Bog Flowers

To Forget the Self

2025-01-09T00:00:00Z

To Forget the Self

"To study the Buddha Way is to study the self,
To study the self is to forget the self,
To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things"
-Dogen Zenji, Genjokoan

You are not a "self" who is aware.

The sense of self is just that, a sense. Not unlike hearing or seeing.

Importantly, this can be directly verified in one's meditation practice.

This is why the "self" cannot get enlightened, any more than your hearing or seeing can.

The sense of self arises in our awareness. In Zen this is referred to as original nature or Buddhanature. In Dzogchen it's called rigpa.

Your open awareness can't be improved upon or damaged. Recognizing this, there is nothing to do.

Furthermore, awareness has no preference between stillness and movement, so we are also free to take action when it's appropriate

On Shining the Light Inward

2024-08-01T00:00:00Z

On Shining the Light Inward

"Everyone has a light. What is everybody's light? The kitchen pantry and the temple gate." - Yun Men, The Blue Cliff Record #86

Lately I've been fascinated by the similarities between Shikantaza in Zen and Dzogchen in Tibetan Buddhism. Both forms of meditation involve stopping and resting without relying on technique. In general, the practice instructions typically do not specify goals. Instead they involve just sitting in a comfortable posture and not trying to make any effort with one's mind, simply leaving it alone.

One small difference is that Dzogchen instructions tend to emphasize trying to be aware of awareness itself. This can be done by adding an element of awareness based inquiry. You might simply ask yourself, "Is awareness here?" You then could respond to this question with, "Yes, awareness of the breath" or "Awareness of thoughts." In many ways it's not that different from meditation where you try to be aware of the breath or other bodily sensation, except this adds a slight element of self-inquiry. In my experience so far with this practice it's quite pleasant to meditate on awareness. It also produces a fairly stable concentrative state, because you aren't relying on just one meditation object. You are simply following awareness wherever awareness goes, so in a sense you never lose your focus.

Another cool thing is after doing this practice a little, I wondered: Isn't awareness only known through being aware of one's senses? (And remember in Buddhism, thoughts are a sense too.) It turns out that meditation teachers have thought of this already, of course, and indeed it's impossible to know awareness outside of experience. But that just means there's no separation between mind and objects, i.e. it's non-dual. Our everyday awareness effortlessly works non-dually with the things that we are aware of.

What is also interesting is how when I learned about this form of meditation, it reframed a lot of Zen writing that I've encountered previously. For example, when Dogen said in Fukanzazengi: "take the backwards step and shine the light inward." Instead of being prosaic this might also be a more literal instruction to shine the light of awareness back on itself. Whereas if you aren't familiar with this meta-awareness aspect, you might think he is describing meditation in general. Furthermore the so-called "direct pointing" instructions in Zen are often about bringing out this bare awareness. Things like offering a surprising response (or in the olden days, a slap or a shout) can shock us back into bare awareness instead of the conceptual mind.

It is said that over time this awareness focused practice leads to a shift where you more closely identify with awareness itself instead of an idea of your self. Bare awareness, which has always already been present, is arguably more "you" than the you that you think you are, because the content of your awareness might change moment to moment but your awareness is the same. Perhaps this is the "original face before your parents were born" and the "true person of no rank," as the old koans describe. Although, this doesn't mean that you are solely bare awareness, either. We are talking about non-duality here so you are both; we can't separate awareness from its contents.

Another benefit of shifting our identity more to our awareness is that it leads to more effortless compassion with all sentient beings. Bare awareness is something we share in common with all people and all creatures. One of the reasons I love bird watching and nature is sometimes you do get an intuitive sense that all life on Earth is more similar than different. Perhaps when a bird hears a sound it too is aware that it's aware.

Shifting towards just bare awareness helps us get through difficult times as well. The part of us that is just bare awareness is somewhat free and independent. Whether we are having a great or a terrible time, it remains the same. It continues to shine a light on our experience no matter what.

Room for Growth

2024-03-11T00:00:00Z

Room for Growth

“No need to seek the truth, only cease to cherish opinions” - Sengcan
"Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful" - Lao Tzu

Old Zen practitioners often report that decades of Zen has made them less confused about life. They don’t say that they necessarily have reached some new esoteric understanding, just that the confusion has lessened significantly.

This is one reason why Zen is not the same as self help. Instead of trying to craft the perfect worldview or the most impressive version of yourself, you simply rest in awareness and let the confusion dissipate on its own.

Personally I used to have some anxiety when I felt that I couldn't clearly imagine what the future would be like for me. Eventually I felt that it was better to let it be the mystery that it is, instead of stressing myself out trying to predict the unknown.

