Pay attention, Pilgrim!

This is based on a talk I gave to the StoneWater Online Zendo on Saturday 21st June. I didn't record the talk, but I've tried to capture what I can from my notes… though trying to be less wordy and verbose than I am when I talk!

Book of Equanimity
Case 20: Jizo's "Not knowing is most intimate"

Attention!

Master Jizo asked Hogen, "Where have you come from?"

"I pilgrimage aimlessly," replied Hogen.

"What is the matter of your pilgrimage?" asked Jizo.

"I don't know," replied Hogen.

"Not knowing is the most intimate," remarked Jizo. At that, Hogen experienced great enlightenment.

[From Gerry Shishin Wick (2005), The Book of Equanimity: Illuminating Classic Zen Koans. Wisdom Publications. p.63]

This morning's talk isn't really on this koan, it's more just that it was inspired by this koan, so I'm not going to talk around this in the usual way, but maybe return to it for inspiration a time or two.

As a university lecturer, I've seen clearly over the past 20 years that the attention of my students has been eroded, in and out of class. The scientific evidence on this is mixed… and we can't fall prey to a nostalgic yearning to a 'simpler time' when students were all amazing and could focus for hours on anything universities asked them to do. I was an undergraduate in the early 90s, and I was a terrible student! But there is some evidence to show that young people are less able to sustain attention, and have learned to switch between tasks quickly all the time - Insta, listen to lecturer, TikTok, textbook, doodling, chat with friend, attention back to the lecturer… This is known as "continuous partial attention" and is bad news for learning in both the short and long term.

But I also see it in myself and my contemporaries. I moaned to a friend the other day at work that I'd put on YouTube recently and starting watching short videos and the next thing I knew, an hour had gone. He laughed, and told me to come back to him when it was a week, not an hour. I do hope he was exaggerating! But none of this is news to anyone alive today who's got a phone in their pocket or eyes in their head.

But look: fears about distractions have always been around. Famously Socrates railed against writing because it would "create forgetfulness in learners' souls, because they will not use their memories." Fortunately, Plato wrote that down so that we still remember it! So has anything changed? I believe it has, and it's the expertise of those seeking to distract us. It's become part science, part game, and those who seek to divert our attention to whatever they (or their clients) want us to look at next on our phones, TVs and so on… well, they're very, very good at their jobs.

This competition for our attention has been unfairly weighted against us: "They" know very well how to distract us.

By distraction, I mean: the loss of control of our own attention, removing the focus of our attention from what we had been focusing on, to a new, shiny thing (blog, tweet, insta reel, video). So, why do we get distracted? I'm not asking how, I'm trying quite hard not to sound too much like a psychology lecturer (and I think I'm failing!), but: why? And it's because of the nature of our individual minds, our seeking, searching minds, which are always looking out for something new, something changed. There are very good evolutionary reasons for this: the early hominids and humans who didn't spot that the bush looked less lion-y last time they glimpsed it… well, they didn't survive to pass on their genes, and their more cautious friends did: our ancestors. Such continual awareness, scanning the environment for threats and things that cause surprise, is still baked deep into our minds, so we keep on scanning, flipping from one thing to the next.

So as we go on to discuss attention and distraction, let me reassure you: you're safe. Right now, in the room where you're listening to this, you're not about to be predated upon! Be easy. Stop seeking, and like Hogen in the koan, dwell in not knowing.

Attention is the heart of Zen practice. There's a famous story of Master Ikkyu, who when asked to capture 'Zen' in calligraphy, simply wrote the character for "Attention". When pressed for some more subtle, secret teaching, he wrote, "Attention. Attention. Attention." Our decision to practice Zen is a decision to pay attention to this moment, and this one, and to our lives as they unfold.

So, let's look at this "Attention." I have a series of observations on this: pay attention to each one. Agree or disagree, resonate or be left unmoved: fine! But consider each one.

[During the talk, there was a long pause after each of these points, so that we could pay attention to each one for a while.]

• Who is being distracted?
  From what are you being distracted?

• Distraction does not arise outside awareness, it is a movement within awareness.

• We do not pay attention to something:
  We are attention.

• Attention requires a heartfelt effort… and then to let go of that effort.

• Embody your attention.
  It's not all about the head.
  Breath.
  Posture.
  Sensations.

• When we try to pay attention, we're grasping at attention with our attention.
  Put down the grasping.

• When the mind wanders… where is it now?
  It is still mind, it is still here.
  Step up to it.

