ZEN IS BORING
Let's face it. Zen is boring. You couldn't
find a duller, more tedious practice than Zazen. The philosophy is dry and
unexciting. It's amazing to me anyone reads this page at all. Don't you people
know you could be playing Tetris, right now? That there are a million free
porno sites out there? Get a life, why don't you?!
Joshu Sasaki, a Zen teacher from the Rinzai
Sect, once said that Buddhist teachers always try to make students long for the
Buddha World, but that if the students knew how really dry and tasteless the
Buddha World actually was, they'd never want to go. He's right. Look at Zen
teachers. Not a one of them has any sense of fashion. They sit around staring
at blank walls. Ask them about levitation, they won't tell you. Ask them about
life after death, they change the subject. Ask them about miracles and they
start spouting nonsense about carrying buckets of water and chopping up fire
wood. They go to bed early and wake up early. Zen is a philosophy for nerds.
Boredom is important. Most of your life is
dull, tasteless and boring. If you practice Zazen, you learn a lot about
boredom. I remember the first time I sat Zazen, I was real excited. I figured
I'd be seeing visions of four armed Krishnas descending from the Heavens, or
I'd be fading into The Void just like the old Beatles song, or reach Nirvana
(whatever that was) or some great wonderful thing. But the clock just ticked
away, my legs started aching, and stupid thoughts kept drifting by. Maybe I
wasn't doing it right, I thought. But no, year after year it was the same.
Boring, boring, boring. After almost 20 years it's still boring as Hell.
People hate their ordinary lives. We want
something better. This, our day to day life of drudgery and work, is boring,
dull and ordinary, we think. But someday, someday... There's an episode of The
Monkees* where Mike Nesmith says that when he was in high school he used to
walk out on the school's empty stage with a guitar in his hands thinking
"Someday, someday." Then he said that now (now being 1967, at the
height of the Monkees fame) he walks out on stage in front of thousands of fans
and thinks "Someday, someday." That's the way life is. It's never
going to be perfect. Whatever "someday" you imagine, it will ever
come. Never. No matter what it is. No matter how well you build your fantasy or
how carefully you follow all the steps necessary to achieve it. Even if it
comes true exactly the way you planned, you'll end up just like Mike Nesmith.
Someday, someday... I guarantee you.
Your life will change. That's for sure. But
it won't get any better and it won't get any worse. How can you compare now to
the past? What do you know about the past? You don't have a clue! You have no
idea at all what yesterday was really like, let alone last week or ten years
ago. The future? Forget about it...
People long for big thrills. Peak
experiences. Some people come to Zen expecting that Enlightenment will be the
Ultimate Peak Experience. The Mother of All Peak Experiences. But real
enlightenment is the most ordinary of the ordinary. Once I had an amazing
vision. I saw myself transported through time and space. Millions, no,
billions, trillions, Godzillions of years passed. Not figuratively, but
literally. Whizzed by. I found myself at the very rim of time and space, a vast
giant being composed of the living minds and bodies of every thing that ever
was. It was an incredibly moving experience. Exhilarating. I was high for
weeks. Finally I told Nishijima Sensei about it . He said it was nonsense. Just
my imagination. I can't tell you how that made me feel. Imagination? This was
as real an experience as any I've ever had. I just about cried. Later on that
day I was eating a tangerine. I noticed how incredibly lovely a thing it was.
So delicate. So amazingly orange. So very tasty. So I told Nishijima about
that. That experience, he said, was enlightenment.
You need a teacher like that. The world needs
lots more teachers like that. Countless teachers would have interpreted my
experience as a merging of my Atman with God, as a portent of great and
wonderful things, would have praised my spiritual growth and given me pointers
on how to go even further. And I would have been suckered right in to that, let
me tell you! Woulda fallen for it hook line and sinker, boy howdy. If a teacher
doesn't shatter your illusions he's doing you no favors at all.
Boredom is what you need. Merging with the
Mind of God at the Edge of the Universe, that's excitement. That's what we're
all into this Zen thing for, right? Eating tangerines? Come on, dude! What
could be more boring than eating a tangerine?
Some years ago some psychologists did a study
in which they sat some Buddhists monks and some regular folks in a room and
wired them up to EEG machines to record their brain activity. They told
everyone to relax, then introduced a repetitive stimulus, a loudly ticking
clock, into the room. The normal folks' EEG showed that their brains stopped
reacting the stimulus after a few seconds. But the Buddhists just kept on
mentally registering the tick every time it happened. Psychologists and
journalists never quite know how to interpret that finding, though it's often
cited. It's a simple matter. Buddhists pay attention to their lives. Ordinary
folks figure they have better things to think about.
If you really take a look at your ordinary
boring life, you'll discover something truly wonderful. Our regular old
pointless lives are incredibly joyful -- amazingly, astoundingly, relentlessly,
mercilessly joyful. You don't need to do a damned thing to experience such joy
either. People think they need big experiences, interesting experiences. And
it's true that gigantic, traumatic experiences sometimes bring people, for a
fleeting moment, into a kind of enlightened state. That's why such experiences
are so desired. But it wears off fast and you're right back out there looking
for the next thrill. You don't need to take drugs, blow up buildings, win the
Indy 500 or walk on the moon. You don't need to go hang-gliding over the
Himalayas, you don't need to screw your luscious and oh-so-willing secretary or
party all night with the beautiful people. You don't need visions of merging
with the totality of the Universe. Just be what you are, where you are. Clean
the toilet. Walk the dog. Do your work. That's the most magical thing there is.
If you really want to merge with God, that's the way to do it. This moment. You
sitting there with your hand in your underwear and potato chip crumbs on your
chin, scrolling down your computer screen thinking "This guy's out of his
mind." This very moment is Enlightenment. This moment has never come
before and once it's gone, it's gone forever. You are this moment. This moment
is you. This very moment is you merging with the total Universe, with God
Himself.
The life you're living right now has joys
even God will never know.
FOOTNOTE
*For those of you not up on old US pop culture, The Monkees was a TV comedy
show about a rock and roll band that ran from 1967-68 and was rerun throughout
the 70s. The Monkees were supposed to be just like The Beatles. Mike Nesmith
was the "leader" of the band, the John Lennon character. To
everyone's surprise, when The Monkees, a fake rock band, went on tour they
attracted almost as many squealing teenage fans as The Beatles had a few years
before.