Living a Zen Inspired Life (2010) by Joshin Althouse Roshi
It is worth remembering that the "Golden Age of Zen" took place during the Tang Dynasty in China, when that country was going through hugh upheavals of civil war, famine, and disease on a massive scale. Two great Zen masters at the time, Mazu and Shitou, responded to this crisis with creativity and wisdom. But it is worth noting that they did this in ways that were uniquely their own. From their own lives, their struggles and difficulties, they brought forth the two major schools of Zen, Rinzai and Soto – which are still with us to this day.
In our time, Zen is easily misunderstood and trivialized. Yet it is a path of spiritual practice which is profoundly transformative and empowering. Unfortunately, much of our educational system leads us far astray. We learn to memorize facts and concepts but no one really teaches us about any kind of pracitcal, down-to-earth wisdom. Who teaches us about character development? We can have all the rules and regulations in the world, but that won't necessarily contribute to a more enlightened or compassionate society. If our schools did nothing more than teach us to respect ourselves, respect others, respect the process of learning itself and those teachers and elders who helped us to grow and learn, our schools would be so much more functional and relevant to our lives.
Zen begins with our own direct experience. We have to learn to trust ourselves. Our actual experience is not so simple. It can be pretty messy and confusing, so it's easy to imagine that a spiritual practice such as Zen would help us clean up this mess. Think again. What if a Zen-inspired life was about helping us to take up residence in our actual experience, without being distracted. Here you know something, but you don't yet know how to say it. You experience this paradox as tension. And this is a good thing. This is part of life. Zen can help you learn to honor this tension within yourself as a source of wisdom. If we are uncomfortable and unwilling to be intimate with this ambiguity and uncertainty within ourselves, we will try to construct a world of black and white truths that has managed to remove all the richness from within ourselves.
So how did Mazu and Shitou respond to the crisis in their time? Amazingly, they didn't try to escape their world, which was falling apart all around them. They embraced it as an expression of themselves. In the process they gave birth to a revolutionary spiritual practice which helped those around them respond with more flexibility and creativity to rapidly changing circumstances. They developed a big view. It wasn't about getting free of the world but about being free in the world. Up until the time of the 6th Chinese Patriarch, Hui Neng, Zen teachings had mostly been about passive introspection. Shitou and Mazu moved Zen in a much more dynamic direction.
Shitou and his line tended to emphacize peace and reconciliation in times of instabilty and chaos. Here's an example of Shitou's teaching. A monk asked him how he could be free. And Shitou asked the monk what was binding him. The monk then asked Shitou about the Pure Land, and Shitou asked the monk what is defiled. The monk, probably a bit frustrated at this point asks the teacher about enlightenment itself and Shitou asks the monk what is suffering and why does it continue in the monks life.
Mazu was more severe in his treatment of students. A monk asked him what was Zen and Mazu kicked him in the chest knocking him to the floor. The monk stood up, greatly awakened with a big grin on his face and couldn't stop laughing. Mazu and his line took a very different, more physical approach. They valued their independence from the main stream which allowed them to more effectively critique the status quo.
With a fearless, generosity of spirit, they both forged a Zen practice that we still follow today, a path that encourages us, even requires that we abandon any fixed point of view. It's a path of practice that invites us into a working relationship with the unknown. And it's a path that asks us to embrace the world as ourselves, even if it is sometimes violent, mean-spirited, greedy, ignorant and full of prejudice and hatred.
A Zen-inspired life can help you respond to change, to uncertainty. It can help you be more effective in the face of chaos and confusion. In fact, it can transform and empower you to lead a life of openness, empathy and clarity in the midst of change and uncertainty. It can help you find your own footing and your own true voice, grounded in your direct experience. There is no greater gift that this. Trust your own wisdom in this way, and you will always be at home with yourself, with others and with the universe at large.
