Grass, trees and walls

by Korin Swann
“Moreover, although both mind and object appear and disappear within stillness, because this takes place in the realm of self-receiving and self-employing (jijuyu) without moving a speck of dust or destroying a single form, extensive buddha work and subtle buddha influence are carried out. The grass, trees and earth affected by this functioning radiate great brilliance together and endlessly expound the deep and wondrous dharma. Grasses and trees, fences and walls demonstrate and exalt it for the sake of living beings, both ordinary and sage; and in turn, living beings, both ordinary and sage, express it and unfold it for the sake of grasses and trees, fences and walls. The realm of self-awakening and awakening others is fundamentally endowed with the quality of enlightenment with nothing lacking, and allows the standard of enlightenment to be actualized ceaselessly.  

Therefore, even if only one person sits for a short time, because this zazen is one with all existence and completely permeates all time, it performs everlasting buddha guidance within the inexhaustible dharma world in the past, present and future. (Zazen) is equally the same practice and the same enlightenment for both the person sitting and for all dharmas.  The melodious sound continues to resonate as it echoes, not only during sitting practice, but before and after striking sunyata, which continues endlessly before and after a hammer hits it. “ Master Dogen’s Zazen Meditation Handbook, translated by Shohaku Okumura and Taigen Dan Leighton 

This passage brought up many questions for me when I first read Bendowa. I could see how grass, trees and earth might expound the wondrous dharma, but fences and walls?   

We know of witness trees that were present at Civil War battlefields. In Austin there is an oak tree that witnessed the gatherings of the indigenous people who lived in the area. That oak was attacked by a person, poisoned, but it survived and is making acorns again. What its awareness is I cannot know, but that oak is about 500 years old and has seen so much.  We know now that aspens are not single organisms but groves that  are all clones and connected underground. Our understanding of these organisms has shifted radically during my lifetime, and will no doubt continue to grow.  We can only experience these trees with our senses and intellects, rather than as they experience themselves, but their majesty and age provokes us to imagine ents and entwives, mystical sentient beings with their own culture and history. But fences and walls?   

Surely they are insentient and thus I had to wonder how they could demonstrate the wondrous dharma.   

What is ‘wondrous dharma’?  The term in Japanese is myoho.  Myo means ‘something strange’ and something we cannot grasp with the intellect. Shohaku Okumura says it also means something human beings cannot create. Ho is dharma, of course. We can’t devise it or create myoho with our powerful intellects. It is already here, given to us, and we can only be aware of it, open to experiencing something beyond the capacity of understanding with the discursive, rational intellect.  

And yet Dogen says fences and walls demonstrate the dharma. How? They are, after all, human creations.  The pivot point is the awareness of the implications of sunyata, emptiness.  

Okumura suggests Dogen is referring in this passage to a poem by Dogen’s teacher Tendo Nyojo.             “The whole body of a windbell, like a mouth hanging in emptiness, Without choosing which direction the wind comes from, For the sake of others equally speaks prajna...” Translation by Okumura and Leighton  

We have talked about emptiness a lot in the practice period just past. Emptiness means that all dharmas are empty of any permanent aspect, any separate self that is fixed or permanent. This is an idea foreign to those of us who grew up in the western religious and philosophical tradition. Whether you grew up believing in a soul, or in a Platonic ideal, you thought there was something fixed and permanent, some essence of you or perhaps ‘tree-ness’.  Buddhism teaches there isn’t. But what is the implication of emptiness?   Interdependence.  

Every dharma is dependently arisen. Every dharma is interdependent, whether fences, walls, trees or grasses. We are all interdependent. Nothing arises alone. This is a basic tenet of Buddhism- whenever any phenomenon arises due to conditions, another phenomenon arises with it, due to the same conditions. So sunyata, emptiness, echoes before and after a hammer hits it. The conditions of the hammer striking existed before the hammer came into the room. The conditions of your zazen existed before you were born. The conditions are tied endlessly together in past, present and future. They are unceasing. Indra’s net goes on in the ten directions, and in the three times we talk about, past, present and future.  It extends ceaselessly, without beginning or end, and is of a complexity we cannot grasp.  

