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dharma talks
Stopping the World:
Zen Meditation and Balancing Our Life
given by Nomon Tim Burnett
San Juan Island Retreat
September 19, 2003
Good evening, I’m very happy to be here, and I really appreciate everyone for coming out. Our usual way of thinking when we go to this kind of event is that the speaker is some kind of expert who is going to impart something to us & we are just here to receive. But the Buddhist understanding is more like: the talk can arise though the interaction between speaker and listeners. There’s a feeling of mutual support and mutual empowerment if we come together with a good spirit to address the questions we are addressing tonight. So I really appreciate your help. Let’s go forth together on a short exploration of our life, our mind, together for the next hour or so.
Since our topic tonight involves meditation I thought we would try some. My plan is this: let’s try sitting meditation with just a little instruction for about 5 minutes. Then I’ll speak for 30 minutes or so, then maybe another short round of sitting meditation and we can follow that with some discussion time. Does that sound okay?
[5 minutes zazen w/ a little instruction on sitting on a chair & breath in the belly]
Buddhism is at it’s core about just living our life. It’s about living happily. It’s about living with some peace in our hearts, and very naturally from the peacefulness and contentment springs generosity and kindness for others. This sounds good, right? Everyone wants this.
The Buddha’s central question was why don’t we feel this way all the time? What is the problem really? Is the problem external difficulties? Or is it something internal? Is it something we bring to the situations in our life.
Speaking about Zen Meditation on a beautiful island is particularly poignant, because whether you live here, or whether you are visiting, here we are together in a place that’s close to paradise. A beautiful, peaceful place on the face of it. Certainly we all have our worries and concerns, but basically we are incredibly lucky privileged people in a beautiful place. None of us, I’m guessing, has to worry about where our next meal is coming from. We all have friends, and family, and even though some our relationships may be difficult we really do have plenty of support and the opportunity to live under really great circumstances. So the basic question of Buddhism, is "what’s the problem?"
And you probably all know the story of the Buddha’s life. He also lived in very fortunate circumstances. He grew up as a pampered prince in a wealthy family with nice palaces, beautiful friends and attendants, his life was an endless party really. All parents are protective of their children to some extent, but the Buddha’s father was truly world class. He tried to shield him from all of the troubles of the world. His daily schedule was endless pleasure, and if anyone got sick or was having a bad day or anything they were whisked away. And yet, the story goes, as nice as everything was something wasn’t just didn’t quite feel right. And so he slipped out of the palace to see the world and saw first hand that people do get unhappy, they do get sick, they do get old, and they do die.
These three facts - sickness, old age, and death - are pretty shocking really if you think about it, but we are used to them. He wasn’t so it was a huge problem for him. How could he go back to his protected life of pleasure on the face of this unbelievable situation of trying to live and get some happiness, only to inevitably and complete foiled by our own illness, aging, and death?
He went on to spend seven years in serious full-time study with the best philosophers, yoga masters, and meditation teachers he could find. Trying to find an answer to this question - how can we ever be happy and content given the reality of our life? Or, another way to think about is, given that we have basically a good and supported life, why aren’t we completely content with the way things are?
This is a huge and seminal story in the history of the human story, and I am barely giving it justice here. But to cut to the chase, he did eventually find a way to very deep and complete peace and insight. And his central practice, his central method for getting from point A to point B was sitting meditation practice. And not just any kind of meditation practice - he had already mastered many forms of deep meditation practice before he finally hit upon what really worked.
The key characteristic of the meditation practice that really helped him to find peace and release from his suffering was that he learned how to practice meditation with a strong intention and a deep sense of purpose, but without trying to get anything from it. In Zen we say he learned how to have "no gaining idea". For years he was trying so hard. In the last few years of practice before he finally figured this out, he was convinced that being attached to physical pleasure was the root problem, so he stopped eating or bathing or doing anything with the slightest hint of pleasure to it. There are very powerful statues of how he looked during this ascetic period - starved half to death with his rib cage standing out, his eyes sunken and boring into you as he sits intensely in concentrated effort.
So he figured out that deep and meaningful spiritual practice is not about trying so hard to get something. He realized quite the opposite: deep and meaningful spiritual practice is about letting go of getting something. It’s an activity that operates outside of our usual habit of trying to get what we want and avoid what we don’t want. The kind of meditation he discovered, and the insight that arose from that practice, is that to have a happy life we really need to work with out impulse to chase after happiness. We have to work with out mind to release ourselves a little from this very strong knee-jerk reaction we all have to try to grab onto things we desire, and push away things we dislike.
This is the meditation practice that we try to practice in the Zen lineage I have been lucky enough to ordain into. It’s a different kind of activity than we are used to, but my experience is that it is a deeply helpful activity. An activity that grounds and integrates our life, and helps us live just a little more in accord with what is really supportive in life.
And as Jim [Gwen?] mentioned at the beginning, we will be spending the morning tomorrow practicing this together. And the word "together" is very important. When the Buddha went on to teach people how to do this kind of meditation practice, he emphasized very strongly that we need company to do this practice completely. Our habits and attitudes and ideas are strongly held, and many of them, according to our understanding in Zen, are really not very helpful to us or others. And the power of these strong attitudes and habits, especially this central one of desiring what we want and trying to avoid what we don’t like, are so strong that they tend to subvert the practice if we do it by ourselves. We tend to make meditation practice into another skill. Into something we are trying to get good at in order to achieve some result. But in the company of others, with the mutual support that arises quite naturally from sitting and practicing together, it’s much more possible to practice in the committed yet goal-less way that really does bring us freedom and peace in our life. And the other reason why we practice together with others is that we realize that they are just like us. They too want release from this feeling of dis-ease that is so often the background of our life, they too want a little more peace, and so we want to show up and support them.
