Compulsive Conditions - Stop and Notice

Stop and Notice - Ajahn Sumedho (Luangpor Sumedho)

Attentive, openness..... getting the feeling for this receptivity, openness ...not doing anything, you know, like concentration is...you feel you have to concentrate on the breath or on the body or on Nimita or Kasina so that is kind of concentration where you put your attention on one thing and this is concentrated but it is in an open way, receptive, relaxed, attention...a receptive state of being....conscious. And that is where you recognise the sound of silence. When your caught up in thinking or concentrating or thinking-analyzing things or on objects so then you know you become involved with the conditions, you become the conditions themselves. This way you can get perspective on the conditions. So in this kind of practice many people say "I lead such a busy life, I don't have time to practice meditation" So when can see meditation as something you got to do and you have to have the right conditions and then you don't have time to do that, you get busy...and remember this is a busy world we live in! there is always more and more to do.

You know the more, now that you have washer, dryer, dishwasher, perfect kind of Hoover, air conditioned, central heated, Mercedes Benz car...laptop computer (laughs) and your still busy arent you? time saving devices...it's parkinsons law that you fill up time you know, where those Korean Bhikkunis having to wash there robes in a cold mountain steam and there whole life is around meditation...but anyway its societies like THIS....just to recognise living in London, its like THIS which is not a criticism but acknowledging the way it affects you. You can always imagine a better place than your in. Establishing awareness, here and now Dhamma...its not when you can move out of London and move to a better place than the one your in...its more opening to the present moment its like THIS.

So then in daily life no matter how busy you are, i encourage you to take time and stop being caught in the momentum of busyness because its easy to do that....you gotta do this or you gotta do that - you gotta telephone somebody and then send an email, answer an email - i get email's all the time you know, i don't answer a lot of them. Im not going to be intimidated by this crazy world im living in. In your life just take time to stop, just this sense of stopping and opening when you find yourself in that moment - oh im caught up, this thing, the next thing and the next thing......just say to yourself STOP and relax and open - try to listen to the sound of silence. And even if you cant notice it, just that stopping just being caught in that momentum of busyness of compulsion, you know that compulsive busyness...one thing to the next and notice how thought is always one thought to the other its a dualistic world, a conditioned world that we bind ourselves in - going from one thing to the other, until we get tired and go to bed - we get up and then we do this and we do that, running around one thing after the other..now thats going from one condition to another, to another, to another then the thinking is like...even though its nonsense is going from one though to the next and then we have our own obsessions our own karmic obsessions you know, where we worry about this and you know...we get caught up in our own particular conditioning and programming - worry worry worry - meeting the deadline - DEADLINE its always like this and just noticing this feeling just by observing this in myself - this sense of feeling there's always something else, something I have to do, something that needs to be done! so then the stopping and reflecting just stopping and being the KNOWER of this feeling - not trying to suppress it but recognise it - that recognition of that compulsive momentum.....well thats Paccuppannadhamma - its like THIS ...this feeling of rushing...of going onto the next thing - meeting the deadline, so much to do, so much pressure, its like THIS. Now staying with that, even for a moment is better than not doing it at all - just being a helpless victim of compulsive habits, until you burn out - break down (laughs) so its running like a motor car until it just breaks down, not reading the signs. You see in your life, your the one has, this is your life - don't be intimidated by it or just become a victim of habits.

So even in monastic life, get into compulsiveness - I was a very busy person before i was a monk - going through University and graduate school with this incredible pressure and it conditions you to do that, even when its not necessary. You become conditioned to this compulsive momentum. So even in bring that into monastic life i had to tell myself...sometimes you have to do anything...going nowhere, doing nothing - i just kind of say that to myself and I have this kind of relief because it kind of stops this blind momentum of compulsive busyness. Then with the sound of silence as you develop that like counting to five, sometimes i get caught into this compulsive busyness - i just suddenly see it and become very astute in recognising this habit and then I would say to myself - doing nothing, going nowhere, being nobody - Sound of Silence 1, 2.....Im still with the sound of silence because im counting.... at the same time ..1,2,3,4,5 that was a way of just stopping and suddenly you notice there is a change or i would be carrying something, some resentment towards somebody and feel really annoyed or averse to somebody in the monastery and then I would recognise and then counting to five and the sound of silence - sometimes i couldn't even remember who i was angry with - who was i so annoyed with? it would take me a while to remember....where before when your angry with someone...whatever your doing, your carrying it around - you go into your kuti ...nah, nah, blah (moaning sounds) that person and you go out into the garden - nah, nah, blah you go into the Ashridge, Little Gaddesden etc and your carrying this person all the way, have you ever done that ? .....then your remembering the sound of silence...boost it up to 10 - you know you don't need to make this into a big project, so you have to stop everything and go off to a monastery and sit and meditate - you can do this in your office or in your car.....just a way of stopping and cultivating this and after a while the accumulative effect is very good...so if you think "I dont have time to meditate im just too busy" ..."I have too many responsibilities" be aware of that...this kind of attitude - too busy too many responsibilities - its not that your trying to suppress that feeling but recognise it rather than just being propelled into it blindly and keep you going until u burn out and faint with exhaustion and maybe take to drink or drugs - but this is much better...its skillful.