Those of you who attend the Tuesday night class may recall reading this quotation from Kobun Chino a few days ago. “I learned breathing from butterflies. One day I was sitting at Tassajara, and I felt in tune with the breath of everything. The trees were breathing. About twenty butterflies were sitting on hot rocks, very white hot rocks, with clean water cascading between them. The butterflies were all breathing at once, opening their wings, and I tuned them in. It was very fantastic to feel that. Where does breathing originate, what is the beginning and end of each in-breath, out-breath? Who, or what, is breathing?” 

In Austin I sat for years bracketed by two live oaks, one in front and one behind the building. I often felt gratitude to them for breathing in the carbon dioxide I breathed out.  They breathed out the oxygen I needed. Our relationship was intimate, and yet many of us spend our lives unaware of our deep dependence on the lives of other beings.  We can’t even digest our food without the assistance of gut bacteria. But we get caught up in a dream of a separate self that is somehow entirely independent. We make decisions that have implications for the lives of others. We eat meat, and the Amazon burns. We turn the AC on, and the oceans rise. Our connections are profound and ceaseless, and yet the connections are beyond my capacity to grasp. We can only investigate the edges of them, and in our zazen remain open to our profound connection to those we understand as sentient and those whose sentience we do not yet understand.  Remain open to the wondrous dharma as expounded by fences and walls, as expounded by the zazen bell, as expounded by the clack of my keyboard.  

Guanzhi Goes Visiting

Tongan Guanzhi

Master Mohan

Guanzhi  went visiting and called upon Master Moshan.
Moshan asked, Reverend, are you here sightseeing, or have you come seeking the Buddhadharma?Guanzhi  replied I seek the Dharma.
So Moshan went to her quarters (yes, MoShan was a female Zen master) and Guanzhi called upon her there for a private conversation.
Moshan asked: Where have you come from today?
From the intersection on the main road.
Moshan : ‘Why don’t you remove your hat?’ ( He is signaling he isn’t sure she is worth staying around for)
Guanzhi  hesitated a bit, then removed his hat. He then asked ‘What is the nature of Mt Mo?’
(Mo shan literally means the Peak of a Mountain) She replied  ‘The summit is not revealed.’
Guanzhi asked  ‘Who is the master of Mt Mo?’
Moshan:’ It does not have the form of female or male.’
Guanzhi replied with a shout HO! (He had been studying with Linji, so we hear where he is coming from)  Then he asked ‘Why doesn’t it transform itself?’
Moshan : ‘It is not a God or a demon, so what would it change itself into?’

Capping verse:  Daido Loori
The summit is not revealed, not even a shadow. Neither female nor male, how can you approach it?
Dropping off the skin bag, casting off the mask of red flesh directly. The nose is vertical, the eyes horizontal.

by Korin Swann
The Vimalakirtinirdesha Sutra tells the story of  layman Vimalakirti who lives in a house where he is visited by all kinds of beings. . One of the beings living  is a goddess. One day, the Buddha’s disciple, Sariputra, comes to call on Vimalakirti and encounters the goddess. Not one to mince words, or perhaps shocked to see a female in the great Vimalakirti’s home, Sariputra asks the goddess, “Why don’t you change your female sex?”

The goddess answers, “I have been living here twelve years looking for the innate characteristics of  the female sex and haven’t been able to find any, so how can I change what I can’t find? If someone asks, ‘Why don’t you change your female sex?’ what is he really asking?”

The goddess then uses her power to change Sariputra into a likeness of herself and change herself into a likeness of Sariputra, saying, “All things are without any determinate, innate characteristics, so how can you ask, ‘Why don’t you change your female sex?’ Why don’t YOU now change your female sex?”

Sariputra, in the form of a goddess, answers, “I do not know how I changed into a female form so how can I change back to a male form?”

The goddess responds, “Sariputra, just as you are not really a woman but appear to be female in form, all women also only appear to be female in form but are not really women. That is why the Buddha said that we are not really men or women.”

Then the goddess, using her supernatural power, changed Sariputra back into his own form.

We often think koans are mysterious and inexplicable, but when we delve in we find that everything refers to something else. If we follow the dense web of references we find the koan unfolding.  Moshan here is referencing a Mahayana sutra that points directly to the absolute.  She knew the teachings of Linji, her contemporary.  Linji often talked about Host and Guest.  Host and Guest was first referenced in the Surangama Sutra. It is, of course, a Mahayana Sutra probably composed in China, but it retrospectively puts in the mouth of the Buddha these words: ” Beings have not awakened fully because they are confused by afflictions that visit them, coming and going”. He talked about these afflictions that come and go as Guests, while the Innkeeper was always present, the Host.  The Host is the Absolute, while the phenomena of the Relative world are the Guests that come and go.

