Being Nowhere
Photo by Javier Esteban
Using a passage from the 14th century mystical text, The Cloud of Unknowing, Zuisei speaks of the bridge between the relative and absolute worlds.
She refers to the center of the present moment as the place where there is nothing and we are nowhere—the place where we “just sit"” “just walk,” “just eat,” as we refer to it in Zen. It’s the place where doing and doer disappear and we are free to respond to the world spontaneously and “magnificently.”
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This passage is from The Cloud of Unknowing:
Understand this clearly, your spiritual work is not located in any particular place, but when your mind focuses on anything, you are there in that place spiritually, as certainly as if your body is located in a definite place right now. Your senses and faculties will be frustrated for lack of something to dwell on, and they will chide you for doing nothing. But nevermind. Go on with this nothing moved only by your love for God, your love for reality. Never give up, but steadfastly persevere in this nothingness, consciously longing that you may always choose to possess truth, through love. Whom, no one can possess through knowledge. For myself, I prefer to be lost in this nowhere, wrestling with this blind nothingness, than to be like some great master, traveling everywhere, and enjoying the world, as if I owned it.
As many of you probably know, The Cloud of Unknowing is that 14th century mystical text that speaks so beautifully, so eloquently, about contemplative life and about what is required to attain unity with the Divine, with a Ground of Being. It's one of those books that I keep close and re-read often. Everytime I do I find something new, which tends to be true of the great spiritual texts of the great spiritual traditions. It's probably also true of the little known texts of the lesser known spiritual traditions. This is really one of the things I love about spiritual practice. No matter how much you think you've seen or understood, there is always more. This is truly something you can count on. There is always, always more. Which means we'll never be done, we'll never reach a point where we can say to ourselves, "There I'm too present now and too clear. I better pull back." I hope [Zuisei laughs] you don't say that to yourself.
Last week, one of you suggested that I speak about the movement from the relative to the absolute and about the place where the two intersect. To put it another way, where the two realms intersect in us. For some reason, I immediately thought of this text, which is not Buddhist, but I think speaks well to the state of mind necessary to straddle both worlds: the world of form, the world of emptiness; the world of conventional truth, the world of ultimate truth; the sacred and the mundane. Most of us live mostly in the world of form, in the ordinary world. We base our thoughts, our speech, our actions, on what we can see and feel and touch. But ever since human beings have had consciousness, there's always been people who've been aware that there is more, that there is another realm, and that having access to it, as well as to what is tangible and defined, is what gives us access to our full humanity. When we ignore or diminish the world of the spirit (a slightly awkward way to talk about it), when we deny it, we deny something in ourselves. We deny something which is not only true, but essential.
Right now we're putting time and effort into understanding consciousness, which we don't yet understand. We don't understand how an immaterial thought can bring about change in matter. How can it be that, just by thinking, I can lift this cup. We don't understand how that happens. We assume that we human beings are the only ones who have this particular kind of consciousness. Although we're already seeing that that's not true. There are many animals and sentient beings, trees for example, that have a particular kind of consciousness. Perhaps this desire to see what more is there, perhaps that, is unique to humans. I don't know if cats and dogs suffer in the way that we suffer, not existentially that is. They don't look like they are. Of course, it's hard to know. But if we have ever wondered, why is life so difficult and does it have to be this way, chances are, that is why we're practicing. Somewhere in us, we believe that there is another way. Right. So here we are, tonight, trying to see and understand and practice this different way. Different, not because it negates the ordinary world, but because it includes the more.
The Cloud of Unknowing was written as a kind of manual, by an anonymous writer, perhaps a monk, a nun, or a priest, for one of their students. It lays out the method to come close to and to realize the nature of God, which I call the Nature of Reality. I should clarify that I don't actually think or know that all these various traditions are saying the same thing or pointing to the same place necessarily. Sometimes we speak of it that way. I'm not sure that it's entirely fair or that it's fully accurate to equate God with reality, but I'm working with words so bear with me. I do think that in the place of true unknowing where there is no form, no tradition, no belief, no faith, no dogma, certainly, perhaps there we can say that the particular experiences these traditions are trying to point to are similar. So, when Christianity says, “Not this, not this, not this,” as it does in the apophatic approach to God (which is a main approach of this text) and when Buddhism says, “Not this, not this, not this,” I understand both of these as attempts to go beyond what words can express and our senses can grasp, to reach a place that is beyond what we can understand with the intellect. Why? So we can live more freely, more skillfully in the world of form. That is, after all, where it counts, ultimately. One of you said to me recently, “Kindness won't pay the rent.” I mean, it might indirectly. But it is true that knowing the nature of reality won't pay your bills. It won't undo racism, violence, distrust. Or will it? A question I often ask myself is, what is the use of practice, of realization ? I know why I do what I do. Of all the many paths I could have chosen, I chose to dedicate myself to the Dharma because I saw it as the most direct, most effective way to deal with a continuing conflict I see in myself and in the world. I asked myself, what will have the most effect? What is the most skillful way for me to bring about change?
