No Seams
One of my all time Zen favs is The Unfettered Mind by Takuan Soho, the great Rinzai master of the 16th century. The book consists of a series of letters exchanged between Master Takuan and a warrior, Yagyu Munenori. This book introduced me to the idea of seamless being. This is an excerpt from it which addresses that very topic:
In Zen, if asked, “What is the Buddha?” one should raise a clenched fist. If asked, “What is the ultimate meaning of the Buddhist Law?” before the words have died away, one should respond, “A single branch of the flowering plum” or “The cypress in the garden.”
It is not a matter of selecting an answer either good or bad. We respect the mind that does not stop. The non-stopping mind is moved by neither color nor smell.
Although the form of this unmoving mind is revered as a god, respected as a Buddha, and called the Mind of Zen or the Ultimate Meaning, if one thinks things through and afterwards speaks, even though he utter golden words and mysterious verses, it will be merely the affliction of the abiding place.
Can it not be said that the action of stone and spark has the speed of a lightning flash?
It is immovable wisdom when one is called and answers “Yes?” immediately. When one is called, to hesitate over the why and wherefore of the request is the affliction of the abiding place.
The mind that stops or is moved by something and sent into confusion—this is the affliction of the abiding place, and this is the common man. To be called, to respond without interval, is the wisdom of all Buddhas.*1
As an lover of football and fighting, this hits home. When I'm dribbling the ball at high speeds, that single moment of being internally stopped causes my concentration to lapse and the ball to slip or miss it's target when I send it down the field or smash it into the goal. I think back to one time that I was playing a big local tournament with hundreds of people looking on. I was the star, of sorts, long-legged, fast, ferocious. A ball was lobbed over the head of the defenders and I raced to get the ball and bolted down a few more meters before having a showdown with the keeper. I tried to smash the ball as hard as I could, but instead I missed the ball and threw myself to the ground. I was horrified with such a public embarassment.
I told myself for a few days after that the ground was uneven, the I'd misplaced my feet, that the ball took a bad bounce. Maybe that was all true, but I also knew that in practice 10/10 of those shots would find their way to the back of the net. That time, the ball literally went nowhere.
At the moment that I kicked the ball, I wasn't thinking, but I also wasn't there. There was a gap between me and experience. Desperation and exhiliration gripped the moment so tightly that I literally became blind to the very ball right in front of me. I didn't hesitate, but I did rush to be somewhere where I wasn't, and that gap sent me falling on my ass and filled me with shame.
After that fail, I was shaken for the entire game and I felt like I was more a spectator than player, hanging back somewhere from the moment, too afraid to commit and feel the sting of failure again.
It is not a matter of selecting an answer either good or bad. We respect the mind that does not stop...Can it not be said that the action of stone and spark has the speed of a lightning flash?
Looking back, I see that I'd lost that sense of immediacy and seamless response to the moment. There was this split second of hesitance and fear that clouded my judgment for the rest of the game and eventually cost our team the W. I wasn't like stone and spark.
But now that I know what to look for - that hesitancy or haste, I see that I'm no longer at that precise moment of reality, of truth: right now. Hesitancy delays the spark by just a few miliseconds. Rushing tries to make the spark happen before the stone's struck by just a few miliseconds. In everyday life, this delay's there and visible to those with sharp attention, but it's hard to spot for most. But on the football pitch or battlefield, those miliseconds spell the difference between victory and loss.
Living mindfully can consist of feeling the suds between my fingers and the scrubber grating against my flesh, but, as the Japanese monks used to tell me, "that's putting a hat on a hat." Just be completely absorbed in what you're doing so there's no gaps, no delays, no rushes forward between you and now. Especially in sports, the feel your hands while you wash the dishes brand of mindfulness that's become immensely popular just doesn't cut it. The moment I try to focus on such a minute aspect of experience intentionally, I'm already behind. For soldiers, the audience of Takuan's letters, the stakes are even higher: death for even the slightest gap.
Instead, I try to live my life like sparks from a stone. Action-and-reaction without gap. Some of you might be wondering, isn't being reactive wrong? Isn't mindfulness all about finding that space in the moment to be more conscious, controlled, and measured in our actions, not to go on autopilot? The division's false. Living seamlessly doesn't mean that there's no freedom, it means that there's a complete being of where you are, as you are from moment-to-moment. If I'm angry, I'm angry completely. If I'm sad, I'm sad completely. If I'm washing the dishes, I'm washing the dishes completely. If I'm thinking about what to do tomorrow, I'm thinking about what to do tomorrow completely.
Instead of feeling like there's some CEO in the space behind one's eyes calling the shot, living with intervals, seems more secure, more contained, more prudent, more wise, even, but this is the very thing separating me from reality and the ability to respond fully to what is as opposed to my own preconceived ideas about it. Thus, freedom comes not from finding those gaps between action-and-reaction, but in being so utterly present that they dissolve in the vividness of our attention, in the fullness of our being. That's mindfulness: no gaps. Strike the stone, sparks. Ring the gong, sound.
*1: The Unfettered Mind, Takuan Soho translated by William Scott Wilson