On Zen Practice
The revolutionary art of unlearning.
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Jr Korpa on
UnsplashI don’t think that what follows is especially original. It was probably communicated to me at the beginning of my practice, but I was too bewildered and stupid to understand it. It is only now, after years of practice, that I finally understand what was communicated.
When I talk about Zen practice, I talk about both the formal aspect embodied in Zen meditation, and the informal aspect when someone who has engaged in meditation takes Zen into their daily life.
Zen practice is an activity that frustrates the capitalist impulse.
Why?
Because Zen practice has no immediate benefit. My own practice did not bring me riches. The benefits of practice regarding my health have been very mixed. It did not protect me from a heart attack, but maybe that’s because I was too green back then. However, it did not protect me, many years later, from cancer either. Still, there are a few health benefits: my breathing capacity is high, and my heart rate is low, and both are due to my Zen practice.
Zen practice, moreover, did not give me partners. My ex-wife is someone who practices roughly to the same intensity I do, but everyone after her has been on the fence about Zen practice, or decided to simply not practice at all.
Zen practice hasn’t made me superhuman. This is in part why I call Zen practice revolutionary. It goes against capitalism, against the grain, and against social conventions about what people should do with their time.
I’ve practiced Zen meditation for over 28 years. Giving an exact figure is difficult. I did not mark on my calendar the day I became invested in Zen practice, or the first day on which I decided to go to the Montréal Zen Center to sit in meditation.
I’ve practiced meditation for over 28 years, but these were definitely not years of utmost dedication. I’ve been to seven-day retreats, yes. However, I’ve had periods during which no meditation whatsoever happened. These days, I don’t meditate every day. Such is life. However, Zen practice is ever present, even when I do not sit in meditation.
More recently, I’ve taken my practice into the relationships that I’ve established with my partners after my divorce. Seen from the point of view of the ego, a lot of these relationships are failures, because they did not last. However, seen from the point of view of Zen practice, they are successes because the trials that my exes have put me through have revealed so much to me.
“What have you gained over all these years of practice?”
Nothing.
“Lol wut?”
Alright. I’ve gained everything.
“Now you’re contradicting yourself.”
When we sit in meditation, we are not replacing one way of thinking with another. What we are doing is unlearning our habits. As we unlearn our habit, we are not replacing these habits with other habits. We just unlearn them.
This is very much unlike any other endeavor of ours. Usually when we undertake something, it is to gain something concrete. So we replace one way of thinking with another, or one behavior with another. Not so for Zen meditation.
This is the “nothing” that I have gained. I’ve given up old habits.
However, what you gain in this giving up is an openness. Whatever life throws at you. You let it come. This is everything. This is what I mentioned above when I talked about my relationships with my partners. One thing for sure, I’ve not gained access to any state of bliss, or anything extraordinary. Quite the contrary, what I have experienced in meditation is extra ordinary. (In the sense of very ordinary.)
I’ve mentioned above that even when I’m not sitting, Zen practice is a constant. I practice whenever people come to me expressing difficult issues in their life. It would be so easy to respond to them with my own opinions, and tell them to do this or that. However, I do not do this. I let them express themselves fully. Then, yes, maybe I’ll have something fruitful to say, but not until they’ve revealed themselves. If I start with my own opinion, my words will most likely be colored by prejudice and be fruitless.
I call this non-obstruction. What we learn in meditation is how to not be obstructive when the myriad things or the myriad folks manifest themselves to us. We listen, and wisdom illuminates what is fruitful to do, and what isn’t.
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