Already OK

Last Saturday, my husband Paul, our friend Rah and myself all spent the afternoon on a Zen Buddhist retreat, This involved sitting facing a wall for roughly half hour periods interspersed with ten minute sessions of walking very slowly around the room in a clockwise direction.

Afterwards, as we sat round a table with the other participants and ate soup, Paul asked the teacher a question: “What’s the point of Zen?” by which he really meant “What’s the point of sitting looking at a wall all afternoon?”. The teacher smiled. “That’s a good question” he said. “ The Zen answer is that there is no point. We are already ok and there is nothing to be attained.” 

In the last few weeks I have heard a number of different teachers and therapists from a variety of different traditions (or none) all asserting that what we essentially are is already ok, or that wellbeing is our true nature. It is not a new idea – so is there any actual point in saying it again here? Maybe not; it often appears that whatever words are used to point towards this essential okay-ness, a listener will respond, “Ah yes. I see! I love that – now how do I live it or put it into practice?”. It can seem like there is always something to do or something to be fixed in order to realise the wellbeing that we are told is already the case. It is as if someone has pointed out to the sky that their nature is vast and spacious and the sky starts planning on how to remove all the clouds in order to be able to appreciate that spaciousness.

There is, of course, no problem with the clouds (or birds or aeroplanes or anything else that appears in it). The sky is still vast and spacious with or without them. It is simply that the clouds (or birds or aeroplanes) are being given an undue amount of importance. They are being seen as a hindrance rather than simply as clouds appearing in a vast spacious sky.

So in this case it may seem obvious that the sky is working unnecessarily hard. Nothing needs to change for it to be vast and spacious. It doesn’t need to practice, or achieve or get rid of anything. It is already just as it is. And perfectly good enough in that too.

In the Zen practice, life was simplified. There was a white wall in front of us with a window ledge where I could put my cup and spectacles and a gentle, cooling breeze from the open window. My sitting position was comfortable and we got to stretch our legs every now and then. Paul and Rah were nearby and there was a sense of a small, quiet but friendly group just doing their thing with no demands or pressures other than the intention of sitting still and not following any impulses to move unless they were essential.  Any thoughts that arose in that spaciousness passed by like clouds or lingered for a moment like the little fly that occasionally visited the wall to provide entertainment.

There was clearly nothing that needed to be any different to the way that it actually was. I could understand the longing that many people express to ‘do this again’ or go on longer retreats or live in a monastery and experience more of that simplicity.  However, even that feeling of longing for more of this would also be part of the experience. Like any other cloud or bird or fly. 

It seems to me that the Zen wall-watching practice is ultimately no different to any other experience. Life is always fundamentally simple and the spaciousness never goes anywhere. It is just that this might seem more obvious when the sky is a bit emptier – which is to say that the underlying stillness and silence may be easier to appreciate when there is less noise and busy-ness going on. Nonetheless, even when the sitting meditation conditions are simple and uncluttered, the longing for something to be different (“my neighbour shouldn’t breath so noisily” or “ there shouldn’t be any thoughts” or “this bit of wall isn’t as good as the some of the others”) or grasping for more of this enjoyable-ness might still seem to give rise to a maelstrom of unpleasantness. The metaphorical sky is filled with clouds and its vast blue-ness appears to have been lost. But of course the nature of the sky does not come and go. It’s the backdrop to everything that appears in it, including apparent clouds of dissatisfaction or belief in something being lost.