You know meditation is really learning to understand the human mind - learning to live in the sense realm, the conditioned realm without becoming a victim of conditioning. Most people are victims of there conditioning. You get born into this family and you get all there problems, your parents, your ancestors - you inherit all there prejudices, phobias, biases, tendencies and then you get conditioned into your school and achievement and deadlines, tests, examinations, tests - on and on like this - so we're easily programmed, we become programmed and become creatures of habit and some of the habits can be good habits - habits are not always necessarily bad but even good habits are not liberating - so just recognising the conditioning, the thinking process. Emotional habits, this is not an attack on habits - the conditioned realm is like THIS - you don't live just in the unconditioned then destroy all the conditions. The unconditioned then gives you the freedom from the conditions, this does not mean you don't experience the conditions - it just means you have freedom and you are no longer blinded and caught in habitual behaviour when you realise the unconditioned....the deathless - there is the unborn. So there is the unconditioned, if there was not the unconditioned there would be no escape from the conditioned - but there is the unconditioned and therefore an escape from the conditioned. That escape from the conditioned is mindfulness, but escape from the conditioned does not mean turning your back on it or destroying it - its in just recognising - most human beings do not recognise the condition as that, they become identified, attached, habituated victims of the conditions. We have delicate natures, we're frightened, we have neurotic problems about ourselves, self aversion, feeling of being unloved, unwanted, not appreciated, not good enough.....then it goes the other way maybe we're feeling megalomania, arrogant conceited, thinking your better than others but those people are harder to teach - the ones that actually believe they are the best. But when your self critical and discourage yourself its kind of going in the right direction but with the wrong interpretation. You know, when you see your faults and see weaknesses and inadequacies in yourself and you kind of discourage yourself at least your aware of suffering but the interpretation of it is wrong . It is always from "its me, its MY problem" "im not any good because of this..." "I cant do that..." The right way to see it, is to see conditions as conditions then any sense of self - whether "im the best" or "im the worst" is conditioned and that awareness of it is just enough - thats the escape, not a matter of anhiliating the self, its just letting go of it. So even if forget all this and you get caught up for months in a whirlpool of compulsiveness and suddenly you will remember and STOP ... make it something simple like this....4 letters. Just by saying that to yourself you begin to be aware of this compulsive momentum of habit.

Its like a stop sign, your in a rush to go somewhere - appointment or deadline to meet - urgent meeting and your slightly late and your in a rush and the traffic light goes into red "whens it going to change!" when your in that state it seems forever - its never going to change. You want to get to the office and your late and the traffic light turns red - "whens it going to change" "I think its stuck" its like an eternity......."for the rest of my life i will be stuck" thats what it seems like. Compulsive momentum, this restless feeling, its really unpleasant....wanting to push against anything because you want to get somewhere so your body is here and want to get into the office - your mind is already in the office! but due to circumstances your body has to stop. These are moments just to observe this, this restless, compulsive pushiness of the mind. Then if you can stop and notice the sound of silence. If you do then count, the kind of counting that helps you sustain your attention on it - otherwise its so easy the compulsive energy can be so strong it can be hard to get a perspective on it - you recognise then are propelled right back into it again. Thats why we use words like "calm down", "going nowhere, doing nothing" the sense of just stopping and resting just for a few seconds is better than not doing it at all. So do not make grandiose determinations that you can never fulfil - just doing the best you can, and when you have that moment - no matter how many times you fail and get whirled away by pressures and habits , that one moment you suddenly realise don't disparage yourself but just be grateful for that - so more and more you are beginning to cultivate and develop awareness. So not just being compulsive about being aware...that doesn't work, you grasp the idea of mindfulness and then your "gotta be mindful, gotta be mindful" and then when you do something like drop the cup, break the very valuable antique vase - oh! im heedless "meditation is doing me no good because i break things, im clumsy" so then you start disparaging yourself. STOP determined not to follow that with self hatred, self criticism, despair, aversion, its like THIS...your not completing the habitual pattern. The self view is you try to be mindful and you make some blunder and then you "oh, i cant do it, im so heedless and clumsy" blah blah blah....stop doing that. Determined not to disparage yourself, no matter how many Antique vases you break, start always in the present - its HERE and NOW and be grateful for this moment of suddenly realising - capturing yourself at this moment - at this moment you are not caught in that momentum, compulsion. Gently tell yourself to relax and open yourself for just a few seconds, at least your breaking through, breaking the spiral and momentum. Then as you recognise the value of that more and more your not just creating ideas about meditating and failing and not being able to do it and you create another habit based on the self view "I can meditate at Amaravati, but I cant in my house or in London..." "I got some really good Samadhi at Amaravati [Monastery] but I lost it" dont believe that, different place..... its a different situation...Amaravati [Monastery] is like THIS, where you live is like THIS, where you work is like THIS.