• Are distraction and attention really two?
  Dogen wrote that each moment fully expresses itself.

• When are we distracted? Is it just a case of labelling a certain mental state as 'distracted'?

• When do we experience clarity? Is it just a case of labelling a certain mental state as 'clarity'?

• What about distraction in koan practice? What seems to be a distraction can be an opening to insight.

• When clarity arises: who is it that recognises that?

• Nansen said: "Ordinary mind is the Way," and, "If you try to direct yourself, you go away from it."

So, there are some things to consider. Let me go back to something I said earlier: when distraction occurs, that's fine. Remember that you're OK, you're safe. This is how awareness works.

When distraction arises, perhaps ask: "Who is noticing that?" And then… keep paying attention. Again, again and again. It's OK. You're safe.

And finally, coming back to our koan… Can we see our lives like Hogen's pilgrimage? Can we live in a less grasping way, allowing our lives to play out more freely? Paying attention but not being grasped. Can we… not know?

Pilgrimage (AI-generated)

Why start a "goal-less" practice?

 The Zen teacher Kodo Sawaki once famously said, "Zazen is useless!" This is an important teaching, one that I keep coming back to, and it presents us with a genuine challenge. Why would we start a practice that's described as 'useless', a practice that we're told time and again has no goals? What brings us to Zen practice if there's nothing promised to us as a result of the time and effort we have to put in?

Let me first deal with the obvious: meditation practice does have benefits, and over the past 25 years there's been a huge amount of research in psychology and other fields that has explored what these benefits are. They're manifold... and I'll leave you to google those benefits to your heart's content!

But that's not how Zen practice is presented. Master Dogen opens his Fukanzazengi ("Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen") like this:

The way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient. What need is there for special effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth.

Let's have a closer look at this to try to get to grips with this slippery idea. First, what does Dogen mean by "the way"? It brings up feelings of ancient masters passing on arcane instructions to their successors, of traditions of the Mysterious Orient that we can tussle with intellectually. But this "way" is nothing other than our own lives. In the Sandokai ("Identity of Relative and Absolute") by Sekito, we chant, "If you do not see the way, you do not see it even as you walk on it." In truth, there's nothing mysterious about this way, which means that it's very easy to overlook: we continually seek elsewhere, outside ourselves, for answers to the problems in our lives. Who is it that can help us? Which Master can utter some gnomic phrase that will transform the way I understand my life? Even with years of practice behind me, I still find that I yearn for someone to waltz into my life and fix it all! But the promise of Zen practice is that this isn't necessary, we're already deeply involved in our Way, our quest, our struggle. It's not about finding an arcane practice that will lead us to advanced knowledge or special experiences, it's about clearly seeing our lives unfold as the Way with each step we take. 

Dogen's mention of dust is a reference to another old text, the story of the Sixth Ancestor, Huineng. His teacher asked for students to express their understanding in a poem, and another monk had written of the pure nature of mind and how in our practice we polish it clear of dust. Huineng responded to this though, and asked, if our original nature is pure, where can this 'dust' alight? What is the point of all this goal-directed and strenuous polishing?

It is this 'original nature' that is the bedrock of our practice. We don't have to do anything: it's always already there. If anything, we have to cease from doing, stop adding our own personal, small-minded desires and prejudices onto the world because they only get in the way of seeing our lives clearly as they genuinely are. We're not improving anything, we're not attaining anything, when we sit in zazen we simply express that fundamental truth: we're already in the middle of the Way

When meditation is presented to people, it's often described as a technique: something we learn to do that will have specific benefits in our lives. Learn to do a body scan, to count our breaths, to focus on the sensation of eating a raisin. And of course this does work for many people to bring some clarity, but this isn't what we do in Zen meditation, in zazen. This is shuzen, which contemporary Zen teacher Fujita Issho (link) describes as "a personal training to achieve a human ideal." He stresses this is different from zazen, "an expression of something transpersonal or universal" - and I love the difference between "achieve" and "express": in our Zen practice, we sit just as ourselves, we manifest who we really are without trying to do anything. 

And of course there is a transformation in this, as we sit without goal, we become intimately involved in the experience of right here and now, and in accepting our lives as they unfurl with each breath and each step, we cling less, we cease from grasping for anything outside ourselves. We learn that each moment that we experience is sufficient in itself. That's not to say we don't hurt or love or fear or laugh: we do all of that but we come to do those things more fully, more honestly. 

So what to do? Sit. Sit, breathe, breathe again. Allow our lives to unfold in each instant, and appreciate our lives in their entirety.