We might have the image in our mind that meditation is some solitary thing that really pure and hard-core religious people do off in a cave somewhere. Well, that kind of practice might be helpful to do sometime, but really in my experience what is helpful and productive is a much more modest program. Since we are busy and all have different schedules, we sit at home by ourselves or with one or two others, maybe in the early morning or the evening when things are a little calmer. And then as often as we reasonably can we join together with others to practice. We join a weekly sitting group. We go to a retreat or two each year. Eventually we might form a relationship with a teacher. And most importantly, the very most important thing in my experience, is we just keep at it, we take some inspiration from our fellow practitioners. We take some inspiration from the Buddha’s story & from the stories of other experienced practitioners who have come before us. If we feel discouraged about it all, and this will happen - our mind is good at producing discouragement, we recognize those thoughts and feelings as thoughts and feelings and we just keep at it.
I have been to a few dialogs with people in other religions, and they always ask me "what do you Buddhists believe". And the funny thing is that it’s really hard for me to answer that question. We don’t really concern ourselves much with beliefs actually. We don’t concern ourselves with whether there is a God, or lots of gods, or no gods at all. Our primary concern is not cultivating beliefs, but in actually entering into the activity of doing the practice. One can believe this or believe that. And definitely these beliefs are strong ideas and important ideas - just look at the many horrible conflicts in the world which are based on conflicting beliefs. But rather than trying to figure out the right belief, we are more interested in exploring what happens if you just sit down, follow your breathing, become more aware of your body, learn to notice what’s really actually happening right now, right in this very moment. And if you do that for a while with some guidance and support, I will bet you good money that you will realize that beliefs are really just thoughts and if you really look into them they are not as substantial and monumental as you once thought.
That is what I meant by the grand title I gave this little talk. "Stopping the world" is stopping the world of beliefs, the world of desires, the world of anger, the world of hatred. If we can stop this world of our own creating even for a moment, my experience is that we will lighten up a little. It will be more possible for us to be flexible. To be generous. To be kind. To be less reactive of others whom we don’t agree with. Because fundamentally we are all just people. There’s not really that much difference between us. Those divisions and differences are generated by the mind.
I am not saying that these beliefs and ideas of difference are not strong. They are very strong, they are unbelievably strong, they control us probably more than we can every really understand. What I am saying is that if we choose to, there are practices that can help us stop all of that. Help us return to that which is truly fundamental, truly basic, truly life-affirming, truly just life itself. And my own experience is that meditation in the Zen style is one of those practices. It might turn out to be so for you, or it might not. But if it’s not Zen meditation, maybe you should try something else. My own belief, if I have any beliefs that matter, is we all need some kind of practice like this in our life. We need it, the people in our lives need us to have, the world needs us to have it.
And we use the word "practice" with good reason. This kind of activity is not about getting something or getting somewhere. So we say "Zen practice" not "Zen accomplishment". And it’s something that based on our usual way of looking at the world doesn’t really make sense in the usual way. Why would I just sit there following my breath, what’s the point of that? We actually there is not point in that sense. It’s a practice of letting go of everything having a point. "What’s the point" means, "what do I get out of it?" right? Well the you which runs based on desire and getting somewhere can actually be quite frustrated by meditation practice - you seem to not really get anything or get anywhere.
But after a while, you do start to see some deep feeling, some kind of understanding that you can’t quite sum up in words exactly. Some sense of touching something deeper than the idea of getting something out of it.
I think I’ll close my talk with someone else’s description of sitting meditation in this style. Listen:
When you think about meditation, you might think about a guy sitting down in a meditation hall with robes doing his thing. But, really you do not need all of this. All you need is the earth under you, the ability to sit, and an open mind. Pick a quite place, maybe in your room. Sit down with your legs crossed and back straight and hand where you think they are comfortable. This might be a little painful at first, but it is okay to be a little bit uncomfortable when meditation because it creates focus and discipline. Then open your mind, listen to the noises around you. I’m sure there are some because the world is moving and changing and it is always noisy. Then listen and calm your mind and try to think of as little as possible. If this sounds pointless and a waste of time, well, poopoo on you. But if you think it would be cool to try this, go right ahead and experience the joy of the aftermath of meditation: a sane body and mind and a firm view of the world.
That’s by a person named Sam van der Sterre. Sam was fourteen when he wrote that. Pretty good, huh?
I’ve tried not to rattle on too long, so I think there is time for some discussion. Does anyone have anything they’d like to bring up?
[Sit again if no questions]
About Nomon Tim Burnett:
Tim Burnett has been a student of Zoketsu Norman Fischer since 1987 when he was a resident at San Francisco Zen Center's Green Gulch Farm. After sitting practice periods at Green Gulch and Tassajara Zen Monastery, Tim helped found the Bellingham Zen Practice Group in 1991. Tim was ordained as a Zen Priest by Norman in June, 2000. Like his teacher, Tim is interested in the possibility of deep and complete practice by lay people.
A person of wide-ranging professional interests, Tim has been a botanist, elementary school teacher, writer, and computer programmer. Currently Tim runs a computer consulting business with his wife, Janet Martinson, from their home office in Bellingham. They specialize in website programming.
last updated October 19, 2003
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