Befriending Stillness: The Importance of Meditation
In the stillness by the empty window
I sit in meditation wearing my under robe.
Navel and nose in alignment,
Ears parallel with the shoulders.
Moonlight floods the room;
The rain stops but the eaves drip and drip.
Perfect this moment—
In the vast emptiness, understanding deepens.*1
Why bother with formal meditation? Why not just wake up and get on with it?
100 years back, a teacher recognized his pupil's realization. His response wasn't flag waving and toasts. He unfurled a long scroll, pulled out his brush, and penned out this line: 30 more years of practice. He hung that in his quarters until his last breath. A sobering warning against complacency.
My own teacher, a Thai forest monk, said something similar to a close student of his years back. At the time, the board of the temple was debating what direction to take things in and kept putting more-and-more pressure on my teacher, Ajahn Sudhiro, to step up and take the lead. He, in turn, kept on refusing them.
"Why?" they pleaded. "You're perfect. We love you. We trust you. We know that you will guide us well."
"That's why," Ajahn Sudhiro said with his trademark grin. "You think I can't make a mistake. I know I can. You think my mind is beyond defilement. I know it's not. I don't trust me fully, nor should you." They were dumbfounded.
To throw out one more quote (sorry, I'm feeling a little allusional today), here's Dogen in his classic essay, Genjo Koan, "Sentient beings are deluded about enlightenment; sages are enlightened about delusion."
So what does he mean here? If you look at these three statements: 30 more years of practice, I don't trust me fully, and sages are enlightened about delusion, they're all pointing to the same thing: don't get ahead of yourself. We're all human. We're all prone to error. And none of us are beyond the reach of delusion.
Perusing the spiritual marketplace, you can find hundreds of teachers claiming that they're enlightened, that they've rooted out all delusion and selfishness from their heart, that they're utterly free and beyond sorrow. Maybe some of them are, but I highly doubt it. They might believe that what they say is true, but belief is not truth. It also helps that these bold claims sell better and are more comforting for students to hear. After all, if your teacher is really enlightened and figured this whole life and waking up stuff out completely, then you can feel safe in his care. "I don't even trust myself and I still got work to do" is a much less exciting and profitable take.
I think a gander at the decades of meticulously detailed scandals of "enlightened beings" behaving very unenlightened backs up the more skeptical take. Sogyal Rinpoche, a now disgraced Tibetan teacher, put on their airs of enlightenment while abusing his students, sucking them dry to fund his at-times hair-brained projects, and grooming a harem of young women that he disposed of when he got bored. Mooji has also cultivated a cult-like following around him, including keeping a harem of women, brainwashing supporters, and driving an abusive community that tolerates little questioning. Joshu Roshi groomed and sexually abused his own students for decades before finally being called out on it. Perhaps that whole "30 more years of practice" was good advice.
To understand the connection between the above points and the poem, some context is needed. This poem was written in Ryokan's senior years after settling down in his hermitage, Go-an, and establishing himself in the Zen scene as a wise dude. I'm pretty sure he didn't go around shouting to the rooftops how enlightened he was. Instead, that reputation was partially earned and partially assumed.
Ryokan earned his reputation because his teacher formally recognized his enlightenment and even offered him to succeed him as abbot of the monastery. Ryokan declined and, instead, went wandering for a few years during which his repute spread.
People also assumed his holiness because of his lifestyle. Years in a tough training monastery. Years on the road. Living in a small hut in the mountains, enduring deadly winters and searing summers year-after-year with the scraps of peasants for food. As in Thailand, with a living contemplative tradition, folks like this are largely assumed to be enlightened, partially if not completely. When I was a young monk of just a few years, many people, foreign and Thai, even assumed that about me due to my austere, hardcore lifestyle. I even had to argue with some just to convince them that I wasn't enlightened. And as a sidenote, still very not enlightened.
In the above poem, though, Ryokan hints that his purification's not yet done. First, he's practicing shikantaza, or just sitting, in the Soto style. This in-and-of-itself would not be noteworthy if it weren't for the last two paradoxical and mysterious lines that end the poem: "Perfect this moment— / In the vast emptiness, understanding deepens."
Understanding deepens implies that his understanding is still incomplete. It could also be a play on the classic Zen concept of samadhi, concentration, as being inseparable from panna, wisdom. Hence, as his mind settled into deepening stillness, his wisdom expanded. It could also be both, with Ryokan acknowledging that he's still got more work cut out for him while also affirming the indivisibility of stillness and wisdom, concentration and insight.
I read this poem as both confession and affirmation of the classic Zen position. My reason that it's confessional is that it squares with the humility that permeates the rest of his work, especially that of his years at the hermitage. He frequently berates himself for his foolishness and incompetence. He even writes sorrowful verses that don't sit squarely with the ideal of an enlightened being unperturbed by life's vicissitudes. And one of his own nicknames for himself is Great Fool, taken from a poem Ryokan received from his own teacher.
The allusion to Dogen's meditation manual, Fukanzazangi, and Hui Neng's classic, The Platform Sutra, also means it's an intentional commentary on the tradition that affirmed the inseparability of samadhi and panna. While for outsiders, this might seem unimportant, it had been a major point of contention in Zen for centuries, with some claiming that wisdom was a result of a powerful breakthrough after periods of intense practice, rather than being there from the very beginning, as Ryokan and the Soto tradition did.
This doctrinal point also sits nicely with Ryokan's humility. Enlightenment isn't like a medal or certificate you get and then have with you for the rest of your life. It's a practice. It's something which we must make a constant effort to bring to life day-in-and-day-out. That's why the caution of 30 more years. That's why my teacher didn't take on the responsibility that the board tried to put on him. That's why Dogen said that we're only enlightened about delusion. That's also why the cozy little story of "I'm enlightened and I've got this all figured out" is so intoxicating and destructive.
The final part of the poem I'd like to talk about is the paradox in those last two lines. In fact, that paradox runs throughout the work. In the first four lines, Ryokan practices meditation by...(checks notes)...keeping his navel and nose in alignment and his ears parallel with his shoulders. Tough work. Who, in the billion worlds, could manage such an act? In the second part, moonlight and stillness floods the room, yet the rain still drips. Stillness and movement. Illumination and the inscrutable workings of the unseen rain. Emptiness and form. This is all topped off by the final two lines: "Perfect this moment— / In the vast emptiness, understanding deepens."
The moment is perfect, yet understanding deepens? This paradox is at the heart of Zen. Reality's spotless and luminous, yet we must realize and embody that. That's the nature of zazen and of practice - embodying enlightenment. And since we're always the corruptible, fragile, weak creatures that we are, that also means enlightenment is an activity, not a destination. It's something you choose to embody or not day-by-day, moment-by-moment, not some lofty state that you magically manifest because you've had a bunch of special experiences. Sure, those experiences might help, but they're no guarantee of enlightened behavior. If you look at Joshu Sasaki, for example, he might've had some deep insights but it didn't prevent him from grabbing some ass when he shouldn't have.
Ryokan's poem here is both confession and advice. Don't get too far ahead of ourselves. Keep up the practice. Don't get complacent or negligent. Don't make ourselves out as someone special or enlightened. And, for Buddha's sake, stay humble.
References:
*1. Stevens, John. 1993. Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf. Boston: Shambhala.