always becoming

[AUDIO AND TEXT]

This is going to be really short. Tonight is for sitting, but I’d like us to sit with these thoughts in mind.

Recently, the phrase “always becoming” has been echoing in my little brain. It echoes as I drive down the freeway; it clangs about as I’m trying to go to sleep at night. And it’s been happening often in the face of my own very personal reaction to the startling and disastrous wind and fire events in Los Angeles and the possibilities suggested by our new executive “reign” here at home.

It seems we are called now to embrace huge new building and re-building projects and to manage efforts to keep sight of the heritage left to us by those who have gone before. And the dimensions of these changes may require us to see ourselves anew in every moment. We’re facing some huge unknowns. And our Zen practice plays a large part in enabling us to face those unknowns.

Here’s an excerpt from a book by Fr. Hugo Enomiya-Lasalle, a Jesuit priest who was one of the forerunners of Zen practice in the West. In his book Living in the New Consciousness (Shambhala Publications, Inc. © 1988, pp. 108 – 109), Lasalle writes this of zazen practice:

To summarize the inner attitude to be cultivated during zazen, we attempt to turn off all ego-directed activity. The ego should be passive, receptive, open. It is, to use a simile, not an attitude of speaking but rather one of hearing … We must delve into the deeper levels of consciousness while nevertheless not forcing anything; it must be allowed to happen.

“Not an attitude of speaking, but rather one of hearing.” “It must be allowed to happen.” To me, this is saying that, in fact, we must allow ourselves to happen! Our very selves. We’re always becoming, moment by moment. Not becoming anything in particular, you understand; just becoming. Us. New conscious beings, manifesting in accord with each moment we encounter.

Fr. Lasalle goes on to describe techniques we can use to achieve this inner attitude. But I don’t want to go there tonight. Instead, I want us to consider how difficult, yet how necessary, this task may be for all of us –  those who are suffering, as well as those who participate in that suffering from a distance. For their suffering is ours. What is happening to them is also happening to us. And whether they realize it or not, we are happening in them.

Recent discoveries in quantum physics bear out this truth. Nothing in nature or in the universe happens in isolation; everything is connected with everything else. Quantum entanglement. Matter-antimatter interactions. All of this is how Nature works, or so say the astrophysicists. Well, it’s the same in Zen, isn’t it? Everything happens as an expression of Essential Nature, our True Nature. Everything – including us! Sounds like talk in platitudes, maybe. But when we look at it deeply, both on the cushion and off, we see that (as the Heart Sutra says) this is Truth, and not mere formality. Always becoming. Everything is always becoming. What a realization! And so, we practice.

Thank you.