practice – Page 14

Q94. I can’t pay all my attention to Zen practice even though I’d like to because my family wants me to share as much time as possible with them. What shall I do?

August 4, 2015 Zen Fools

A. You should not allow your practice to a make mess of your normal life. If your practice makes your family unhappy in any way, I’d say, you’d better give up your practice. To practice Zen, while making your family unhappy is against the purpose of Zen meditation since it is to be happy.

If your family doesn’t want you to practice Zen, something is wrong with you, I think. If you practice in the right way, people around you including your family members are bound to like you more because you become more considerate, patient and open-minded.

Don’t think that you will complete your practice in a short period of time. In that way, you can avoid overworking yourself, becoming ill and neglecting your family, which could cause you trouble. The idea of reaching the final goal quickly can make you impatient, which rather disturbs your practice.

Look upon each of your family members as a gate to the final goal. Their smiling, laughing, crying, eating, and sleeping are all actions of the truth you want to reach. Ask yourself what is making your wife smile, when you see her smile, and what is controlling your children’s bodies when you see them play. All of this is Zen practice. Do remember that spending time with your family can also be good practice.

©Boo Ahm

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway

Bible, Enlightenment, illusion, Meditation, sutras, Truth, Zen

Q71. Why should we not read books?

June 16, 2015June 16, 2015 Zen Fools

A. Ancient masters always advised us not to read books if we hoped to reach the final goal. However good a book on enlightenment you may read, you can’t reach the final goal through reading books without practice. Masters discouraged us from reading books because reading leads us to feel as if we were approaching the final goal as we get more knowledge on the final goal. In fact, getting more knowledge is collecting more illusions and strengthening the solidity of your illusions while reaching the final goal means breaking illusions. Actually we are going farther away in the opposite direction from the final goal against our intention.

Why do few people reach the final goal though so many people are reading so many books including the Sutras and the Bible around the world? Are the Sutras and the Bible telling a lie? It is not because they are telling a lie but because we can’t digest what they mean. The final goal, the truth, is compared to a cure-all that gives an eternal life to ill people who take it. But the cure-all is so invisible that it is almost impossible to discern it. And what all books, including the Bible and the Sutras, are saying about it is not the cure-all itself but wrapping papers that can help people to recognise the contents, the cure-all. Most people mistake swallowing the wrapping paper for taking the contents, or cure-all. If we had taken a true cure-all, we would have become well instantly.

I don’t want to discourage you from reading books, but I’d like to invite you to change the way of reading books in order to take the cure-all, instead of swallowing the wrapping paper. You should bear it in mind that every single word of the book you read is the gate to the truth, the final goal. If you digest only a single word through your body from any book you read, you can reach the final goal. If you have not reached the final goal after reading so many books, it means that you have not understood even a single word of so many words you have read. You took only wrapping papers. Trace back to the root the word or a sentence you believe you understand, or you like. That is to try to see beyond the word, an illusion. This can be compared to tearing the wrapping paper. If you can see the root, you can be said to have digested the book perfectly, to have reached the final goal. Try to see the root of each word or each sentence as perfectly as possible, instead of trying to read as many books as possible. That is a kind of Zen practice as well.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Buddha, Meditation, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q67. People say a certain place is good for practising Meditation because they can get more energy. Is there really such a place? If there is, where is the best place for practice?

June 15, 2015 Zen Fools

A. Not just a few people seem to have such an idea wandering around in search of a good place. It is like going around looking for Buddha, or God. In Zen, everything including God and Buddha is said to be an illusion. What is not an illusion when everything is an illusion? Is such a place not an illusion? The best place is also an illusion created by people’s discriminating mind.
Zen meditation is to eliminate illusions, but looking for such a place is creating and following another illusion. Looking for such a place for Zen practice is like making an illusion with one hand while trying to eliminate it with the other hand. The best place for practice is just where you are at this moment. The root which your idea of the best place comes from is the best place where you should be.

The best place for practice
should be where you can stay your whole life,
and be where others can’t come.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Buddhism, Enlightenment, Meditation, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q63. I once practised Zen for ten days with little sleep, but I only got some problems with my body without getting anything. How hard should I practice?

June 15, 2015 Zen Fools

A. You seem to be in a hurry. “Don’t make haste where you should take it easy, and don’t be idle where you should be in a hurry.” “Practice just like putting out a fire on your head.” “Practice just like a hen incubates its eggs.” These are very well known maxims in Zen meditation practice.