Ajahn Sumedho
Transcribed by James Ball
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Lay Zen Buddhist Practice

by Robert Aitken Roshi

When changes involve one's self, it is difficult to stand off and see clearly just what they are. It is also difficult for people in a community that is changing to know just what is happening. We in the Western Zen Buddhist Sangha know that something important is shifting in our lives and in our practice, but it is hard to keep perspective from the inside. However, it is important for us to try to understand what we are going through, so in this essay I will make such an attempt as a first step in what I hope can be an ongoing discussion.

It is plain that the old way of Zen Buddhist practice is not working very well. People are saying this and demonstrating it in a number of ways. Here in Hawaii in our Diamond Sangha, attendance has fallen off a little; but, more importantly, members are openly questioning some of the assumptions about the monastic nature of Zen practice which have been accepted as fundamental heretofore.

I see this fall-off in attendance elsewhere on my travels, and hear the same questions. We tend to focus on our local problems and it is useful to see how they are really symptoms of underlying changes that are occurring everywhere.

Let's begin with our origins. We have inherited a mode of practice from Japan and Korea and China that was set up for monks and nuns, or more realistically just for monks. Women who wished to be ordained could have their heads shaved and could wear robes, but they lived separately from the ordained men, and the training they received was probably inferior to that of their male counterparts.

Still, they were much more a part of the mainstream of Zen practice than were the lay people of their time. Even devout lay Zen Buddhists found themselves in low status in China, Korea, and Japan in old times. Some great teachers like Bankei Zenji devoted a lot of time to them, and attracted great crowds to their public talks, but personal access even to such teachers was quite difficult. It seems that there were very few lay people, like the Layman P'ang and his wife, son and daughter, who managed to reach real depth in their practice.

In the West, Zen Buddhism has maintained a quasi-monastic mode. Monks und nuns have been ordained in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere. Although there has not been the distinct line between the priesthood and the laity in Western Zen that we find in our Far F.astcrn antecedents, still it has been clear that teachers at many Western centres have felt that the true path leads through ordination. Moreover, lay people too have sought to keep a kind of monkish role, even when married with children. I myself followed this path.

I remember when I first went to Japan to do zazen, my old friend R.H. Blyth said to me, "Your first duty is to your wife and to your son." That was hard for me to swallow. I felt that my first duty was to my practice. Now I see clearly how 1 was distinguishing practice from my life.

We in Western Zen Buddhism have not begun to deal with the conflict between family and Zen training, and we are feeling a lot of pain as a result. In the Far East there was resistance to the monastic system, but it was based on Confucian ideals of perpetuating the family line. In old European families, there was concern about bringing forth a son and heir, but it was never as strong and as institutionalized as it was (and is) in China, Korea, and Japan. These days our emphasis is more than ever on the family itself, and the person who goes off alone to make a career of meditation seems to be betraying commonly accepted standards of family responsibility.

Another factor in understanding our situation is the attitude we hold toward ages of the individual human being, as distinguished by such shrewd observers as Milton Erickson: the ages of childhood, puberty, marriage, having children, growing old, and so on. While the ages themselves are more or less the same in all cultures, we find different imperatives about them in East and West. Generally speaking, I think it can be said that in Asia people tend to accept their ages more readily than we do. Middle aged people are content to be middle-aged, old people are content to be old — except, of course, in those communities where there is strong Western influence.

Within cultures themselves, there are great historical interruptions of this natural movement through individual ages. Most of us have experienced at least one of these during our own lives. Wars bring interruptions for large numbers of people; depressions can bring interruptions, as can social upheavals such as the one we experienced in the decade of 1965-1974.

In that Vietnam period, we saw hundreds of thousands of people drop out of society in a religious search, neglecting the conventional stages of education, marriage, and employment. In their own way, they were monks and nuns.

It was during this time that Zen Buddhism took root and people were attracted to its monastic way of life. However, even those who were ordained remained fundamentally Western. They did not become Confucian. They did not become Japanese or Chinese. As time went on, most of them married or formed lasting relationships, but they still considered themselves monks or nuns and continued to direct themselves toward spiritual self-development and a kind of monkish life. Even those who were not ordained maintained quasi-monastic lives, though most of them too formed relationships or married, and many started families.