At the same time, there is practicing just for the sake of practice. We're not practicing for real life, we're not practicing for the performance. We're doing it. We're living as we are living. In that sense, we practice because we can, because it is the nature of who we are. So when we sit zazen, we sit as Buddhas. We don't sit in order to become Buddhas. We sit in the knowledge in the faith and the trust that we already are that which we seek. In one sense, this is what the author of The Cloud of Unknowing is pointing to, this nothing or nowhere, which I'll come back to.
Part of the challenge of spiritual practice is that we're so used to measuring everything. We measure time, we measure space, we measure age and wealth and progress. We're constantly triangulating our position within our lives. We do this because we want to know where we stand with respect to ourselves with respect to others. We want to know. Even though some part of us senses that this probably won't work within the spiritual path, we measure anyway.
In Zen, there are the ten ox-herding pictures, which essentially provide a roadmap, a very loose, very open-ended map, of the spiritual life within Zen. At Zen Mountain Monastery, there is a set of these pictures hanging in the dining hall. The originals were drawn by Jikihara Sensei. When he was alive he was a Japanese national treasure, and he gifted the series of images to the monastery. People would come to the monastery for an introductory retreat. It would be the first time that they're there, and they would stand in front of the pictures. You could see them, looking at each of the pictures and reading the poems that accompany them. Slowly, moving along the path from left to right, along this progression, clearly thinking to themselves, okay, where am I? Where am I here? And very often, very often, actually, they would keep walking all the way until they got to the eighth picture, which is the Enzo, the circle of enlightenment. You could see it in their eyes thinking, I think I'm here. Until, soon after, they would see the teacher and that would be the end of that.
Shugen Roshi, the abbot of the monastery tells a story, that when Jikihara Sensei offered the pictures, it was the opposite. He said, "I really want my son to be a priest, but you see these pictures—” Then he did the opposite. He walked from right to left to the beginning of the path, and then he kept walking a few feet until there was a blank wall. Then he pointed and said, "My son is here." He looked so sad when he said that.
If we are fortunate, sooner or later we realize that much of what truly matters in life cannot be measured, cannot be measured objectively— love, health, happiness, insight, understanding, a general sense of well being. Think of a day or a moment when you felt truly happy, truly content. What were you doing? What was the source of your happiness? This is also something I think about. I think to myself, I'm here for a brief, a very brief period of time, how am I going to spend it? How am I spending it? What is occupying the accumulated hours and days and years of my life? What is the effect of that on me and on those around me? How do I actually feel about the life I'm living, not what I think I should feel, but what I actually feel?
Many years ago, an experiment was conducted to try to measure happiness. This was before cell phones. The subjects were asked to carry a pager with them, and they were given a clipboard. The pager would go off at random times during the day, and they were supposed to stop what they were doing, write down what they were doing, and rate their level of happiness. What the experimenters predicted was that people would feel happiest when they had free time, like on the weekends when they could hang out. When they could go out, go hiking, or whatever ways we spend our free time. This is so often how we frame our lives, right? There's the work week and the weekend, and we can't wait to get to the weekend. We just make it through the work week so we can get to what we really want to do. They predicted that this would be confirmed by the experiment. Instead, what they found was very interesting. What they found was that hands down, people said, they were happiest when they were having sex. Which you just have to wonder how that worked? Hold on one second, honey, the pager just went off, I have to make a note here. [Zuisei laughs]. How did that work? In general, people said they were happiest during sex. After that, people reported being happiest, not during the weekend, but actually at work when they were being challenged, when they were engaged in what they were doing. This is so interesting, there is the gap, as I've spoken about before, between our expectations and the reality. So it turned out that people actually preferred to be working and being engaged as they were working. Hanging out on the couch watching Netflix did not give them the satisfaction and contentment that you would have expected.
