Children and Zen: A Snapshot

"What is the meaning of rank?" If this was asked as a question in koan exchange, it would be hard to beat this picture's response. Perhaps the response has even more value in that the question was not even asked!

Three times per week, my daughter attends Aikido class with me. It's simply what she does. She enjoys the physical activity and she enjoys the company of her friends. Class begins, class progresses, and class ends. Afterward, the day continues.

Why does she do it? Does she care about what anyone else thinks about her practice or how anyone else judges her techniques? Does she believe it's time well-spent? Is her way of living a good experssion of Zen?

To ask any such a question is to have already lost what she has no need to find.

But congratulations to the newly appointed fourth kyu nonetheless!

The Great Puzzle

Life & death are a great puzzle. Do not spend your life in vain.

- Bodhidharma, "No Buddha Nature Outside the Mind"

Get up, stretch, listen to bones crack, feel aches that weren't there yesterday. Calesthenics, drill, hit the punching bag. Shower, shave. Breakfast. Drive. Traffic. Morning news. War. Famine. Pestilence. Work. Work. Work. Boss is a jerk. Fast food lunch. Work work work. Traffic. Screaming kids. Left-overs for dinner. Death. Taxes. Sleep tonight & do it again.

Sucks, don't it?

This is the time you've been given.

With all of the things life throws our way, it all slips right past us.

Yet this is the time & place we have.

Bodhidharma's words are a reminder to us. Like the clack of the moktak snaps us from sitting meditation to return to the sleeping world, he would rouse us out of the distractions that we allow ourselves to be muddled by, and encourage to delve into the practice itself.

If you still do not know yourself clearly, you should be awakened to the essence of life-and-death by finding and meeting a Master who already has attained a great awakening.

Your opportunity to practice is here, right in the midst of all that life throws at us. You cannot afford to wait for when the distractions will pass, for a moment when the children don't need your attention, for after you've finished your taxes. The disruptions of life will cease when you're dead, but then it's too late. There is no perfect time, but there is Now. Through the practice, we have the opportunity to shed the things that have always held us back and discover our true selves. All of those things that life uses to tug at us will still be with us, but through transforming our understanding of ourselves, we transform our relationship with them.

Even though we might say there is originally not a thing to be attained, if you do not yet understand it, you must, with sincere effort & work, find and meet a Master to open your mind.

Now is the time to practice, with all the diligence we have.

A Zen Moment in Parenting

After a lot of exercise, my eight-year-old son was having a loud fit in the pool. His sister wronged him, he would suggest, and he was indignant on being called out of the pool for a chat. I sat him down beside me and told him that he could get up and go back into the pool once he understood why he was sidelined.

The fit continued in spurts. It was his sister's fault, he would protest, shouting, “Why won't you listen to me?!”

I sat face-to-face with him silently in response for some time, eventually asking, "Why are you sitting here?"

With only slight prodding and a few, shrill "I don't know!" protests, he yelled at me, “Because I was yelling!!!”

I sat face-to-face with him silently in response.

“Because I was yelling! Because I was yelling!!! How many times do I have to say the right answer?! Why won't you listen to me?!! Why won't you let me go back in the pool?!! I said the right answer!!!” And the fit continued.

“Why did I call you out of the pool?”

“Because I was yelling!!!”

“Why did I tell you to sit here?”

“Because I was yelling!!!”

“Why are you still siting here?! Tell me!!!”

He paused, and he answered clearly: “Because I was yelling.”

Once he clearly understood, we rejoined my daughter in the pool and enjoyed the rest of the evening playing together.

There are many ways the situation could have been handled. On another day, maybe a firm threat would be in order. Maybe just a shout to dislodge him from his rage. Maybe a “time-out.” This time, though, it was a koan of sorts. It was not easy allowing my son to have a fit in a fairly public place with other parents looking on; I certainly hoped my son would learn his lesson before we were kicked out. I wanted my son to see how he had created the situation he was in, and how he kept himself in that situation. I wanted him to see himself having a fit, perhaps as a first step to averting them in the future.

