Someone asked on a group zoom call what I mean by being real, which I often mention in class.
Some people, for various reasons, have had their everyday perception blown open. Whether it is just from their natural innate permeability or they’ve had some kind of dramatic opening, the doors of their perception have been profoundly opened up. In truth, we are all like this, translucent animated beings walking around living our lives. But for some people, they can lose the sense of how to be, how to function in life. As someone said, “Even making coffee would be too much”. They are living in an untethered world. They are stuck in the chaos brambles of so much feeling and confusion. They can’t tell how to put one foot in front of the other, and can lose their sense of up and down, in and out. In the wide multi-layered spectrum of our ability to perceive life, they get confused, lose their bearings. They might not be able to tell what is real and what is not real, and distrust their everyday experience. This can be a dangerous place to be in.
One very good remedy for this is the physical practices. When we begin to learn to unify our bodies, simplify, our awareness will naturally begin to unify, and with time we will not be confused any more. We will be able to wield this spectrum of perception but not be lost in it. We will be able to eat stars* and dig in the dirt, be transparent to all things and not lose our way.
Daily physical activities are a good way to work on this. To feel the fabric of time and space and get to the heart of it. When we are sweeping the floor, we are only sweeping the floor. When we are raking the garden, our total being is raking the garden. When we are washing rice or peeling potatoes, we are only peeling potatoes. When walking, only walking! Not five levels of interpretation about it. Not going forward and going backward! This is not to become a mindless robot, not to become controlling, but to learn to imbue our total being into what we are doing. To unify in our activity.
With time, we will gain a profoundly different sense of energy and buoyancy. At a very high level, all of the molecules in our body are moving in oneness. And driving further and further into this natural oneness, our total being will drive deeper and deeper, more refined, like we are drilling for oil into our experience. We are simple, like a magnet being driven into our experience, zeroing in on the main event of what is happening. This will begin to naturally want to happen and will not need to be forced or made to happen. In fact, trying to make it happen will obstruct the process. This is much of what I am trying to share in my classes and retreats these days. From the outside, people often think I am just teaching these physical practices, but actually they are just a medium to get into this bigger process.
As we feel into our experience and see what it trying to happen all along, we will lose ourselves in this process. But it will be different this time, as we will be profoundly rooted. We will be wide open but somehow not lost. This is a delicate time. In time it will ripen, and we’ll be like an arrow in mid-flight, driving into the present moment. This is not something easily talked about, but must be experienced as part of a transformation process.
We will have found this center-less center, where we have let go, our perception is open, but we are not lost. So I am not saying in any way that we close down our open awareness or block how we are perceiving all of life, much the opposite. We remain profoundly open, but begin to wield that oneness from a new connected perspective. And this connected way of being will be like a divining rod to being smack dab in the middle of this shining moment. And this will feel real and natural, and our total being will be falling into this oneness or suffering. It won’t be manufactured, but just the universe moving through us. The feedback will become clear.
At some point there will be a profound shift. We’ll have touched a place beyond confusion. A place of no going back. We will of course still be our silly selves!, but we will live in this magical realm of possibilities, and rooted in our experience. The doors of perception can be wide open but we will not be lost in that huge spectrum of feeling and awareness. This is not metaphorical language but just a matter of fact.
So by simply getting into our bodies, working with the Tanden, feeling the tactile terrain of how to navigate our experience, gradually we will see that we can learn to move in oneness. A natural trust and joy will emerge from this place, and a clear path will begin to emerge. And what we learn from our bodies will begin to inform how our entire being can learn to function. And then we will not be helpless, not be living lost in half dreamlike fantasies, not asking anyone else what is real. We will have a deep functioning in the world and simply our way of being will transform others. Maybe we need to get a simple job with routine, bagging groceries at Trader Joe’s or doing landscaping work for a while, digging in the dirt, going back to kindergarten with our awareness. To learn how to put one foot on the ground and take a step is no small thing. We will know what is real from our experience. When we take a step, the whole world will come with us. When one flower blooms, the whole world is Spring.
*I am paraphrasing from Nanao Sakaki’s book, Let’s Eat Stars
Zen Embodiment 