"Of all the disciplines that I studied, practiced, learned, Zen was
the essential one. It was not so much an influence on me;
rather, it created space. It allowed those things that were there to
be there. It gave some form to my experience. And it built up in me
the critical mass from which was kindled the experience that produced
est.
Although the
est
training
is not Zen, nor even anything like it, some features of
est
resonate with Zen teaching and practice. It is entirely appropriate
for persons
interested
in
est
to be
interested
also in Zen."
"When you're hungry, eat; when you're tired, sleep."
... Zen master Baizhang Huaihai answering the question "What is
Zen?"
"When they're hungry, they don't just eat: they think of all sorts of
things; when they're tired, they don't just sleep, but dream all sorts
of dreams."
Baizhang Huaihai's fabulous Zen adage "When you're hungry, eat; when
you're tired, sleep" covers just about everything you'll
ever do in the world, yes? All of it. If you're a
graduate
ie if you've examined all
this
profoundly ie if you've inquired deeply into what all
this
really is (and into who you really are in relationship to all
this)
and what there is to authentically do if only the frenzy of life and
living can be transcended, and when you've finally figured out a way to
hold life's demands in a clear perspective (and look: there are always
demands, so "transcending the frenzy" is just
a place to standlike a possibility), then there's the question: what's left for
a fully woke human being, that's mandated by Life
itself if all the distractions / the frenzy are to be
miraculously transcended - that is
recontextualized?
(I
love
that
word).
It's really very simple (and notice how oddly hard this is to accept,
given how we're thrown that it couldn't
possibly be simple ...): the way of Zen is to do what there
is to do - nothing more, nothing less. What could possibly be simpler
than that? When you're hungry, eat; when you're tired sleep (I'll add
one more: when you're thirsty, drink). Of course, there's more that
demands our time and attention than hunger, tiredness, and thirst. Yet
that's the entire framework for living right there, the
context
for managing all of it in the most pragmatic way: whatever there is to
do, do it. That's Zen, the beautiful, the simple, the elegant, the
profound, ... the Zen.
Werner
has made extraordinary contributions to Zen by providing two (at least)
new, unique, powerful
lenses
through which to look at it. The first nails down "When you're hungry,
eat; when you're tired, sleep" like so: when you're hungry, eat - and
just eat while you're eating; when you're tired, sleep -
and just sleep while you're sleeping.
Tersely:
do what there is to do. Explicitly: do what you're doing while you're
doing it. When you're doing what you're doing while you're doing it,
you're essentially doing ... well, nothing (it's this
distinction / this way of doing nothing that's discussed at length in
revealing detail
elsewhere in this collection
of essays).
To be sure, that's a startling
lens
indeed. But what's even more startling (more riveting, if you
will) is the second
lensWerner
provides, which is this: Zen is not
the work of
transformation.
Now if that's true, why even make that distinction at all? After all,
if X is not Y (which it clearly isn't), then
who cares? But wait: aren't Zen and transformation
related? Aren't they colleagues? Yes
the work of
transformation
may owe Zen a debt of
gratitude
for providing the space like a Petri dish in which the
experience of
the source of
transformation
was kindled and took shape. Nonetheless it's necessary to draw the
distinction sharply between Zen as a practice of being
with / doing what there is to do ... and being transformed being with /
doing what there is to do. And they are patently distinct:
the latter is what comes next like a possibility, out of the space
allowed by the former. But there's still one more point to be made to
clearly distinguish the one from the other, and it's this one:
Look: "When you're hungry, eat; when you're tired, sleep" effectively
provides the Zen to be with and complete all the logistics
demanded by the world, indeed which are demanded by everyday living.
Yet that's not the end of it. When what there is to do, is done with
elegance, impeccability, and immaculately (in other
words,
when what there is to do, is done with Zen) then there's a possibility
for who we really are to come forth, to come out and play,
to express, to create, to be with, to
dance - with
life,
and with each other. The former is the domain of Zen. The latter is the
domain of transformation. And in the domain of transformation, Zen
(like the
external
tank
of a space shuttle) can be released, having fulfilled its purpose.
Indeed, releasing it is smart. Why? Not releasing Zen after the
onset of transformation, risks its diminution by casting its role as
necessary, an attachment, a belief system, a concept - all of which
ruin Zen. Zen is best considered to be a practice. Transformation is
best considered to be a way of being,
whose source was allowed
by the practice of Zen. Each are studied and learned separately. I
suggest you be
interested
in both.