The Call to Contemplation
Photo by Ryan Stone
The call to turn inward, towards our present-moment experience, is a call toward truth. In this talk, Zuisei explores the importance of letting our minds become still, so that when the call arrives, we can heed it.
Accepting the call is saying “Yes” to reality. It’s becoming intimate with that which we know to be true, which then allows us to see how we must respond.”
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
This is Thomas Merton, from a piece called “A Transforming Vision.”
I have the immense joy of being a human being, a member of a race in which [truth and love] became embodied. As if the sorrows… of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
This changes nothing in the sense and value of my solitude, for it is in fact the function of solitude to make one realize such things with a clarity that would be impossible to anyone completely immersed in the other cares, the other illusions… of a tightly collective existence. My solitude, however, is not my own, for I see now how much it belongs to them—and that I have a responsibility for it in their regard, not just in my own. It is because I am one with them that I owe it to them to be alone, and when I am alone they are not “they” but my own self….
… If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed… I suppose the big problem would be then that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift.
Shugen Sensei quoted Merton last Sunday, and I too had been reading a collection of his writings and was struck by this passage. In recent weeks, I spoke of silence, and of what I called the power of zazen—the power of zazen to help us to not be changed by the world, to not be swept up by the current of grasping and gaining and fighting and accumulating so we could live our lives from the inside, from a place of truth.
Today, I’d like to continue in that vein and speak of the “peculiar gift” that Merton refers to, by which the truth of things can be seen, and I’d like to speak about it as the call to contemplation. For I believe it is a calling.
Although all of us have the seeds of awakening and all of us have the capacity to cause those seeds to bloom, not all of us will do so. Not all of us will choose to disentangle ourselves, however briefly, from the cares of our tightly collective existence, from the tug of work and family and friends, and from the many other interests and responsibilities that make it difficult for us to be alone, to be still and silent.
And so, I believe it is necessary to be called to this work of contemplation. This work of turning inward and moving beyond words, beyond images and ideas and opinions, and into the direct experience of the light—the illumination—that we’re all walking around in, yet are so often blind to.
I had an experience a few years back, during a hermitage. One of those very simple, moments, a flash, really—it was so brief—that nevertheless change you forever. I had entered that hermitage in a considerable degree of turmoil. I was very upset, very unsettled, hurt, and angry. I knew I needed that time to be with myself in the rawness of my experience, though frankly, part of me didn’t want that at all. But the part that did won, and so I went.
And towards the end of the week, after riding a rollercoaster of emotions and finally quieting down somewhat, I was lying on the grass in a patch of sun after a long stretch of sitting. I had my hands behind my head, my eyes closed, and finally I felt like I could relax into myself, that I could rest. Except for the trilling of crickets, everything around me was very still. The air too was still, and it was hot, it was towards the end of the summer. And it was probably around noon, for the sun was high in the sky directly above me. And I lay there, listening to the crickets, feeling my breathing, the prickle of grass on my neck…when at one point I opened my eyes, gazed at the sun, and closed them quickly. On the inside my eyelids I had the sun’s afterimage, a perfectly round, orange circle of light on a reddish background—almost like an engraving, or a brand on my mind. And in the quiet I heard a voice say, very clearly, “You are that light” …
I suppose in a way I’ve been trying to live up to that, ever since.
As if the sorrows… of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But… there is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
There’s no way of telling others, although we try—women and men have been trying for thousands of years—that things always express their own being, that they live in truth, but unless we can slow down enough and be quiet enough to see and hear, we miss it, we miss things, we miss ourselves. We essentially miss what is so completely self evident, so clear, so… unarguable—after a while, this is how I learned to recognize when I had really seen a koan. The feeling very often would be, “Oh! Of course!” Actually, in the beginning it was “Wait, what? Really? That’s it?!” And little by little I saw, “Yes, that’s it. Of course that’s it. And I just couldn’t see it before.” I couldn’t see it because it seemed too simple, too close. As close to me as my eyes, my heart, my breath, and I could not see it.
