Chan and Everyday Life: Two Images

I was thinking today that I really don’t know anyone who doesn’t like toast. I'm sure they are out there, but they must be few and far between. 

I love toast. 

Because my old trouble plays up now and then, I’m limited to sourdough, but I’ve got the knack of it. A while ago I noticed that I eat it in such a way as to provide the maximum amount of satisfaction. Eating bits I find boring first and looking forward to the finale, an exquisite combination of bread, butter and jam. Quite absurd, and noticing this hasn’t put a full stop to my mind’s pernicketies. 

This movement we have, of trying to work things to make them perfect, is pervasive. In fact all the senses are experienced mostly through our ideas of what or how things should be. I think the flip side to toast perfection is a certain wish for control and resistance to what is, a resistance to the bare reality of things, and it’s most pronounced when we feel the victim of something. 

I had a difficult few hours over the weekend and it was just as I was coming over the brow of this emotional hill that I saw clearly. A wish for both control of, and a resistance to, the things which I felt were causing me problems. 

There may be fear, or anxiety or sadness, but on top of this is another feeling which we seem to actively cling onto. The mind says, I don't want this, I don't deserve this, I don't like this feeling, I want to get away. It can be quite awful.

But to respond in this way is at some level putting ourselves at odds with the reality of the moment, of what is. We may have feelings of sadness or loneliness or anger but then we resist these feelings with such aversion that the body and mind suffer even more. 

The bodily felt sense of resistance can actually be separated out and we can appreciate better how it casts our sense of things in stone, limiting the fluidity and changing nature of feelings which have arisen. Stultifying the creativity we have to transcend it. Our resistance is a problem, our resistance is futile. 

With a certain freshness I appreciate wisdom of the four practices of Bodhidharma: accept karmic retribution, enduring the results of our past actions; align with conditions; seek nothing; practise the Dharma. 

These are practices which demand we simultaneously open to the reality of our life, including our resistance to it. Because only in that moment of recognition can acceptance, compassion and understanding be found. 

Toast anyone? 

Everyday Chan: two images 

I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it. I have no other way of spotting both my denied shadow self and my idealized persona. 

Father Richard Rohr 

I remember when my son was a youngster and we had a birthday party for him at a local leisure centre. The room was packed with kids and mums and me. We had a long table with food, jelly and crisps, and after a few games all the kids were ushered around onto the little chairs for something to eat. Things were going ok. Then my wife needed to pop out for a mo. This meant I was in charge. No problem. They were quite an energetic bunch and as the seconds and minutes, which frankly felt like hours, went by the energy seemed to lift. Kids were getting up and running around the table; then one threw a cake. Others reciprocated. I found myself trying to placate, then be command­ing, finally giving a firm telling-to one little boy who showed me his bum, that we don't do things like that at parties. I could feel myself morphing into something between Basil Fawlty and Peewee Herman. 

No one seemed to be helping me. Couldn't they see I was struggling, hear the pitch of my voice? I made eyes with the look of perplexity on another mum's face. 

Where oh where is the invisibility cloak when you need it. 

My wife did come back, eventually, and I was ok after a couple of large Vimtos. But I felt I'd lost a little prestige. A prestige I never had or needed. 

For me, humiliation comes when my sense of self has indeed morphed into something bigger than usual. As the sense of self grows, so does the importance and relevance of my story. Then everything is seen through it and lived through it. The flip side to this is when the self is allowed to become less important, so the story has less power, and I live life through more presence and awareness. Life is lighter, I am lighter. 

Even if a solid, independent self cannot be found behind the layers of thought and sensation, it feels real enough and we ignore it at our peril. I know because I do it all the time. Our sense of self needs consideration and care as it is a reflection of many things: The generations before us, our childhood experiences and our present understanding. 

But it is not just psychological. It's a reflection of our environment, our physiology, when we are tired or ill or happy or sad. 

My moments of humiliation arise from relying on a skewed perspective, a false sense of who I am, how I present myself and how I feel I am seen. My idealised persona, as Richard above writes, is shown to be false. It is in those moments that I cannot deny I have not been authentic with myself or others. 

But to consider ourselves an island of dysfunction ignores our interdependence with our whole world. If we can search back, we may find that we have been expecting too much of ourselves, are overly stressed, overworked or lacking sleep. Maybe there's been a number of things pressing. Slowly we may begin to rely on the safety net of old habits to save us. 

When things build up, I slowly lose touch with the present and the gateway for rumination breaks open like a lock of a canal. 

Thoughts can be addictive and so it is at these times, when I finally realise things have gone too far, I get back on the wagon. This entails really applying myself to samadhi meditation and Dogen’s advice to 'Think not thinking'. 

Slowing things down, not allowing thoughts to gain a hold as soon as I rise in the morning, taking time to feel the soles of my bare feet as I make my way across the bedroom and reducing my engagement with unhelpful thoughts throughout the day. You could say back to basics, but it is these little incremental steps that guide me back to the very real refuge of being present. Not coping but re-alignment. 

We really are such delicate flowers, requiring consideration and care and a knowledge which can only be gained through experience. 

So I say, what helps you grow? 

What helps you bloom?