Don’t make haste where you should take it easy, that is, you should not be impatient for the final goal. The purpose of Zen is to do away with attachment and illusions. To intend to obtain something fast is also a kind of attachment or an illusion that prevents you from concentrating on practice. Be unconcerned about when or how soon you will reach the final goal as if it were none of your business. No one knows when you will reach the final goal. However, when the time is ripe, you will reach it as easily and naturally as you touch your nose while washing your face, and (you will feel) as if it reached you. Leave it alone until the time is ripe of itself just like a hen incubates its eggs. The more impatient you are, the farther you will get away from the final goal.

However, don’t be idle where you should be in a hurry, that is to say, you should pay all your attention to your question when practising as if you were being chased alone by hungry lions. There is no time to lose in producing an original idea, no one to help you and no shelter to hide yourself. The only way you can avoid being devoured by them is to run faster than them. Don’t try any other way than focusing on your question. Don’t try to have the same experience as you heard from others, or read in books, that seem to be nice or mysterious. Don’t take understanding for the final goal, which is you are serving your enemy as your father or mother. Never try to understand it. It can’t be explained and understood, but must be felt or experienced through the whole body. Don’t care about how far away the final goal is, but care about only whether you can keep your question. The harder you try to find a better way, the farther you will get away from the answer. Focus all your attention to the question just like putting out a fire on your head. You will undergo something new sooner or later. What is important here is that you should never attach yourself to the new experience. Just keep your focus on your question, leaving it alone, however nice or novel it is.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Meditation, Truth, Zen

Q60. How can I obey the precepts (Buddhist commandments) well?

June 14, 2015 Zen Fools

A. Once upon a time there lived an old man in a village, who was well known as a good Buddhist and respected by all the people in the village. People often came to him for advice when they had problems in their lives. One day he happened to talk with an old monk.

Monk: I’ve heard that you are much respected as a very good Buddhist. How do you lead your life?
Old man: I always try to obey five precepts.
Monk: (looking surprised) Do you still obey the precepts?
Old man: (looking surprised) Of course, don’t you obey the precepts?
Monk: No, I don’t.
Old man: (looking more surprised) Do you break the precepts then?
Monk: Of course not.
Old man: What do you mean by that?
Monk: I neither break the precepts nor obey them.

Let me take an example. What do you think is the most important to keep your life? Of course, to be alive we need a lot of things such as food, water, air and so on. However, no one can deny that air is the most essential of all we need to keep our life because we can’t maintain our life even for a few minutes without air though we can stay alive for a few days without water and even for over a month without food. In other words, not a moment can we live without breathing. Then do we feel ourselves breathing every moment we breathe because breathing is very important?
Of course, we don’t feel ourselves breathing as long as we are healthy even though we can feel it if we try to feel it consciously. If someone, feeling himself breathing every moment, tries hard to breathe, he must have a problem in his health, especially in his breathing system of his body. Likewise, if someone, Buddhist or Christian, conscious of the precepts every moment, has to try to obey them, he must have a problem in his life.

How can we obey precepts as naturally as a healthy person breathes? In a word, the precepts should become part of ourselves, and we should be able to obey them so naturally that we can obey them unconsciously just as we breathe.
Only then can we be said to obey the precepts perfectly.
Strictly speaking, to obey precepts perfectly means not that we hold back our desires to break the precepts but that we have no precepts to obey in our mind because we have realised by practising that everything including desires to break the precepts and even the precepts themselves, is an illusion.

I don’t mean that we need not obey the precepts until we realise that everything is an illusion. We should try to obey the precepts consciously because trying to obey the precepts is not only part of practice but also the minimum moral attitude we must take as human beings. Whenever you are tempted to break a precept, trace back the temptation to its root and the temptation will die away before you know it. That is a good Zen practice as well as a way to obey the precepts. With time the precepts will become part of you naturally like breathing.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Buddhism, Mind, mindful, mindfulness, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q57. Do we have to do away with all illusions in order to see the truth?

June 12, 2015 Zen Fools

A. Absolutely not. You should know that escaping from illusions means not removing or destroying them but realising that all illusions are also the truth. We are apt to judge what seems, or sounds nice or holy, to be the truth and what seems bad or ugly to be an illusion. In fact everything we can see, hear, feel and imagine, whether good or bad and right or wrong, is the truth. There is nothing but the truth, which we can’t escape from even a moment. Not seeing it is much more difficult than seeing it.