The word “contemplation” means to “gaze attentively, to observe.” In ancient Rome, an augur or diviner would contemplate natural signs—especially the behavior of birds—and interpret them as good or bad omens for actions the rulers or priests should take. In the most famous of these stories, Pope Fabian was chosen in 236, despite the fact that no one was thinking of him as a likely pontiff. But, while everyone was gathered during the conclave, a dove landed on his head. Everyone took this as a sign from the Holy Spirit, and he was unanimously chosen to be the next pope.
Much later, in Christian mysticism, contemplation became a kind of prayer or meditation in which the mystic would have a direct experience of God or the divine. It was a silent prayer, though—a prayer devoid of images or words—anything that would separate the mystic from themselves and therefore from the divinity within them. And yet, there is a clear kind of communication, an ongoing relationship with truth, with love, with sacredness.
Saint Teresa of Avila, who was renowned for describing in great detail the levels of contemplation, once had the following dialogue: “Who are you?” her Beloved asked her one afternoon. “I am Teresa of Jesus,” she said. “And who are you?” “I am Jesus—of Teresa.”
So, paradoxically, although you have to be in solitude to experience and practice contemplation, in doing it, you are never alone, because you’re in relationship… with everything.
As I was writing this talk, I got a strong sense of nostalgia for Daido Roshi.
He didn’t speak of contemplation per se, but he would talk about this subtle communication all the time, and he would often quote Dogen and Thoreau and Evelyn Underhill in this regard.
Thoreau said, “I hear beyond the range of sound; I see beyond the verge of sight.” I move beyond the reality-limit in order to directly come in contact with what lies beyond, what cannot be apprehended with eye and ear. And that line that we repeat every introductory weekend before a talk?: “These talks are dark to the mind but radiant to the heart,” that’s Evelyn Underhill. I pulled out my well-worn copy of Mysticism, and this is what I read:
Contemplation is to transcend alike the stages of symbol and silence, and “energize enthusiastically” on those high levels which are dark to the intellect but radiant to the heart… It is a supreme manifestation of that indivisible “power of knowing” which lies at the root of all our artistic and spiritual satisfactions.
But do not be deceived by the term “high levels.” It is possible to enter into a deep state of contemplation just while sitting and gazing, as the Buddha did when he was eight years old, at a field being plowed.
You can enter into a deep state of contemplation while counting your breath. That is why it’s so unfortunate when people start asking after a month or two of working with the breath when they can start doing koans. And I often reply, “You know, the Buddha never did a single koan in his life, and he did pretty well, don’t you think?”
The breath was the Buddha’s primary meditation subject, and it held such importance for him that he called it “the Tathagata’s dwelling,” but we underestimate this practice, we see it as training wheels, as preparation for the real work. We say, “I can follow my breath very well now. What’s next?” It’s that view: “What’s next?” that gets us into trouble. It’s that view that stops us from experiencing contemplation. “What’s next?” Nothing’s next, this is it, this is the whole thing. But do we truly understand what that means? If we do, then we know how irrelevant it is to ask, “What’s next?” How incongruous.
One evening, I was in the dokusan room, closing the line for Daidoshi, and as I was about to leave, he said, “Zuisola,” he didn’t often call me Zuisola—just when he wanted to get my attention. “Zuisola, sssh. Listen.” So, I did. And he said, “What is that?” “Katydids,” I said. “But what are they saying?” “Uuuuuhhhh….” “This is it. “This is it. This is it,” and he laughed… at me. I think he often laughed at me, he’d look at me and then pinch my cheek and say, “You’re so serious,” then he’d laugh even more.
This is it. This, my aching knees, this, my broken heart. This, the toilet I’ve been asked to clean, this, the conversation I don’t want to have. It doesn’t get better than this, it doesn’t get worse, do you understand? “No creature ever falls short of its own completeness. Wherever it stands, it never fails to cover the ground,” Master Dogen said.
But how will we know that if we spend our time running around? If we constantly tell ourselves we’re falling short, or that others are. It never fails to cover the ground is not a manner of speaking. There’s no footnote saying, “This is true, except in this and this case.” It, we, never fail to cover the ground, because we are that ground. Because we are the cover, and even the failure. We are never, we are standing, we are whatever place we stand in—and we are none of those things. I, Zuisei, am none of those things, yet wherever I go, I see it, I meet it.
