[AUDIO AND TEXT]
In his book, The Intimate Way of Zen (Shambhala Publications, 2024), James Ishmael Ford Roshi discusses what Buddhists know as the five hindrances. These are tendencies we have that can distract us from our spiritual practice, both on the cushion and off. They are:
- Craving sensory pleasures
- Feelings of hostility, resentment, bitterness
- Half-hearted engagement
- Restlessness
- Doubt
He reminds us that these are natural tendencies, born inevitably of our existence in these physical bodies we walk around in. Those pursuing the spiritual path are just as naturally led to try to avoid, or at least lessen the effect of, these tendencies – often with major difficulty.
But Ford Roshi gives us a bit of relief, as he reminds us that these tendencies are natural functions of our being human. Not that we should embrace them, you understand, but that we needn’t drive ourselves up the proverbial wall trying to avoid or cure them. When these natural tendencies rear their ugly heads, we can usually just notice them and move on. But moving on involves one of the hardest things we have to learn on our spiritual journey: letting go.
A few years ago, I gave a talk on a Thursday night that I called “Letting Go of Letting Go.” I’d like to revisit that talk here; it reminds me of my own take on Ford Roshi’s prescription for relief. And it may serve to make things a little easier on your own journey – in your meditation practice and in life. Here, from that talk given in April of 2021 and updated for tonight:
Zen practice is easy. All we have to do is sit still and pay attention. And we don’t even always have to sit still; we practice every moment, doing whatever it is we happen to be doing, being mindful of whatever it is we happen to be doing.
If we’re lucky, we sometimes get to go on retreats where we can do concentrated practice over several days in a dedicated setting. Or, as we do so often these days, we sit together virtually with others who are doing the same thing, by way of online internet technology.
If we’re working with a Zen teacher, things may come to appear to us a little bit more complex. We have a partner – a guide – in our practice of sitting still and paying attention, and we have a goal, a standard we want to meet. And if we’re doing koan study, well … things often seem to go completely off the rails. We get restless – the fourth of the five hindrances. We bemoan our progress (or the lack thereof) through koan study: “Why can’t I get this koan?” “What am I holding onto that’s keeping me from seeing through this koan?” “Why can’t I let go and just see and present the right answer?” “Am I just a dummy?” “What am I doing here anyway??!!?”
But whether we’re doing koans or not, we may have the feeling that we’re supposed to be letting go of our attachments and thoughts and tendencies and all the other things that are pinning us down and causing us to suffer, to not be free. And we find ourselves in a vicious circle of trying – trying to get it right, trying to let go of everything that’s holding us back, and even trying not to try.
And that may be the secret to getting out of that vicious circle. All we have to do is stop trying! Don’t spend energy trying to make our practice “right.” Don’t get tied up in knots trying to awaken. Just stop trying. But isn’t that just the vicious circle in another guise? Trying not to try? Where is our way out?
Well, how about this? Just sit. Just be. Just do whatever it is we happen to be doing. And do it fully. No half-hearted engagement (the third of the five hindrances). The contemporary Zen master Norman Fischer says this in his book titled What Is Zen? (Shambhala Publications, 2016):
When you desperately press for some goal or aspiration, your very pressing becomes an obstacle. You are tense, you try too hard, you are impatient, you get discouraged easily, and this hampers you.
He goes on:
The liberation we seek – the relieving of suffering, increased participation and depth in our actual life – is, ultimately, liberation from ourselves, from the tyranny of our own habitual point of view that has kept us small and unhappy. When we press to “get something out of the practice,” we are reinforcing everything in us that is crabby, needy, and self-centered. When we let go of our need and just relax and enjoy our practice, we begin to see its benefit.
So, when we can let go of our need to have our practice look like something in particular or yield a particular result or imagined way of being, all starts to become clear. Fischer again: “Zen practice helps you to live your actual life, not your descriptions of it.” And isn’t this what we all want? Just to be us!
Back to tonight. Here again is James Ford Roshi in The Intimate Way of Zen:
Dealing with the matters of our bodies [the five hindrances or whatever else we run into] is, if you will, a dance. Sometimes you lead. Sometimes you follow. And sometimes you need to sit it out.
… The dance.
Notice the thing arising. Live with it. Dance with it.
And be ready to let it go.
When we begin to let go of the tangles of “should” or “it might be otherwise,” when we let go of our desire to be somewhere else, or be doing something else, worlds begin to appear. Magic imbues the moment in our zazen, our actions, our lives.
So, let’s not drive ourselves crazy trying to let go. Let’s just live the dance – stumbles and all.
Thank you.
EMPTY CLOUD ZEN 