Why can’t we see it? It is because our eyes are covered with the truth and not because it is too far away. In other words it is so near us that we don’t recognise it.

Don’t look away from illusions for the truth. That is to go after illusions turning your back on the truth. The truth is not separate from illusions. What you regard as illusions is the truth and what you look upon as the truth is illusions. Don’t try to do away with illusions. You can’t make it because they are not illusions but the truth. People who strive to eliminate illusions are those who don’t know what they are. How can you remove them when you don’t know what they are? Faced with what you think is an illusion, trace back to the root which the idea of the illusion stems from instead of making efforts to get rid of it. That is the very Zen practice.

Never avoid illusions.
Never go after the truth.
If you stop avoiding and going after,
You will be motionless.
That is the way the truth is.

Meditation, Mind, Practice, Zen

Q52. What shall I do when I don’t seem to make any progress in my Zen practice?

June 12, 2015 Zen Fools

A. That is a very common feeling novice practitioners can have. You don’t have to think you are not making progress because you don’t know what progress is like, and I wonder what your standard of making progress is. If you can keep good focus on the question, you are doing well regardless of whether you feel a change or not. If you can’t make concentration on your question, ask yourself what thinks you can’t make concentration and you are not making progress. In other words, trace back your negative thinking to its root.
Your negative thinking is the very form of your final goal.

Enlightenment, Meditation, One, Truth, Zen

Q48. When practising at home alone, how can I know whether I am doing well or not? Can I feel any change when doing well as told?

June 9, 2015 Zen Fools

A. In the beginning you might feel it difficult to focus on your question, but it becomes easier and easier over time and the question will be internalised sooner or later.
Once your question becomes one with you, your practice feels very easy and even interesting, and you feel as if it is going on of itself, with little effort. Whatever you do, you feel your work is not separate from your practice, when we say work and practice are one. Then you start to feel what you couldn’t feel before: see and hear what you couldn’t see and hear before. For example, you can be surprised or shocked to hear a sound from a bird, a dog, a car, a person, the wind or anything. On hearing a sound, not knowing what it means, you feel it as the sound of the truth, feeling yourself becoming one with the universe. Sometimes you may feel as if your body has disappeared or collapsed down, becoming one with the universe. You are so happy at that moment that you might burst into tears.

The feeling doesn’t last long but your practice seems to go better and you get more confidence. Experiencing such changes, you come to grasp the words ‘see with ears and hear with eyes’. What is most important here is that you must not be attached to them, nor must you try to avoid them.
No matter how good or marvellous things are that you may experience; you must not attach yourself to them, keeping it in mind that it is also no more than an illusion. You should not be attached even to enlightenment.

Buddha, Buddhism, Enlightenment, Koan, Meditation, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q34. Would you recommend any other way to practice Zen, when I feel tired of the question ‘What am I when my body is not me?’

June 6, 2015 Zen Fools

A. If you feel tired of asking yourself the same question, I’d say two things.
One is that you may take another Zen question that is likely to stimulate your curiosity. I plan to provide a new Zen question a week.
The other is that you ask your question of the things around you instead of yourself. Seeing a tree, you can ask the tree your question ‘Hi, tree. What am I when my body is not me?’ or a little different question ‘Hi, tree. What are you when you are not a tree?’ You can ask such a question of anything such as a car, a puppy, a bird, a desk, spoon, a cup and so forth that you can see in your everyday life. My words might sound ridiculous but they, whenever you ask them the question, never fail to tell you the correct answers. The problem is that you can’t grasp their answers because your eyes and ears are veiled by illusions. To try to understand their answers is a good practice, too.

Buddhism, Enlightenment, Happiness, Truth, Zen

Q31. Are we living in an ideal world or aiming for it?

June 6, 2015June 6, 2015 Zen Fools

A. We are both living in an ideal world and aiming for it. We can be said to be pursuing an ideal world in that we doing something, practising Zen, for a better life. However, the truth is that we are living in the ideal world as part of it. Therefore, the purpose of practising Zen is not to create an ideal world, or reach an unknown ideal world other than this world where we live, but to realise that we are already residing in the ideal world we are anxious to reach. We are like a fish looking for water in the water.