Expert: Joe McSorley - 8/6/2009

Question
QUESTION: I have read some articles from Zen teachers critisizing our understanding of mindfulness. Particularly, for example, this statement:

"We should always try to be active coming out of samadhi. For this, we have to forget things like "I should be mindful of this or that". If you are mindful, you are already creating a separation ("I - am - mindful - of - ...."). Don't be mindful, please! When you walk, just walk. Let the walk walk. Let the talk talk (Dogen Zenji says: "When we open our mouths, it is filled with Dharma"). Let the eating eat, the sitting sit, the work work. Let sleep sleep."

I do not quite understand what it means. Does this mean that we should not consciously *try* to be mindful, that we should not think, upon realizing that we have been obsessing over some thought or other, "I should be mindful now"? If you shouldn't consciously try to be mindful during the day, then how will we learn to be mindful? It is my understanding that the ultimate goal of mindfulness is to learn to always be aware of the present moment - to reside in the now instead of in our minds. But how can we do this, say, 'without effort'?

This ties in with some other things that I have been doing - during the day, I try to be mindful. When I am biking somewhere, I try to be aware of biking. When I am sitting, I try to be aware of sitting. But this tends, over time, to get very frustrating - I am not always mindful, and when I realize that I have been thinking, I tend to get worried over it. It has become a sort of obsessive habit - quite contrary to the purpose of Minduflness.

Could you help me understand this...? Thank you.

ANSWER:
Dear Nicholaas,

 I know that this is particularly difficult to understand.  When Masao Abe first went to the monastery after giving up his secular life he saw this written over the gate, “To seek enlightenment is itself, hell creating karma”.  He said this threw him into despair.  To put in your situation, “To seek mindfulness itself negates mindfulness”.  You could easily say that any Zen practice itself negates Zen.  As you try to be mindful you are not being mindful.  To do something, anything, is to posit your self.  This simply means that you take a position.  So you posit or position yourself to be mindful.  By taking this position you therefore stand apart from mindfulness and are thus, not mindful.  So there is a dilemma that is created; if you do it you ruin it and if you don’t do it, you achieve nothing so what can you do?   Let me try to straighten this out with an analogy.
   You ride your bike.  When you started riding your bike you had to be conscious/mindful of everything you did or you would fall off or run into something.  It was probably a bit harrowing and frustrating trying to shift gears, steer and be aware of traffic.  Over time you consciously strived to become integrated into the riding of the bike.  Things that were once difficult become second nature; they blend into your consciousness.  You are no longer ‘doing them’ but being them, now when you ride shifting, steering and pedaling are second nature.  Think about that; second nature, they have become what is natural and not what is contrived.  When you become conscious of these things you tend to mess up.  If you have to think “ I am pedaling” or “I am leaning to steer” you will not do them well.  You had to go through the practice of it to lose the practice of it. You are unconscious now of leaning into a turn or shifting or pedaling.  You are just doing them.  When you started you were very conscious of it but now you have lost the dichotomy or split between what you are doing and the doer, you, the one who is aware of it.   There is no longer any bike or rider, just the riding.
   If you practice mindfulness and want to be aware of mindfulness you create the dilemma.  You have to become mindfulness, not someone who is practicing it. To sit and say “ I am mindful” is in fact, not to be mindful, but like learning the bike, eventually the practice will overcome the self and you will mindful without being aware of it as you ride being unaware of it.   The dilemma becomes a living, working contradiction or a paradox.  You are doing without doing it.  You cannot do this practice with any anticipation.  To anticipate results is to ruin your practice.  You must commit to it fully and forget about yourself.  Years ago I exclaimed to my teacher “how will I know I am enlightened” and he shouted back “your wanting to know is what stops you from being awakened”!   The knowing is the conscious separation of self to know what it is doing whether it be bike riding or mindfulness.  
  Another way to look at this would be to just pay attention, period.  Not as yourself or anything, just pay attention, without thought, judgment or discrimination.  At all times forget yourself and pay attention.  This is mindfulness in activity.  If this takes root it becomes you and then overcomes you.  You will have no idea you are doing it and that’s when it’s real.  Think of this; did you ever run into someone in a store or some place and you said to yourself “I know this person” but could not figure out where or how.  There is nothing to grasp onto other than “ I know them”.  You think and think but nothing.  You think about it so much it becomes you, integrated into your very being and now you are no longer aware you are thinking about it.  Thinking about it produced no result and not thinking about it produces no result.  Now it is in you completely, you have no anticipation and you don’t even know you’ve become it.  Suddenly three days later out of nowhere you say “Suzy from the bank”!  It became resolved beyond cognition and ‘knowing’.   Mindfulness must be practiced till it is lost this way, it becomes you and you are the living paradox.  It is not knowable or known and yet is somehow both.  You can only achieve this through great determination but it is real and doable.  So stop worrying about it and let it become you.  Practice without anticipation.
  I hope this has helped you. Write back if you need more clarification.
         Joe


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I understood most of what you said, thank you. My only question is - how? I can see the importance of being the mindfulness instead of being you being mindful, but how does one make this second nature, as you said, without first having it be primary nature? You cannot ride a bike and already have it be second nature, first you must be conscious of biking.

