Favian Straughan, Rev. Master

From Portobello Buddhist Priory Newsletter, September – December 2019.

It has been recommended that when we sit in Zazen, we bring to mind the question: What is this? Not as a mantra to continually repeat or as a question to think about and produce a conceptual answer, but as a way of settling us into the body/mind experience of the present moment, with attention and open looking or seeing. Meditation is generally said to involve two aspects: 1. Concentration or attention and 2. Insight or Open awareness.

It is necessary to develop a capacity to concentrate, which has been likened to strengthening a muscle over time, hence the importance of regular sitting which gives a momentum to our practice. Without some capacity for giving attention, the mind tends to drift into habitual patterns of thinking which get identified with and help generate a separate self-sense. ‘What is this’ helps to focus attention, not just on any particular object of mind or body, but also on their moment to moment presence, as flowing and changing experience. With this comes a ‘knowing’ awareness which offers a holding and grounding space for whatever arises in the present moment. This knowing awareness is integral with concentration and what becomes ‘known’ is the empty nature of phenomena – as a direct recognition. This insight which can clarify and deepen, releases the mind from its clinging to notions of permanent separate objects; and with a deeper self-reflecting movement, produces a disenchantment with the belief that what I am is also a permanent separate self, behind or at the heart of this flow of ever-changing experience.

This recognition is one of the reasons why Sōtō Zen teaches that the goal of practice and the path of practice are one and the same. Nothing is gained or added to what is, but ‘what is’ is uncovered or recovered as the truth of this moment: the undivided nature. This practice is called a ‘path of liberation’ because it frees the clinging mind which has reacted in self-defence to the perceived dissatisfactory nature of life and has sought relief again and again by grasping and rejecting in a desperate attempt to find permanency, security and wholeness. This is why the bald instruction for Zazen meditation encourages us to neither grasp hold of nor push away whatever arises. With practice, these moments of ‘liberation’ leave us where we’ve actually always been, at the heart of this moment and one with the flow of this life. Dissatisfaction comes to an end in such moments, not because sensations of discomfort cease to arise but because they are not impacting a constructed sense of self. In penning these few paragraphs, it might be easy to assume practice to be a straightforward progression from delusion to liberation but of course as those who practice know, it is multifaceted and a sense of progress often dissolves in the face of a need to keep going in unknowing, a stepping forward in the dark.

Faith becomes an important feature of training now. Faith arises from the growing intuition of what we might call the ‘unconditioned nature of mind’ which we could say is recovered from behind the screen of addictive thinking. While empty of self – so not being grasped at and set up as ‘I the subject’– it expresses the non-grasping sufficiency of being, one with this moment and this life. As Zen Master Mumon put it: “Though you stand at the brink of life and death, you have the ‘great Freedom.’”¹

1. Zen Master Wumen Hui-k’ai (Chinese) Mumon Ekai, (Japanese) 1183 – 1260, The Gateless Gate, Collection of koans. Case 1, Joshu’s dog. (There are various translations.)