The reason I initially signed up for Paul’s class (and this practice period) was because the theme of it was “putting practice into your everyday life.” I was looking forward to learning tips and techniques for putting into practice all the theories I had been learning at the zen center. But an obnoxious thing started happening instead. Rather than fitting zen into my everyday life, my whole life perspective changed to a zen one.
This kind of pissed me off. I hadn’t signed up for a life change, I just wanted to help the kids in my classroom. But it was too late, I had already changed. So then I thought about what had changed; if I were being brainwashed, what was it that my brain had been stripped of? Apparently, this is what has been removed, or at least downgraded, in my brain: judgment, control, and value of thoughts over actual experiences. Here’s how my brain was washed of these things:
#1 Do what needs to be done
I would say that this is the most significant change in my perspective. The interesting thing about this perspective is that it is totally undefined. What needs to be done? I have no idea. It totally depends on the time, day, my emotions, what has happened five seconds before, what happens as I’m doing it, and what blows up in my face five seconds later. But in that moment, I do what needs to be done right then and right there. And in so doing that, I’m actually able to let go of what I’ve done because I was doing what needed to be done right then. I was actually meeting my life, as it was, at that time. It’s bizarrely comforting and fulfilling to do only what needs to be done.
The other significant thing about doing what needs to be done is that there is absolutely no judgment or evaluation in doing what needs to be done. It’s true, you do need to determine what needs to be done but you no longer ask yourself “Is it done well?” “Is it done right?” you simply ask yourself, “Is it done?” If it is, you let go, if it isn’t, you keep going until it feels done. Again, that “done” piece is just about being right there, at that moment, done for now because now is all there is.
#2 Letting go
This was my intention that I set for myself at the beginning of the practice period. I still struggle with it all the time but I also keep coming back to it because for all of the grief it gives me in asking me to let go, when I actually do let go, I feel incredibly at ease and peaceful. In some ways, it’s like the bittersweet pill of zen- you hate to take it but you know it’s totally good for you.
#3 Breathing
I guess that this is actually a representation of the physical aspect of zen or even a shift of focus from the brain to the body. Maybe it’s just another way of describing meditation. But in this practice session, and in my everyday life when I feel my shoulders tensing or I hear myself analyzing or criticizing myself I actually stop and take a big deep breath. This immediately halts the football-field wide assault of thoughts that tighten my shoulders and quicken my breath. It’s true that they immediately regroup and often march from the other side of the field shortly after I take my breath but for that one moment, I am free from their onslaught.
I know there’s more to come and if I am being brainwashed, it’s of my own free will. In some ways, I actually feel relieved about what is gone. I’m kinder with myself when judgment is removed. In giving up control, I’m giving up fighting things and grabbing at things. The effort that I do put into things is in experiencing them, and that feels so much more calming, less futile, less exhausting.
The switch from brain to body is still a scary one for me. But I’m finding that the more willing I am to just feel my breath, or to experience how my body responds to things, the more of a comfort my body becomes. In contrast, my thoughts are beginning to feel frenetic, random, and unreliable rather than a source of security or control.
Who knows, maybe I’ll write another crisis post tomorrow… but for now, I think I'm ready to join the frequent washers club.
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