Is it just a matter of 'plowing through' until mindfulness becomes a matter of habit, and then trying to not be self-conscious when being mindful?

ANSWER: Dear Nicholaas,
       
    If you do it, you’re not doing it and if you don’t do it then you get nowhere. This is the age-old dilemma in Zen.  There was a conversation between Dr. Paul Tillich and Shin Ichi Hisamatsu decades ago that went like this:

Tillich: If I follow a path I won’t get there?
Hisamatsu:  Correct
Tillich: If I don’t follow a path I won’t get there?
Hisamatsu: Correct.
Tillich: Well, that’s a dilemma!
Hisamatsu:  That’s the path you follow.

  So, how do you do it? You do it by doing it.  You commit to it whole-heartedly, mind and body, from the heels and do it. Don’t worry about it and do it without anticipation or expectation.  You do it every second, mindfulness, paying attention, or whatever the practice is.  You will reach a point where you are no longer doing it, you won’t have to try to not be self-conscious, it will just disappear and you won’t know it.  I am sure you did not know when you became unaware riding a bike, it just happened one day.  If you commit to it fully it will completely integrate into you; you will be both seeker and sought.  You must commit to it fully for results. This sets the conditions for awakening.
   The Zen master Bankei once said that if someone fully commits to this kind of practice they will awaken in 30 days.  The problem is that few of us commit to it.  We step back from it and analyze it and look for other ways.  This is the crux of Zen practice, to actually do it.  It doesn’t mean leaving home and society but committing every moment to it while in every day life.
   I hope this has made it clearer to you.  Good luck.
         Joe


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you. I think I understand it more.

I just have one last question, on a different topic. It is on the nature of zen practice. From what you have told me, I do not see how zen brings insight - that is, there is no form of vipassana meditation. The method used to experience non-duality is not to see the non-self nature of reality and ourselves, but to simply focus on something else (in this case the present moment) until we *forget* duality. Is this not then just a different fabrication? If one wishes to see how a cup is not separate from the tea it holds in it, then should one not try to see into it's nature instead of,  say, focusing on the cup until you simply forget that the cup is separate from the tea? Are we not simply deluding ourselves that way? Or am I simply misinformed about the nature of zen?

Answer
Dear Nicholaas,  
The nature of Zen practice is not to maintain some state of non-duality any more than mastering bike riding is supposed to be some blank state of riding nor is practice a simple forgetting of self.  I do see where some Zen people claim this ‘forgetting’ is a Zen state but I think that is completely wrong.  You had asked about trying to maintain the idea of being mindful and what I said was that you practice so hard that you become the problem, the subject object duality of self and practice is integrated.  In this state you ‘forget’ the problem because you and the problem are identical but the idea is not to forget something it is to become it.  So long as you hold the problem in your head or so long as in Vipassana meditation you investigate the nature of self you stand outside of the self you are inquiring about and the problem remains.  This is the same dilemma that must be overcome in practicing mindfulness.  In Vipassana if you are aware of the ‘self’, the body functions, the breathing, whatever, you stand apart from the self to investigate the self, no matter how deeply you go there will always be this dichotomy of observer and observed.  What needs to happen is a total annihilation or extinction (nirvana) of this self so that universe as self can be realized.  Non-duality can never be experienced by the self because there is a duality between that which is experienced and the one who has the experience.  This again it the ever recurring dilemma of self trying to overcome self.  Even in Vipassana you have to overcome the search for the nature of self/reality or you will forever stand outside of self in this basic dichotomy of observer and observed.  So in Vipassana, as in Zen, the goal is realize the interdependent co-origination of all things.  
  The idea is not to focus on something else; it is to be aware of the true self in the eternal present, to see things as they truly are.  You cannot be aware of the present moment because there has to be a self that has to experience the moment and it has to stand apart from the moment to exist.  We, as egos, cannot live in the moment because we only exist in a separated state.  In the true ‘moment’ there is no self that can discriminate.  This is the problem of our self, the ego, it can only exist in a divided state so the moment can never be something else or it’s not the moment.  Like mindfulness, the moment you try to be mindful or in the moment you are no longer in the moment.  The self stands between.  I said to pay attention without a subject or object to that attention or mindfulness.   To meditate on tea or cup immediately defines them as apart from you and thus not you.  To look deeply into the self-nature of tea, cup, self or other ultimately brings you to realize there is no such individual self-nature but that all things are co-originating and co-dependent.  In the Indian idea of neti-neti, not this- not this, the idea is that nothing you observe is you therefore, the you or ego, can never be observed because you can only observe what you are not.  In one of my favorite lines from Nisargattada he says, “You cannot be that which you perceive”.  So the attempt to inquire into your true nature in Vipassana is as problematic as being mindful while not being mindful though they both lead to awakening.  
   Ultimately the practice is not to be in some blank or non-dual state but to break down the self that discriminates so that the true self is revealed.  This is a non-dual duality where you are both the observer and the observed, the rider – the bike and the road.  It is a dynamic state of being aware while at the same time being completely liberated (moksha) from the simple dualistic ego as an ego-less ego.
  I know writing this way gets mind numbing and it sometimes takes several readings of it to digest.  I am sorry that I cannot make it much cleared than this.  Good luck
         Joe