It’s good to know that we cannot, in fact, miss this truth—we can and do, all the time, but only from the perspective of conventional truth. In ultimate truth, we cannot miss it, we cannot stand apart, but we forget this. Other desires sing their siren song, and then we can’t hear the call to contemplation.
People ask, “Why do we have to get up so early?” “Why sit late at night?” Because we need to be able to hear that subtle communication. When our name is called, we want to be able to respond, and we can’t do so in the midst of all our noise.
In the past I’ve quoted from The Cloud of Unknowing. The author has another book, called The Book of Privy Counseling. In it she or he says:
You have reached a point where your further growth in perfection demands that you do not feed your mind with meditations on the multiple aspects of your being… Now it is important that you seriously concentrate on the effort to abide continually in the deep center of your spirit, offering that naked blind awareness of your being which I call your first fruits.
… There is no name, no experience, and no insight so akin to the everlastingness of truth than what you can possess, perceive, and actually experience in the blind loving awareness of this word, is.
There is no name, no experience, no insight closer or truer than the truth of our own being, our own isness. There is no place closer to reality than the place we are standing on. That is why resistance is so challenging, and why it can be so fruitful.
In that moment when we say to ourselves, “I don’t want to do this”—whatever the this is, we are effectively saying “no” to reality (And I’m not speaking here of being forced to do something harmful against our will; I’m not speaking about injustice, which should be resisted; I mean the everyday refusals of reality that we’re all familiar with). “I don’t want to get up so early,” “I don’t want to work in the kitchen again,” “I don’t want to lead dish crew,” “I don’t want to do face-to-face.”
But what if we were to choose “is”? What if we loved it? We don’t have to like it. Like or dislike have nothing to do with it. What if we loved its “isness”? What if we honored it? How will we move beyond the reality-limit if we don’t first accept this reality? We can’t. So, we could say that contemplation is the profound practice of loving what is, of resting in and into what is, of not distancing ourselves from ourselves, which is what resistance is.
I’ve mentioned before my Triple A formula: Attend, allow, and accept. Attending is the opposite of denying or ignoring. It’s turning toward, it’s turning toward whatever we’re having difficulty with, it’s choosing to not turn away, to not evade or repress.
Allowing is giving space. It’s giving space to our resistance and also the possibility that there’s more beyond it. It’s allowing what is to be what is and allowing ourselves to be with it. Accepting is saying “Yes” to reality, it’s becoming intimate with it, which then allows us to see how we must respond, saying, “I accept this,” two thirds of the battle is won. Or, more accurately, saying “I accept this” we’ve just turned a battle into a gathering. There’s me, there’s the thing I have to do, there’s my feelings about it, and all of us are now gathered on the same side of the line and relating to one another.
Attend, allow, and accept.
If all the light-emitting animals everywhere in this world
Would, for the purpose of illumination, shed light:
One single ray, issued from the orb of the sun, outshines them all,
And infinitesimal would be all the luster of the hosts of light-emitting animals.
I really like this verse from the Prajna Paramita Sutra. I take it to mean that the light of wisdom outshines every other light, no matter how bright, no matter how numerous its hosts. And you know, in Spanish, the word for firefly is “luciérnaga,” “place of light.”
But we could also shift this a little: If all the light-emitting animals in the world—which is all of them—and all the light-emitting insentient beings—which is all of them—knew that they constantly shed light, knew that their light is exactly the same as that ray issued from the sun, and if they all shed this light for the purpose of illumination, then this world would be bathed in that light, from the tiniest corner to the vastest expanse, and we would not need to speak of illumination, for it would be our natural state.
There would be no more war, As Merton says, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed… [Though] I suppose the big problem would be then that we would fall down and worship each other…
Well, that would not be so bad, would it? That would not be so bad.
The Call to Contemplation, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
Explore further
01 : Transforming Vision by Thomas Merton
02: Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill
03 : The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counseling