This case appeared in Dogen’s Shobogenzo, in Raihai Tokuzui, or Prostrating to Attainment of the Marrow, in which he discusses what should be sought in a teacher.  He suggests a teacher is beyond the question of male or female, but should be someone ineffable. “ too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words” He goes on to suggest that “we might hope that trees and stones preach to us…we should question outdoor pillars, and we should investigate fences and walls.” Dogen is speaking her of how even inanimate beings expound the Dharma.  The Dharma is ineffable, and beyond any words that might come from my mouth.

Linji said “ This mountain monk is telling you that within that lump of red flesh of yours is a true sage of no rank, constantly entering and exiting the openings of your face. Any of you who hasn’t figured this out yet, LOOK! LOOK!”  This True Sage of No Rank is beyond any question of better than or lesser than, beyond any question of sex or gender, age or rank.

When he returned to Japan, someone asked Dōgen, “What did you bring back from China?” Dōgen answered, “I came back empty-handed. All I have is this: Eyes horizontal, nose vertical.”  This became one of Dogen’s strongest teachings.  It entered the Fukanzazengi, instructions for meditation as “ Be sure your ears are on a plane with your shoulders and your nose in line with your navel”   People too often think it refers to posture and nothing more.  But did Dogen return from China with nothing more than instructions on how to sit zazen, or is Dogen suggesting something about the universal human reality. Suzuki Roshi used the expression “things as it is” quite often. I was told that ‘things as it is’ was just his broken English, but he also used ‘things as they are’, so he clearly understood the difference. Things as they are is simply the nature of reality, the way things are. ‘Things as it is ‘ points to the central oneness found in the midst of the 10 thousand things. This ‘eyes horizontal, nose vertical’ is both a recognition of reality as a human being,  and also the profound recognition of suchness.

Kobun said that the closest word in our European- descent world  to tathagata was YHWH, or God’s declaration in Exodus “I am that I am.”  I am that I am, eyes horizontal, nose vertical, or a true sage of no rank going in and out of your face….returning to the fukanzazengi- “ if you want to know suchness, be suchness, without delay. “  This too is an instruction for zazen, to be suchness.

The Oxherding Pictures - Searching for the Ox

The Ten Bulls of Zen began as a Taoist teaching story in China, and was adapted and adopted during the 12th century by Cha’an (Zen) master Kuo-an Shih-yuan (Kakuan Shien).

In the pasture of this world, I endlessly push aside the tall grasses in search of the bull. Following unnamed rivers, lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains, my strength failing and my vitality exhausted, I cannot find the bull. I only hear the locusts chirring through the forest at night.

---

In America, we grow up being told that we can be anything we want and thus the onus is on us to create a self and then sell it to the world.  We spend about 25 years trying to create a functional self and then spend the rest of our lives trying to escape it. One day we realize that we are not the story that got created along the way.  Mostly, what we notice is a feeling that there is more to this life than what we have been taught.  Naturally, some sort of a sojourn begins.  In the larger world, Joseph Campbell calls this the Hero’s Journey, but in zen we just call it the path.

Whether daydreaming at work, reading books, or going to events, we begin to wander.  Like the oxherder in the drawing, we discover an ability to open ourselves to the world around us.  In this first drawing, the oxherder enters the wilderness.  All around, the air is filled with birdsong, a stream provides crystalline water, and the forest is filled with creatures to guide us.  Still, the oxherder’s steps trepidatiously as he looks around anxious for something he has only yet seen in the midst of his heart.  There must be something more and, not finding it in the world we know, a vision calls us to the wilderness.

---

Read about the full series of Oxherding Pictures
on Kindle or Apple Books.

Bringing Rohatsu Home

A monk asked Zhaozhou to teach him.


Zhaozhou asked, "Have you eaten your meal?” 


The monk replied, "Yes, I have."


"Then go wash your bowl", said Zhaozhou.


At that moment, the monk was enlightened.

by Joseph Hall
Strangely, the most common complaint we hear about sesshin has nothing to with knees but the ease at which sesshin mind evaporates when the ignition key is turned.  This seems to go along hand and hand with the idea that zen can only be fully practiced at the temple and  inspires questions that always arise with a dispiriting sense of sadness.  Thus, on the Thursday after Rohatsu this year, I discovered a small but important fact. I could feel the elements of sesshin as I walked around the house.  There was a little more stillness in the world as I sat and as I worked.  There was a flow from one task to another until the days ended in the refuge of sleep.  This would have been unremarkable except I moved down the hill several years ago and quickly learned that it was no easy task to bring sesshin home.