Birders often remark how some of the most well populated bird watching spots are not impressive natural areas but water treatment plants or runoff ponds. A perfectly curated garden often has less wildlife in it than a simple patch of trees that’s been allowed to grow unhindered. Nature just needs a place where it’s left alone in order to flourish.

In our daily lives, that empty space that promotes growth could be setting aside a time where we just sit down and pay attention to our breathing. It could be going for a walk, getting our hands dirty with chores, or just trying to keep an open mind about the future.

Recalling the Fox Koan

2024-02-14T00:00:00Z

Recalling the Fox Koan

Recently I've been thinking about a koan from the Gateless Gate, Baizhang's Fox. You can read the full koan here. The gist is that a strange man comes to Baizhang and claims that he used to be a monk but was cursed to live as a fox for 500 lifetimes because he preached that the awakened are above cause and effect. Baizhang offers the correction that the awakened are "one with cause and effect" and at hearing this the monk is free of his curse.

At first glance the lesson of this koan is that the monk was punished for thinking that the awakened are beyond cause and effect. This makes some sense because we know that no amount of spiritual practice will save us from the inevitability of old age, sickness, and death, not to mention more down to earth concerns like having to work for a living or getting along with our neighbors. We are still mortal no matter how much we fantasize about our spiritual practice solving all of our problems.

But recently I've thought that there might be a different way of interpreting the meaning of being incarnated as a fox for 500 lifetimes. In a way, it's the perfect real world crash course in cause and effect because an animal is forced to be one with it just to survive. When I'm birdwatching I'm often struck by how hard the chickadees, cardinals, woodpeckers, etc work just to find enough calories to make it through our cold Minnesota winters. For a more concrete example, the red fox in the photo in this post looked like it was suffering from mange, a condition that can often kill the creature because eventually it makes it too difficult for them to hunt prey. It's hard for a creature to not to be one with cause and effect while living with such a reality.

As humans, especially those of us in wealthy developed nations, we can sometimes forget that we too are animals, and are on the precipice at any given moment. Oftentimes it takes a bout of illness or a natural disaster to remind us that we are at the mercy of cause and effect at all times. Wild animals have no such luxury and this is one reason why we admire them. To humans animals seem to live without conceit or artifice; their lives are all about bare survival.

So in this sense 500 fox lives is less like a punishment than a practical lesson in cause and effect. Getting sick is living a fox life. Having your house burn down is living a fox life. Not getting what you want is living a fox life. As long as we are on this Earth there will be times we succumb to cause and effect, but just like in the koan, realizing this offers some small liberation as well. Knowing that times like this will come and go helps us accept them and be "one with cause and effect."

The Gate of Joy

2024-01-16T00:00:00Z

The Gate of Joy

"...the dharma gate of joy and ease..." - Dogen Zenji, Fukanzazengi

"Joy isn't something we have to find. Joy is who we are if we’re not preoccupied with something else." - Charlotte Joko Beck

Jumping off my post on New Year's and not relying too much on external conditions, lately I've been thinking about how unreliable our conventional idea of happiness is and what might a better alternative look like.

The problem is that happiness is too often seen as having things go your way. In the conventional definition happiness is the result of acquiring things such as money, status, relationships, etc. Now there's nothing inherently wrong about wanting or having these things, but as I talked about in the last post, dharma practice is largely about not being too reliant on external conditions.

So what is the alternative? I would argue that joy is in many ways superior to conventional happiness. Joy is spontaneous and in the moment. You could be going through a rough time in your life and experience joy at a seeing a beautiful sky full of clouds.

Happiness is often about having an impressive life, when we feel joy we see that our life is seamlessly part of everything else. When it comes to worldly happiness, there's always someone with a fancier title or a nicer house. Joy is personal and can't be compared to anyone else's. Being in nature is full of joy. There's no good or bad way to look at a beautiful landscape. No one will outcompete your appreciation of natural beauty. Conventional happiness is too much like doing accounting on your life and hoping that you come up with a positive number. Joy is forgetting that and appreciating what's right in front of you. The experience of seeing a beautiful wildflower in early spring is only enhanced by knowing that it will soon fade.

Something that I've been learning to appreciate is that this practice is more than just words. The idea that you should have a loose handle on conventional happiness/success has real practical implications in Soto Zen. Beginners and experts alike all engage in "just-sitting" meditation no matter how long they've been practicing. We don't talk about whether we are good or bad at sitting, we just sit with whatever is coming up for us at the time.

So maybe, at least once in a while, stop trying to measure your life and just appreciate it for what it is. You might find your daily experience is suffused with joy without you even looking for it.

