I’m trying not to overdo blogging anymore. I’m trying to generally not post more than an item per week on the average. When I found this item from Woodmoor Village Zendo, though, I decided to break my guidelines, at least temporarily. The excerpt below from Finite Beings and Selves makes an important point that I’ve seen many misunderstand. First the excerpt.

We are finite beings, and even though in Zen we may frequently talk about the illusions and delusions of self, we need a healthy self, even if one that increasingly realizes that the notion of a separate self is one to transcend, in order to live with the realization of impermanence. To realize that we don’t have a separate self, but rather that we inter-are, requires first an understanding that being is process, not static entity, a concomitant realization of the embodied nature of our beingness, and an appreciation for the fact that the flow of being that animates our sense of selfhood (as process) is impermanent.

As I was sitting in meditation in the meditation hall, I felt some hairs tickling at my collar where my token kesa brushes my neck. I shrugged it off a bit. It sure didn’t feel like budding enlightenment. A bug? I brushed my hand in the area to sweep anything I found to the floor, and there on the floor lay one of those giant winged Southern cockroaches, probably about 2 inches long, and a bit more with feet and antennae extended. I got up from my cushion, found a tissue paper, and carried it outside and let it go in the midday heat and light. (Those who think their meditative practice is enhanced by letting bugs bite and crawl on them will just have to judge me.)

There are many admonitions in Zen about “letting go.” Whole books have been written on the subject; they mostly expound the merit and virtue of doing so, or exhort one on page after page to do this. Very few have useful advice about how to go about doing this. It seems like simplicity itself, yet I have not found it to be that way.

The obstacles I’ve encountered include the following:

1. I did not see or want to see that I was holding on to something.
2. I did not want to let go.
3. I wanted to let go.
4. I tried to push or hurl something away that I didn’t like.
5. I reached for something thinking it was part of letting go.

Much of life is the mundane business of staying alive, living with others, and dealing with a world that is alive, ornery, joyful, and full of misery all at the same time. Believing this world doesn’t exist is delusion, and believing it does exist is delusion.

So, until this delusion is transcended, much of ordinary life is dealing with things as they really appear to be, while not quite believing the appearance.

Comments about current events will fit here.