The last time I sat Rohatsu was at one of our local temples, Santa Cruz Zen Center, and it was a beautiful and transformative experience.  Patrick and Gene brought forth all the traditional elements solidly and we sat in deep silence until we learned to recognize our new friends by the sound of their footsteps. The whirl of thoughts seemed to lose their weight and drift away, leaving us all floating deep in sesshin mind.  After the last bell, I left grateful for the rare gift we had received and moved the car mindfully toward home.  And although the distance traveled was a single mile, by the time I walked through the door, I felt ready to take on the long list of work to make up for the time away.  There were three jobs that needed updates, a comments list from the city to respond to, of course the house needed attention after the sudden departure and treating it as a bunkhouse for the few hours of sleep we got during sesshin, our neighbor needed help with the internet, and what the heck happened to all that serenity? By Tuesday, my memories of sesshin were neatly filed away in my mind somewhere near various graduation ceremonies, the cities where I used to live, and my parent’s advice when I was young.

So last Thursday, noticing sesshin was still in the room with me, I was, in a very zen way, struck by a simple question: ‘what is this karma happening right now?’  Since I am a zen student and this was a question on the nature of karma (the law of cause and effect), I sat down immediately on the floor of the shower and tried to open my mind until the hot water ran out.  I decided two things.  First, I needed to make a list for myself (which is presently becoming a blog post) and that it would be OK to shave on Friday.  One can’t very well study karma without considering that once the hot water is gone, it will not appear again in this precious shower.  In any case, why did rohatsu stay with me this year instead of following the path of the warm water?

My first thought was that it was not the quality of the sesshin.  At SCZC Patrick, Gene and the sangha, had built a superb sesshin and had honed it together for many, many years.  This year, Pop Up Zendo happened to be the host sangha for the first Rohatsu for Phoenix Heart.  While we have been a zendo for a few years now, Rohatsu required a temple, and we had spent the previous three weeks doing woodworking, sewing, planning, finding the right rubber spatulas, and we were operating at full bore.  We got the job done, but we arrived at the venue with several carloads of gear and a head full of steam.  Since Phoenix Heart is a group of sanghas, people arrived from four different states, most of us shaking off the rain and rushing towards one another in the last steps of many long journeys.  We scattered the furniture and spent the next few days refining our little temple and synchronizing our forms.  Our first sesshin was a warm and deeply connecting experience, but placing the two sesshins side by side in my memory, it was clear that the root cause was not the development of a perfect Rohatsu.  In fact I had spent most of it running around correcting chant cards and trying to find the elements that had been forgotten.  In the end, I had missed the extended depths of sesshin as I was constantly crossing back and forth across the threshold to the zendo.  So it wasn’t a question of the intensity of my zazen, it was a question of how we made the transitions, not just the zendo door but through the entire journey.  Inadvertently, on arriving home, the forms had somehow seeped into the everyday, and found their shape in my daily life.

In a monastery, when we leave sesshin we don’t go far.  Sesshin ends with a day off, which, for a monk, is usually a busy morning of hand washing clothes, cleaning the cabin, and maybe reading a book and writing a letter. Sesshin stays with a person living in a monastic world a little longer because we don’t really go home.  We are home and by the time the sun rises the next morning, you are already back sitting in the zendo.  Intensive sitting comes in waves and each wave comes just as the last recedes and so the phenomenon of a rising tide gradually sways to wash the self away.  And while we constantly say that zazen is the answer to everything, it is also said that our true practice is everyday activity.  For a monastic, everyday activity has a close relationship to the zendo, since our eating, work, and routine change very little in sesshin, they just get slower and more of our attention.

In the world that we live in, while there is a lot more noise and the occasional slamming of brakes, our everyday activity can seem radically different than how we lived in sesshin, which seemed very clear as I sat on the floor of the shower, noticing that it was the only place where I could rely on ‘silence’ for the rest of the day.  But yet there was a clear quality of the feeling that was moving with me: I was intimate with the chores and projects that were making up my days.  So it wasn’t my diet or the particular things I was doing that mattered, the key to transforming my karma was an intentional shift of the energy of Rohatsu into what I was doing in this moment.