Now the New Age has run its course, and the old, very deep drives for spouse and perhaps children, home, and fulfillment of career potential conflict in many cases with the drive for spiritual self-development. Some people have managed to integrate these two drives, but this achievement has been a matter of individual talent, and does not spring from the design of the Western Zen Buddhist programme.
So here we are in 1985, sixteen years after the funeral ceremony was held in the

Haight* For the flower children. Focus in society is again on the family, and we Zen Buddhists find ourselves rather an anomaly, following an outmoded way.

In the Diamond Sangha we still have old-time members who are single or who are in a relationship without children. They manipulate their careers so that they either work part-time and are voluntarily poor, or they have some kind of professional status that allows them to take off for sesshin quite easily. We also have old-time members who have conventional careers, who have married and begun a family, and who have tended to drop away.

Now this may seem to be natural, but it is not. Look at other religious institutions, churches and synagogues all over the West. Parents are the most active among leaders of those institutions. There is something in our basic structure that encourages people to seek a monkish role.
What to do? It seems to me that our teaching has to change, and the attitudes of individual participants toward the practice have to change. There must be changes in schedule and even in buildings themselves. What would the changes in teaching be?

I think that we teachers have over-emphasized the kunin aspect of the practice. Kunin is one of ten kinds of forebearance — ku means "empty", nin means "endurance." Kunin is the endurance which comes with acknowledging that all things are empty. This is the basic teaching of Zen Buddhism as you will find when you look at the first four lines of the Heart Sutra.
Avalokitesvara doing deep Prajnaparamita clearly saw that all perceptions and things perceived are empty. Such realization transformed suffering and distress for Avalokitesvara, as it does for all of us who have the same insight. This teaching is absolutely true, but we have been leaving out some of the stepping stones.

I tell the story in my teisho on the Ninth Precept about a Tibetan lama who asked me what Zen teaches on the subject of anger. I replied, "There is no anger and no one to get angry." He gave me a strange look and said nothing, but I thought about it a lot afterwards. It seems to me that whereas Theravada Buddhism and Vajrayana Buddhism tend to leave out concerns about realization, we in Zen Buddhism tend to leave out concerns regarding the human character and its cultivation. So I think that mindfulness practice should have much more of a place in the teaching of Zen Buddhism.
Most Zen students tend to divide practice from their daily lives, just as I did when I first went to Japan. This tendency is shown in casual remarks I hear at Zen centres. Such and such is not good for my practice, people say — that is, drinking alcohol or smoking dope prevents one from doing good zazen. I think we must explode the word "practice" and diffuse it to mean a Tao that inspires and informs at every moment.

We can do this by remembering to practice "One-breath Mu," or, more simply, one-moment awareness of breathing. We can do this when we hang up the telephone, when we walk across the lawn from the car to the front door, when we are waiting for someone. There are many such chances each day.
We can also practice by reflecting, "How does my koan refer to me?" We can practice in the market by considering the interconnection, interpenetration, mutual dependence of all things. Where do these cabbages and carrots come from? We can practice it with our friends and colleagues, watching their body language and acknowledging it as our own language, and by listening to people in restaurants, reflecting, "These are my stories." In this way we are engaged with others, we suffer with others, on the compassionate path of the Bodhisattva.

Most central of all, we can practice in our families, with spouse and children, listening to them, and investing and engaging in their process of life. And finally we can practice zazen at least three minutes here and five minutes there, brief intervals we deliberately take to restore ourselves for fulfilling our Bodhisattva vows.

We must learn how to walk the ancient way as we change. There is an interesting senryu, "Forever and ever, dancing girls are nineteen years old." There was an interesting story on a television news programme the other evening about a gathering of the Rainbow Family at some place in the Western part of the United States. Here were these wrinkled old hippies with their beards and their nakedness still maundering about things that seemed so important 20 years ago. It gave me quite a pang. We may stay 24 in our heads in some ways, but it isn't real.

I dream of a camp, a large piece of property with a dojo and perhaps a building that could be both a main hall and a dining room, with many little cottages and lots of space for children to play. The families could live in the cottages during their vacations, and take part in formal practice as their family-time permits. The Roshi could live at the camp with a small group to maintain the programme. There could be rigorous training periods and sesshins, with entire families taking part at several levels, each member according to need and ability, starting with play for the children. It would be a monastery transmuted into our own dimension. There is no historical precedent for this kind of arrangement, but if Zen Buddhism is going to acculturate, we are going to have to create family practice.

One final point: I don't want to give the impression that I think that ordination is unnatural, or that being in a relationship or being married without having children is somehow inappropriate, or that gay people aren't welcome. Many single people, unmarried people, and people in relationships without children can sublimate some of their social imperatives and their practice can be thereby the stronger. A Zen programme that is designed for the family can also be pursued by people without families. But if we design our Zen programme for people without spouses and children, then the families are, to some degree, left out. I submit that in our society, this won't do.

* Height Ashbury was the district of San Francisco associated with Hippies and indeed the whole Californian Counterculture of the 1960s

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