Today's Column

Privilege

What I was thinking about this morning is the Hsin Hsin Ming, the Third Patriarch of Zen’s discourse about what's goin' on. The essence of this nonpareil piece of advice is in the first couplet:

“The Great Way is not difficult
For those who have no preferences…”

I think most people look on this suggestion as a challenge to become detached, to weather all storms without being moved, etcetera. I’ve begun to think of it in a different way. I’ve begun to see it as a privilege. What we’ve got here isn’t an admonishment to try to be uncaring. It’s an invitation, to plunge into total caringness, to give to every instant of our lives our complete and wide open attention, no matter how it feels, or how we judge our reaction to it. What we have here is an gentle suggestion to be patient with our impatience, to not be angry with our anger, to be generous with our pettiness, not to try to be impassive.

So what about when the “irritant” is someone else’s actions, not our own? The opportunity for opennesss is there again. If you can hold that stillness for a moment, perhaps something can bloom in that space, like, “Why am I doing that?” Sounds like nonsense at first, but if we’re working from the notion that there is no Other, then this person who is annoying me is me, looking out of another pair of eyes, speaking with another mouth, experiencing life from a perspective that has led to whatever is sparking the defensive reaction coming from this side.

The payoff here is that the Great Way isn’t difficult for those who have no preferences. Every insight into this process means the falling away of another constraint that seems like it holds me inside this bag of bones. Gaté, gate, paragaté, parasamgaté, bodhi svaha!