This is Burns Night, and it should be noted that, though he likely never heard of Zen or Buddhism, he was one of the great Zen poets of the West:
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white – then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.
Many people go through life with one identity, based on an aggregate of subordinate identities, often a hybrid of job and family role. When we don't hold on to identities, when we let go of old things as we move on to new things (without clinging to the new), we can be amazed as we realise all the different people we have been.
When the heart awakens, we no longer try to become something or someone. We stop asking the Blue Fairy to make us a real boy. Life isn't in the future, it's here and now.
At today's sangha meeting, we discussed the dangers of judging our meditation, of thinking of it as something to fail at. How some people say, “I can't meditate,” when what they mean is that their meditation isn't what they think it should be.
It never is. And that's okay.
The only way you can do it wrong is by thinking you're doing it wrong. If you're meditating, then whatever your mind is doing — being focused, being distracted, happy, sad, angry, bored — is what it should be doing.
An apology without amends is no apology at all. To acknowledge causing harm while offering no atonement or explanation is to deliver a taunt. “I'm sorry” is only an apology if it is followed by a comma, not a period.
Some people in the Buddhist world like to talk of “noble silence,” or, even, “Noble Silence.” Silence is neither noble nor ignoble; it's silence. If we try to make it more than it is, we make it less than it is, by imposing our small story on it, so we experience not the silence, but our ideas about the silence.
Once in a saintly passion
I cried with desperate grief,
“O Lord, my heart is black with guile,
Of sinners I am chief.”
Then stooped my guardian angel
And whispered from behind,
“Vanity, my little man,
You're nothing of the kind.”
— James Thomson
Self-loathing is the same narcissism as self-adoration. Vanity prefers to be Satan than just another ordinary sinner. Contemplative practice is not about learning to love, or accept, ourself, but getting over ourself.
We are a small, independent, nondenominational Zen Buddhist sangha based in Glasgow, but practicing internationally, with members currently in Scotland, England, France, Italy, and various American states. Our practice is zazen, which means “sitting in meditation.” We think of our practice as “Zen for real life,” for people who don't have the leisure to go on lengthy retreats. Because of COVID-19, our meetings are currently online only, with the occasional outdoors meditation in Glasgow.
