as much as possible, and you begin to feel that only when you become a doctor, as perfect a doctor as you can be, will you be at peace and ease in your life, or more significantly, only when you’re a great doctor can you really begin helping people, so you really need to get this done, you need to be a doctor, and then your life will be fulfilled. This is attachment because it has set up some ideal to gain, some constant seeking without ever resting in what we are, and also because it becomes all about you. If, however, you do your school, do your residencies, as much as possible with let-go mind, accepting of mistakes and successes, realizing that fulfillment is right now, well, that is still striving to become a doctor, but it’s doing so without attachment to the idea that being a doctor equals fulfillment and peace.

Same goes for shikantaza or enlightenment or kensho or whatever.

In any case, I thought this was worth saying: striving, it’s just like anything, which means it’s okay – being attached to striving, that’s the trap, because then it’s all about us; when we can approach our own striving through the practice of zazen, which is the practice of non-attachment, then we can strive and not at the same time, get somewhere and arrive where we already were all along; play the game of going without ever leaving home.

Gassho