And while I just said the key was intention, in reality, the circumstances of building a zendo and then tearing it down was more serendipitous then well executed this year.  Thus, it seems a good time to write a note to my future self about sesshin.   

Dear self, enjoy sesshin, and while there, please feel free to follow instructions and sit deeply in waters of intensive practice.  At the conclusion of sesshin, your practice will feel a little more natural and you will see clearly that the sounds of the world move through an ocean of silence.  That water is everywhere.  If you would like to bring it home with you, the steps below might help make that possible.

1. Practice Gratitude.  Before leaving sesshin, take an emotional risk and thank people for supporting your practice.  Gratitude is a cornerstone of sesshin mind and the easiest gate by which to return.  We do not get enlightened by ourselves and as we share these small moments of appreciation with each other, we can see the buoyancy that arises in others and that the deep connections that have formed are real.

2. Drive carefully.  When the car starts, habituated busy mind naturally arises, along with our many judgements about the road.  Unroll the window and let this go for a little while. Driving itself can be a powerful practice but mostly, we just want to see if we can make it through this segment of our journey without losing it behind the wheel.  Very important to enjoy the way the world feels now that it’s been stripped of a whole lot of self.

3. Wash your Bowls.  On arriving home, if you have your own oryoki bowls, wash your bowls and set the linens aside to be washed.  Now is a good time to sew a new setsu tip. (If that’s a meaningful sentence to you.) Take gentle care of your bowls and place them on a shelf where you know that they are always ready for sesshin.  Launder your sesshin clothes and if you have particular clothing for sesshin, place those items in a place of reverence where they too can help support your practice.  For clothing and gear that will be part of your days between intensives, fold and store them carefully, being sure to use some of that gratitude you gained to appreciate the many beings that created them and brought them to you.

4. Clean the house like you have never been here before.  And think about refining things.  This is a rare opportunity to transfer the mind state of cleaning the sacred bowls directly to the rest of the kitchen, the cereal bowls, and beyond.  If everything has Buddha nature than that means the kitchen is also a dharma gate.  You made a shift in sesshin.  The world is a little different and you are noticing details that were never before apparent.  Looking around, a little disorder has arisen from your sudden departure but returning, we carry new possibilities.  One of the habits that seems to arise everywhere in zen, is that priests are always making little adjustments, whether it be the altars, a garden, or the text of chants and schedules.  Go with this impulse.  Not only does it improve your environment, but it requires that we pay attention and look more deeply.  Make a circle around your home in curiosity, noticing the myriad details, and feel free to move the lamp to the center or just a half inch to the left.

5. Wear some clothes that drape  Objects are valuable teachers, primarily because we can’t argue with them.  They just are Buddha nature.  Robes, for a monastic are basically several yards of fabric functioning randomly as a dead weight, a trip-fall hazard, something to possibly transfer the flame of a candle with, and at other times a functional sail.  They are both a constant source of vexation and an excellent barometer of our state of flow.  Spandex moves with us but dresses, cardigans, and sweater coats inspire us to move with them and to think beyond the moment when our gesture ends and the hem of sleeve continues to move along the arc of our intention.  A layer or two that requires us to move with rather than our habituated form of just responding to impulses is a subtle and constant teaching on movement and flow.

6. Send thank you notes.  Despite the many times we heard that zazen is everything, sesshin was created through our connections with people and sitting alone for a week is never the same as sitting with others. Actualizing Zen requires the spirit of Dana, or generosity.  The point isn’t what we give or how we give, it’s the feeling of Ryokan, wishing he could give us the moon.  Anything else is merely a gesture.  Looking back on sesshin there is no shortage of moments where we saw a glimmer of something we were seeking or felt the energy of someone else’s practice move to invigorate our own.  To say anything about this would be meaningless but when we seek to imagine the most appropriate response to the the gifts of the world, we open a gate for both ourselves and another.  To recieve an email or card to let us know that our practice is an inspiration can make our practice feel effortless.  And, if you’re flummoxed by the concept of non-effort, just write someone a kind thank you note and listen to their reaction when you next see them.