And, for a moment, I saw what I must look like in a koan interview, not seeing the obvious answer to the artificial situation in which I've entangled myself as an exercise. But how revealing it is, too, to go one step further and examine myself in each situation in day-to-day life, seeing where I've entangled myself.

After all, when I look at my son, who do I see?

Show me Your True Face: Zen & the Internet

When you speak, what is speaking? When you listen, what is hearing?

Does your eye see? A corpse has eyes, yet what does it see?

When friends, family, or lovers communicate with a level of familiarity or intimacy, what is they are sharing? Ultimately, there is a mind-to-mind sharing of the intimacy itself. The intimacy is manifest on every level within the expression, and in turn it is perceived through the other's senses. Juxtapose this with a dealing with an aggressive salesman. When you interact with the salesman, are you talking to the real person, or are you talking to the person's want to make a sale? Do you not perceive this in the person's appearance, actions, voice, and so forth? All of the senses reassemble what they perceive and reintegrate into "salesman."

This process is not perfect, of course. If either the transmitter or the receiver is not operating properly, the message is garbled. For instance, "salesman" can easily be misinterpreted as "sensitive friend" if that is what you hope to see. Similarly, in spite of your best intentions and efforts, if you have doubt in your efforts, the doubt is transmitted.

This is a non-trivial concern for students of Zen. Your everyday life is ultimately an expression of your state of mind. Similarly, how you perceive everything around you is skewed by your state of mind. It is easy to become trapped by what and how you perceive.

What has proven to be an interesting exercise is to examine what happens when, one by one, we delete the senses and continue communicating. With fewer checks to gauge our understanding, will we go awry? Consider email as an example: Even though we can use as many words as we like, how many arguments arise from misinterpreting email? Lacking the visible cues such as body language as well as even the audible tone of the words as they were meant to be spoken, the transmission is garbled. Inevitably, we blame the medium if and when the misunderstanding is brought to light.

But is this reasonable? What is actually the source of misinterpretation? Who provides---or, "projects"---the interpretation that is not matching? Where there may have been room for doubt in the meaning, why would one assume what was meant instead of asking for clarification?

No matter how in tune we are with our senses, a clouded mind will take the inputs and misinterpret them. Sometimes, all we can actually do to increase the odds of clear transmission is to work to perfect our own state of mind.

Twitter (link) is a popular internet service that allows the individual to shout a message of no more than 140 characters into the ether. If no one is listening for it, and no one searches for it, it may never be heard. Occasionally though, perhaps through direct contact or through searching for key words, you may be found, and someone may subscribe to your announcements---perhaps even respond. A new social dynamic is created.

The communication channel is certainly limited, though. There is little that can actually be transmitted in 140 characters. Subtle gestures and tone may be reduced to including a smiley-faced emoticon or the like, presuming the two or three characters can be spared. If you are going to become familiar with another person's mind through this medium, you must adapt your own.

The other day, I encountered a twitter user who announced the following (paraphrased) policy: "If you do not have a picture, I will not follow you." In fact, in Twitter, you can chose a picture (or "avatar") that will show up with every one of your messages. It allows for ease of identification of messages of from any particular person or entity---for instance, a business may use it's logo. You can select any picture of anything (subject to copyright law, I suppose), to stand beside your communications. In this light, what does this person's policy---"If I do not have a snapshot of who you are, I am not interested in listening to what you have to say?"---mean?

If someone is a sailor and chats about all things sailing, would it not be more interesting to see a picture of his boat---a clear picture of what is his mind? What do we expect to see in a still picture of someone's face? Is that face who he really is? Is the value of his mind anchored to the appearance of his face? Ultimately, we ask how attached to the senses are we when we share our minds?

Naturally, there is comfort in retrofitting new technologies to our old ways, but in reality, this is illusory.

People who embrace these technologies fully and without attachment to old ways inevitably do not have these issues. Perhaps there is hope for Zen understanding in the newer generations...

"Show me your true face, from before your parents were born!"