There are many ways of describing Zen practice but one way I think of and experience it is "caring". Of course I'm stumbling at doing this every moment but that's why we call it "practice". And this "caring" is manifested, ideally - (but we don't live "ideally" but in actuality) every moment in innumerable ways like when you nursed or rocked your children or when I clean and cut an apple for my daughter. There is absorption in the details of those activities (or not) because they matter (or not). And isn't life just a stringing together of these moments, moment after moment?
In our dualistic mind we think "I'm cleaning an apple - for her" (I'm taking care of HER) but in the Zen way there is the understanding there is really no separation. Last night my daughter asked me to tickle her. When I'm lazy, it's me tickling "her" but when I'm really caring it's I'm tickling her AND I'm tickling me. We both benefit from tickling. So much so, we might just say there's tickling going on, no me, no her. In other words, this "caring"is not a thing that I give away and now she has it. It's more like the sun, it manifest in the heart of the sun and its rays reach every being on earth, its all sun. So when you rocked your daughter and your practice was intact you really were both being rocked. And what would our life be like if every moment we care for it? From driving our car, to cleaning apples, to greeting a stranger, to filling out a lease?
Clearly it takes effort at maintaining this type of attitudinal shift. But what advice would our death-bed-self give us now? I'm sharing all this of course not "just" for you but for me too. Right now, I need to hear this and perhaps we may both benefit.
In our dualistic mind we think "I'm cleaning an apple - for her" (I'm taking care of HER) but in the Zen way there is the understanding there is really no separation. Last night my daughter asked me to tickle her. When I'm lazy, it's me tickling "her" but when I'm really caring it's I'm tickling her AND I'm tickling me. We both benefit from tickling. So much so, we might just say there's tickling going on, no me, no her. In other words, this "caring"is not a thing that I give away and now she has it. It's more like the sun, it manifest in the heart of the sun and its rays reach every being on earth, its all sun. So when you rocked your daughter and your practice was intact you really were both being rocked. And what would our life be like if every moment we care for it? From driving our car, to cleaning apples, to greeting a stranger, to filling out a lease?
Clearly it takes effort at maintaining this type of attitudinal shift. But what advice would our death-bed-self give us now? I'm sharing all this of course not "just" for you but for me too. Right now, I need to hear this and perhaps we may both benefit.
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