7. Return to sangha.  Every sesshin forms a container and with it, a transient community.  In our gratitude for this community, it is important to remember to return to our day to day community with the same commitment to sangha with the same commitment we had when it was required.  Now is a good time to move our gratitude to the people that make sesshin possible by keeping things going while we are gone.  From there, a natural appreciation arises for the many being that made this possible for us, whether they covered our work for a few days, worked in a rice field, or just found something else to do while we were gone.  Yes, it is true that most of our sangha out here doesn’t know they are our sangha, but no matter how we say community, our people deserve our wholehearted practice.  In seeing the Buddha nature of the people appearing in our lives we come to understand our own.

8. Dance.  Obviously, as we step out into the world, step seven is going to get a lot more complicated.  This is where you need going to need to get creative.  Wherever you go, try to move with grace.  Despite all the sutras, zen is an embodied practice.  Pay attention, focus that attention on this moment and stay curious.  As you follow the stream of your live through the world, let your sense of wonder loose to explore the ways to move from the house to the car, allow your hands to fully explore the arc of the steering wheel, and the delightful subtlety of how each movement begins and ends.  This is our fundamental practice.  At sesshin, there were at least moments where you were actually able watch your breath without directing your breath.  As our small minds simply observe, we notice that the energy of breath moves into a more circular motion and the belly, unhindered by self conciousness, moves in rising and falling waves as it moves us towards peace.  Having learned this, we begin to bring that sense of allowing into our larger life.  When no one is looking, feel free to move with the music, to find new ways of doing things, to explore.  In time, those experiments with find their way into the fabric of your life.

9. Pay Attention. Notice that there is a simple pattern that runs like a clear stream through all of these steps.  Bring the forms home with you, land with grace, put the things you brought with you away with exquisite care, and then transfer that care to your daily routine.  Not very complicated, but it can give a whole new meaning to ‘everyday activity’.

The water turned cold and that was as far as my note to self got, except for this:

Rohatsu comes once a year and so these words seem already to merely point toward a missed opportunity.  But gratitude, the root of all of this is timeless.  Each moment is an eternity and the starting point is always now.  You can do this anytime, and, with practice, bring the heart of any moment home to walk with you in the rhythm of your life.

Personal Ritual

“If you push against the movement, the direction of how things are existing, you have pain. If you flow with the movement, you feel freedom. You don’t get out of it, rather, you flow with it and have a sensation of freedom.”

— Kobun

by Joseph Hall
New Years Eve is a major holiday in the world of Zen. Each year, we gather in the temples on New Years Eve and write out a list of those aspects of our character that seem to be holding us back. Then we meditate for a couple of hours and ring the same bell 108 times trying to meet each one with a full bow. At midnight we burn the scraps of paper with our regrets and the celebration begins as we hobble to the kitchen to eat a bowl of noodles. For people who habitually arise early, conversations at this hour can feel a little uncertain and so the party usually lasts about an hour until we all head to our rooms or our cars.

Admittedly, of the many celebrations that will occur this weekend across the world, ours is a little somber. Then again, the day after is usually a day off and it is the waking up in the new year that Zen New Years Eve is really about. Basically, rather than exploring better living through chemistry, the activities at the temple are more about a cleanse. We reflect on what we would like to let go of, make the sound of a committed endeavor and then nourish ourselves for the profound opportunity ahead.

New Years Day brings two things, the long lonely stretch of winter over the coming months and the simple fact that the world is more attuned to our personal growth than at any other time during the year. Gyms, furniture stores, and travel websites discount their prices, often placing the tools we need for change within reach. Our friends suddenly care a little more about our personal growth and even if we don’t tell them how we are working from within, they still tend to inquire if we might have a resolution. If it sounds like a serious challenge, a number of them will even offer their support. We live in a world of seasons, and there is something about the winter that brings personal transformation into the realm of of possibility. It seems to me that this time of year always ends with some inner change so that growth I make this winter might as well reflect the direction I am trying to go. This seems like a better way to spend a winter rather than reflecting on how true the stories in the media about seasonally affected depression might actually be.

Resolutions are personal things, meant to meet a given life in a given moment. While what is worth resolving for you is unknowable to others, it’s always worthwhile to do a little maintenance work on the Dharma vehicle (that’s you) along the journey. The way an idea gets to become a resolution is that is usually hard to do and in some way the change is going to be unpleasant. Consequently, to make a resolution is to create a little turbulence in our our lives. If we quit a substance, there will be withdrawals. If we resolve to change the tone of our speech, we will accordingly find ourselves in moments where we are painfully at a loss with getting what we want. In the midst of chaotic emotions, it is easy to forget that the irritation that arises is truly in accord with the path we are on and is an intrinsic part of our growth. Our task is to not act from the discord and to keep our eyes open for new ways of moving through the world. These tend to appear when we simply stop doing what isn’t working and wait. So we spend a lot of time in our minds. If we stick with it long enough, the new ways become normal and we quickly forget how it was that we ever struggled. But first, things are going to get a little wonky.