New Year's Thoughts

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

New Year's Thoughts

It's good to hope for a happy new year where you and your loved ones get everything they wish for. Personally I am hoping to travel more this year and possibly buy a house. On the other hand, dharma practice is largely about being ok even when you don't get what you want. And to be certain, no one gets everything they want all of the time. Much of our suffering comes from feeling like the world has to be a certain way instead of meeting it as-it-is and going from there.

There's a koan in the Book of Serenity that asks: How do you walk a straight path on a mountain road with 100 curves? One possible response is that when the road turns left, you go left. When the road turns right, you go right. Trying to walk straight from the outset will only take you off the road, and possibly down the mountain side.

So in this new year I hope we can all meet the road as it is, and hope it doesn't throw us too many curves.

Getting Warmer

2023-12-28T00:00:00Z

Getting Warmer

On winter afternoons here the crows will stream overhead by the hundreds as they move closer to the city. They fly over my neighborhood a dozen at a time on their way to find a warm place to roost in the city core. I like to watch them gather and in the past I've had fun practicing taking pictures of them in-flight. It struck me one time while watching them that they likely don't know exactly why they are drawn to the downtown area. Crows are smart animals but even they can not know why the city is warmer than the country. Despite this lack of knowledge they are still motivated to gather in large winter flocks simply drawn by moving toward the warmth. It's not just Crows who act this way either, even plants will grow toward the sun without having any idea what they are doing.

Maybe Zen practice is the same at times. We might not know intellectually what we are doing. Why we are getting up at 5AM, or spending our precious free weekend just sitting and walking in silence. I'm not sure if anyone knows why sitting down and focusing on your breath has so many seemingly miraculous effects on our hearts and minds. But just like the Crows are moving toward warmth without fully knowing why, maybe we are being pulled by the experiences of freedom, ease, and joy that we find in Zen practice. The Buddha said that the dharma is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end. If we slow down and pay attention to those good feelings of warmth they might pull us further along the path. They could even be a guidepost for the times when we start to wonder if there are better ways of spending our time.

Going full circle, I only got into bird watching from meditation. As I slowed down and started to look more around me, I noticed more trees, clouds, and wild animals. The warmth that pulls us forward can take many forms. It could be natural beauty, or getting along better with your family, or just feeling more at ease. So pay attention as you practice to feel if you are getting warmer or colder and keep moving toward the warmth.

Meditation is Stretching

2023-12-25T00:00:00Z

Meditation is Stretching

Most of the time when someone takes up meditation they are trying to quiet down the train of thoughts in their mind. While you can't really put an end to thinking there is a way to turn down the volume on our thoughts. We can do this by shifting away from viewing thoughts as the primary object of our attention and returning to physical sensation. Doing this puts thoughts in the background where they will continue on but not be as bothersome.

So how does meditation return us back to feeling more physical sensation? Meditation is like stretching. When you are stretching or doing a yoga pose, you aren't trying to willfully cut off your thoughts. But you also are probably not thinking about your thoughts as much because you are concentrating on your form and posture. Meditation can be done basically the same way. It's mostly about feeling the raw physical information that we normally don't pay attention to.

Two methods have worked for me the best.

While walking, pretend like you are feeling the ground with your feet. Investigate the texture of the pavement, the sound of your foot falls, the slope of the ground, which part of your foot hits the ground first, etc
Focusing intently on any physical feelings you experience while breathing. These feelings could be in your abdomen, your ribcage, or the nostrils. In the beginning it might help to pick one spot in particular to focus on. This technique is particularly helpful because of how “portable” it is. You are (hopefully) always breathing so it can be done any time. I'm not sure why exactly, but breathing from your abdomen instead (of your chest) has an additional calming factor. Something to try is to check in on your breathing at random times during the day and make sure you are breathing from your belly.

Additionally in the school of Zen that I practice in (Soto Zen) one of the main meditation practices is called Shikantaza. This translates to "just sitting," as in you just sit in the prescribed posture and don't worry too much about your thoughts. Sitting in meditation this way, your main focus will be on your breathing and posture, not unlike how you might approach doing a proper yoga pose.

Welcome

2023-09-09T00:00:00Z

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. My name is Chris and you probably know me from posting pictures of birds and other wildlife online for the past few years. I actually came to nature photography only after immersing myself in mindfulness and Zen meditation for several years prior to discovering birds. In a way it's all been about Zen to begin with, but I haven't articulated that side of things very much. This blog is my attempt to start doing so. (Though I have already talked about this a little on my friend Taalumot's podcast) I plan on talking about Zen Buddhism, meditation, nature, and maybe some thoughts about knitting and making things. Hope you enjoy your time on this site!