BUDDHADHARMA WITH BUDDHA Gaylon Ferguson

What is practice? As this is "the practitioner's quarterly," this is an essential question, of central concern to all of us. Following the way of the Buddha, we contemplate the meaning of right mindfulness, right meditative engagement, closely linked, in Shakyamuni's original teaching, with right view and right intention. Guiding our practice through self-reflection means genuinely asking ourselves from time to time: what are we doing, and why are we doing it? As practitioners, we dive again and again into the ocean of dharma to deepen our understanding of the most basic questions: what is practice?

Near the middle of his classic guide to the practice of sitting meditation, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki Roshi recounts a version of the traditional story (a famous koan case collected by Eihei Dogen) in which a meditation master comes upon a student, sitting upright in excellent posture, exerting himself in the practice of meditation. "What are you doing?" the teacher asks. "I'm practicing meditation to attain enlightenment, to become a buddha," the student replies. Perhaps this is said--as with many of us when we feel our practice is "going well"--with a tinge of righteous pride in being such a good practitioner, a thoroughly dharmic person. The teacher--spontaneously compassionate in the way of crazy-wise Zen masters--picks up a nearby tile and begins strenuously polishing it. Now it's the puzzled student's turn to inquire: "Master--what are you doing?" To which the master replies: "I'm polishing this tile to make a jewel."

"How is it possible to make a tile into a jewel?"

"How is it possible to become a buddha by practicing meditation?" (As Daido Loori Roshi comments on this case: "Indeed.")

Suzuki Roshi's comment: "The purpose of practice is not to make a tile a jewel. Just continue sitting; that is practice in its true sense. It is not a matter of whether or not it is possible to make a tile a jewel. Just to work and live in the world with this understanding is the most important point. That is our practice."

The traditions of the buddhadharma are justly famed for myriad skillful techniques of spiritual practice--from sitting and walking meditation to sutra chanting and visualization, prostration and the recitation of mantra--a vast range of effective means to enter the door of liberation, to fully awaken into compassionate action. Yet the effectiveness of these methods depends on right understanding, for, as is repeatedly emphasized, the right means, grasped wrongly, become poison instead of medicine. This case of "polishing the tile" is both a warning--against spiritual materialism, believing that practices will produce wakefulness--and an encouragement: walking the path, we are "awakening into the wisdom with which we were born." A jewel is becoming a jewel.

It is crucial to our understanding of all the various "skillful means" that we view them as methods for becoming what we actually are, rather than a tradition-sanctioned set of "spiritual gymnastics," clever manipulations for becoming what we are not. Right practice is based on appreciating the intrinsic wisdom of our fundamental nature. Practicing in order to become what we are not is both filled with hope--and hopeless. It’s like trying to teach a pig to fly--in the end we will only disappoint ourselves and frustrate the pig. If our deepest, "inmost request" is to awaken for the benefit of all beings, then walking the path of cultivating wakefulness is going with the grain of our nature.

The difference between these two approaches may seem slight at first, but it's like the moment of a "tipping point"--a small increment that produces huge effects, a tiny shift in perception that turns out to matter, in the end, a great deal. The difference between practicing under the cloud of spiritually materialistic misunderstanding and practice as a natural unfolding is of supremely practical importance. How so? Taking this approach, our practice can be gentle, fundamentally non-aggressive. Peace is "in every step" if we are not ambitiously, quixotically, trying to force a parched desert into suddenly verdant bloom, but instead patiently encouraging the natural growth of sprouting seeds of wakefulness. Our training is based on cultivating what is innate to the mind and heart, our native "emotional intelligence." Practice is uncovering an inborn human-heartedness, genuine empathy for the suffering of others.

Some of the oldest practice instructions in the tradition of the Buddha emphasize the need for this balance of innate wisdom and practice, the necessity of joining nature and training. For example, the famous instructions to the sitar player to hold the mind in meditation, "not too tightly and not too loosely" are based on this view. When we are overly vigilant, self-consciously watching and judging our practice, this active distrust of the mind's innate wakefulness obstructs the natural flow of awareness. On the other hand, when we are lax and overly confident that "it's all good," we become careless, failing to apply the helpful antidotes of discipline and practical cultivation. In this and similar teachings, we are encouraged to trust both basic goodness and the path of training.

As Suzuki Roshi concludes: "Most people live in delusion, trying to solve their problem. But just to live is actually to live in problems. And to solve the problem is to be part of it, to be one with it….We should practice with this understanding, and solve our problems in this way. Actually, just to work on the problem, if you do it with single-minded effort, is enough. You should just polish the tile; that is our practice." This sense of practice as an entirely natural activity dissolves all pretense of engaging in a special, sacred, holier-than-thou activity: "Even though your spouse is in bed, he or she is also practicing zazen--when you practice zazen!"

Teaching on the second of the four foundations (which he sometimes called "mindfulness of life"), Vidyadhara Trungpa Rinpoche shows us that, essentially, mindfulness is life: "[M]editation becomes an actual part of life, rather than just a practice or exercise. It becomes inseparable from the instinct to live that accompanies all one's existence. That instinct to live can be seen as containing awareness, meditation, mindfulness….Seen from the point of view of mindfulness of life, meditation is the total experience of any living being who has the instinct to survive." In this way, excluding no one, joining the vast web of inter-connectedness, we share the life of practice with all living beings.