When Zen practice is not going well, when meditation and its benefits hit a plateau and when living by the values of the precepts for moral behavior feel hard, spiritual practitioners can sometimes regret undertaking Zen training in the first place. At these times, it is easy to fall into feeling sorry for yourself. The anti-spiritual awareness slogan, “Ignorance is bliss,” begins to sound pretty appealing. Thoughts that open an escape hatch, a back door, begin to arise: “Why not just live a ‘normal life’ and forget about all this meditation and discipline? Why bother to take on this extra burden of Zen training and the continual cultivation of loving-kindness?”
There are times when diligent Zen practice is hard, mind training is hard, the practice of selfless compassion is hard, and even developing kindness is hard. In some conditions, it can be challenging and painful to care about any of this. At these times, speculations about how easy a life other people have can dominate the mind. Thoughts about how great life would be without the added responsibility and commitment to Zen practice and the mind-training slogans fill awareness. It would be such a relief to forget about trying to wake up early for meditation, uncover deception, practice kindness, help others and live a life based in deep spiritual values!
The problem is that once you begin to see your life and your relationship to the world through the eyes of the Zen teachings, it is very difficult to turn that off. If you have had an insight into the true nature of reality, it is almost impossible to erase it. You may be able to turn insight into un-insight for a while, but soon you will remember the truth that diligent practice has helped you to penetrate. What you see, you see, and what you see is real. In the end, insight into reality is a good thing, so why feel sorry for yourself?
The point of this slogan is avoid wallowing in self-pity. The truth is that with regard to spiritual practice, self-pity makes no sense, for you are the one who is benefiting from the discipline and insight that Zen practice brings you. More generally, self-pity is simply a distraction and an energy drain. If someone is better off than you, who cares? If you are better off than someone else, who cares? Why make a fuss in either case? Instead of wallowing in your own fascination either with being special or not getting what you deserve, you could practice thinking of how to reduce the suffering and increase the happiness of the people in your family and in your near and far communities.
Suggested practice: We expect so much from the world and from other people, and when those expectations are not met, we feel angry and sorry for ourselves. Notice the kinds of expectations you have and the relationship between those expectations and the arising of disappointment and self-pity.
This column is a long series of short essays exploring the meaning of the Lojong Slogans. It is inspired by the work of Judy Lief.
Kuya Minogue is the resident teacher at Creston’s ZenWords Zen Centre. For more information, she can be reached at 250-428-3390.