I've always thought that the purpose of a religious tradition is to offer us a map for living a good life, a fulfilling life—not later, when we're reborn in a better configuration, not when we go to heaven, but now in exactly the place that we find ourselves in, exactly as the people that we are. This, to me, is what Buddhism is offering. It's not easy, when you think about it, to find happiness in our current circumstances, with all our current flaws and limitations, with our wishes and desire for things to be different. I think it's even harder to keep chasing after future happiness. In fact, this is the very recipe for unhappiness. Dissatisfaction is caused by the gap between where we are and where we want to be. We've talked about this. I think it's a complete disservice to think of zazen as just meditation, mindfulness, or as a tool to help you get to the goal of living a better life. It's a disservice to think of it as quiet time, alone time, or time to be with yourself. Even though I myself have described it that way now and then. The point of zazen is not to be more calm or peaceful or to reduce your stress levels. Although if you're sitting consistently, it will most likely do all of those things. That's not the point. The point is to get rid of all points, to do nothing and be nowhere. If we can do that then when we do need to do something and be somewhere, we'll be able to be there and do it more fully. Even though it sounds like I'm describing a causal relationship, it's not. It’s not if this then that. That is one way to think about it, but these two circumstances co-arise. They're interdependent. That's the difference between Buddhism and positive thinking or any other practice that promises a reward. There is no reward. There is just the doing itself and the non-doing.
So this is the paradox of spiritual practice. We work, we work hard, no question about it, to get out of our own way, to let go of ourselves, so we can more fully be who we are and do what needs to be done. We can be pleasing to God, as that story said last week, which means being pleasing to ourselves, being pleasing to others, being pleasing to the world.
From The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers, “God is an infinite circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” We can say the same thing in Zen. The center of this moment is everywhere and its circumference is nowhere. This is what we mean when we say,just sit, just walk, just eat. This is what we mean when we say, just be the breath. We say this so often and so easily, but how do you really do that? How do you get so close to the breath that it breathes itself? So it's not Zuisei breathing, it’s not Zuisei practicing being the breath. It is just the breath breathing itself. At that moment, there is no Zuisei, there is no breath. There is nothing. There is nowhere—nothing and nowhere that we can name. And this small shift, this nothing shift, changes everything. Do you understand?
One of you was telling me about this book Inner Gold by Robert Johnson. He says, “Sometimes we turn to others when we cannot contain our own magnificence.” I love that. We need them to hold the gold until we're able to hold it ourselves. What do you think you're doing when you're sitting? Holding your own magnificence, remembering your own magnificence, being your own magnificence.
How about that? You thought you were just focusing on the breath. You were just counting the breath, cultivating concentration. Instead, you are being magnificent. If we could truly sit as Buddha, live as Buddha, believe and accept that we are magnificent, then there'd be no need for more. Then maybe we would see all there is to see, do all there is to do. Maybe that's what the Buddha saw when, after his enlightenment, he said, "My liberation is unshakeable." Then there's the other side. There's Shakyamuni the person. Maybe every once in a while he got up in the morning and thought, I don't want to get up. I don't feel like teaching. I just want to lie here and do nothing. Maybe as he got older. The sutras said from the moment he started teaching, he was never alone. Can you imagine? I think about that with fear and trepidation. I have to imagine that sometimes he just didn't want to do it. Maybe he was short with his wife, his ex-wife I guess, with his son. Maybe he had bad days. We don't read this in the sutras. I've said before that I really want to write this book where I rewrite the Buddhist text, Jataka Tales,(fables centered in the past lives of Shakyamuni Buddha) and everything is not wrapped up virtuously at the end. Where things don't actually work out and the Buddha's okay with that. Maybe one day I'll get to that book.
Jack Kornfield said it well in the title of his book, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. After a tiny or profound realization, after a period of zazen in which you are able to forget yourself and the breath just breathes, then you get up to feed your child, to walk the dog, to file your taxes and to apply for unemployment. There is no magic here. Actually, there is the magic of our magnificence and our loveliness. Once we accept it, then we can offer it to others. That is also part of the work.
There's a story of a doctor who had to operate on a woman who had a tumor in her cheek. He was able to remove the tumor, but he also had to sever the nerve right at the side of her mouth. So her mouth was lopsided after the operation. He was there in the room when the woman's wife came to see her. She'd just come out of anesthesia, and they very lovingly, very warmly hold each other. They touch each other. The doctor is standing back a little bit wondering, who are these people who are so close, so intimate. Then the patient turns to the doctor and says, "Will my mouth always be like this?" And he says, "Yes, it will because I had to cut the nerve." She just nods. Then, the wife steps forward and says, "I like it. I think it's cute." This is what the doctor writes: “I understood who she was. And so I lowered my gaze, because one is not bold in the presence of a goddess.” He watches as the wife leans forward to kiss her wife's crooked mouth. He can see how she twists her own mouth, her own lips to accommodate her wife's lips to show her that their kiss still works.