Here is how one might align the tires in order to reduce all the noise coming from the road. Ritual can help create a sense of flow which goes a long way towards reducing the hum of change. I’m not talking about monastic forms but specifically about reflecting on the forms we have already unconsciously created in our lives and smoothing off the corners. We have a daily routine. Looking at the way we move through that goes a long way towards making something else possible. If, for instance, you accept the call to refrain from negative social media posts or email, thinking about what we don’t want all the time becomes disheartening somewhere during the second hour of our vow. What we really have to learn is to see what we read in a different way. The change doesn’t come from our refraining, but from building the as yet unrealized habits that nourish a different response. For most of the next month or so, the temptation will mainly be to try to fight impatience. Instead of fighting, it’s a lot easier to cultivate a little flow in a place where we can access it.

Whatever your resolution, it is a worthwhile endeavor to examine your daily routine and most importantly what it feels like to move through it. In these moments where we perform our mundane tasks, we can practice bringing our attention to our actions and discovering the simplest arc of motion that will refine the task at hand and gradually lead to a dance as we move through what was once a source of boredom and dissatisfaction. That after all, was how we got to the point where we needed to change.

Nobody will care about this of course and that’s what makes it irreplaceable. To begin, we pay attention as we pick up the laundry basket. If we are honest with ourselves, we notice that this activity became a habit long ago. We can see that we seem to take little joy in it and that the small mind has seized the head time to ruminate over things that have very little to do with sparkling colors or a neat stack of clothes. This is a good opportunity to notice rumination arise, and how the clothes in the drawers often seem to be in some stage of disarray. We are capable people and there are aspects to the results that just don’t reflect our intentions. Just notice this, no need to judge, remember you are growing and the laundry was a koan all along. The good news is that this is a koan you can resolve.

How do we work with such a Koan? Kobun has a few words that might illuminate this dilemma. “If you push against the movement, the direction of how things are existing, you have pain. If you flow with the movement, you feel freedom. You don’t get out of it, rather, you flow with it and have a sensation of freedom.” While existence is a big topic, this is a simple application so it’s worth looking at what is happening and how it changes things.

Sorting the clothes and adding the liquid, you might notice that going mostly on habit all this time has left a few sharp edges in your technique. Perhaps half of the clothes fall on the floor between the washer and dryer or maybe the sound of footsteps as you walk from room to room is louder that you had imagined. Anything can be refined and this transformation can be made sublime. Those moments lost to chores can be changed into a source of quiet joy. So why not sublimate the laundry? To do so, it will help to create a ritual, which while you may not want to describe it this way to your therapist, is the basic practice of a monk. If you’re still on the page, then it’s a good time to take a fresh look at the laundry. Rather than shoving in the clothes, curiosity will reveal all the secrets required to move through the task in one long curving arc. As you see the possibilities, feel free to weave the many details into the fabric of a personal ritual and a place of practice. Set an ideal, and with no-one watching you are free to learn a new way of being in these moments. Give the task your full attention and imagine the delightful form of washing clothes and offering them to others - which includes your future self.

Then, relax and try out the motions you saw. Feel the way your hands dance in rapt attention - which is, after all, the very source of rapture. Give this all the attention you can muster and move, curiously, and know that you have an inner sense of grace that will guide you to a state of flow. It’s a little clunky at first but quickly and then steadily you will soften the edges of your movements. In turn the mind will follow. Mindfulness is not a state we access directly, but what arises naturally when we pay attention, focus it on this moment, and stay curious. So as you’re doing laundry, as you practice, a sense of flow arises. It is right here, in the midst of everyday activity, that you have your greatest chance of awakening.

Returning from the laundry, we eventually realize that we still have some difficult thoughts and remain challenged by that resolution of ours. If a little dissatisfaction arises, it helps to also notice that we found respite in our little ritual and a sense of flow is growing. One might conclude that our more challenging NYE resolution is part of similar, but more restive undertaking. And thus, we are growing and all we have to do is stay between the lines and wait. Then again, it might be an excellent time to reexamine the dishes.