Suzuki Roshi's Zen

7) Whole heartedness in all activity. Suzuki-Roshi often spoke of the nature of time. that it is not an unfolding of things in a linear or accumulative way, but rather the depth and completion that occurs in each moment. To practice in time therefore means that we must give ourselves completely in every activity, no matter what it is. He often used the word "sincerity" to mean just doing one activity completely and energetically --no matter how we feel about it.

Zazen is the center of our practice, but zazen is just being our self, and being our self is being present throughout the whole universe on each moment. This is why everything that happens, every activity we engage in, is decisive and complete. When we approach the world with our ordinary ego-inspired mind, we have many evaluations about our activity: this activity is good, that one is bad, this activity is interesting that one is not interesting, this activity is more important than that one. Such evaluations absorb our attention and we cannot be really present very often with our activity. And even when we are present, there is attachment, and attachment is like putting on a pair of blinders --we only see half the world. But when we try to pay attention to our preferences without validating them, we see that all our activity is a field of profundity, that any gesture or effort can bring up the whole of reality.

This is the reason why we stress simple work in our practice. We understand work as zazen itself, as, we could say, a form of worship or devotion, or a form of offering. This is especially clear when we clean, and Suzuki Roshi in his early training and throughout his life did cleaning practice. There is the famous story of him arriving early to the Cambridge Buddhist Association where he was to give a talk. Everyone was busily cleaning up the place for the arrival of the great zen master Suzuki Roshi, but he arrived several hours early by mistake and everyone was quite flustered. He said, "Oh, the great zen master is coming, we must prepare." And he stripped down to his kimono and began cleaning with everyone. For me, cleaning practice is very important. Cleaning was something I never really thought about, but I learned from my practice that when I sweep the floor I am actually sweeping my own mind, and the whole universe. If I can put one corner of my room in order, then whole worlds come to order.

Nowadays in our practice we honor people's preferences and we understand that sometimes it is difficult for someone to do something and maybe they should do something else. These days at Zen Centers people actually refuse sometimes to do jobs that they are asked to do, and we honor that refusal and the reasons for it. I think it is good that we do things in that way, and can be compassionate with each other in that way. But it would be too bad if we forget that in the end we need to be liberated from preference and be whole hearted in whatever we do. This is our ideal, this is our goal, this was how Suzuki Roshi trained, and this was his instruction for us.

8) Careful attention to form as freedom. Suzuki Roshi was at pains to teach his free-thinking individualistically inclined Western students that being free to choose and express for yourself is not what it seems to be. In fact, true freedom is not found in the exercise of one's preferences, but in finding spaciousness and full self expression within whatever form appears. He once said that when everyone wore the clothes they liked, and appeared with their own body language, it was difficult for him to see people's real individuality. but when everyone put on black robes and sat on their cushions in exactly the same way, then it became clear the ways in which each one was unique. This seems like a paradoxical Zen statement, but actually it is literally true. By letting go of preference, which is after all only habit and conditioning, our real, our deeper, individuality, our own particular spin on buddha nature, can come through. It was with this spirit that Suzuki Roshi stressed the importance of form, of bowing correctly, of walking and standing with the proper decorum, of following all the temple forms, from striking the bell to eating oryoki meals. He taught that we did this not because it was the absolute way of doing things, the best way, but because formal practice is a way for us to find a big openness inside, a truer freedom than our conditioning would ever produce.

Many people find Zen practice too regimented, too stiff and formal. But it only looks that way from the outside. Actually, when the body is guided by form there can be a soaring spirit inside, a real freedom, and a real beauty. Formal practice is not the best way to live or the Zen way to live, it is just an arbitrary way to do things. But I do not know of anything more effective in helping us to let go of our deeply conditioned nature, which is the force that binds us to our suffering. Formal practice works with the body at its most unconscious level, and if we do not touch ourselves there, I think it will be very hard for us to find our buddha nature and bring it to the forefront in our lives.

Suzuki Roshi stressed this at a time in the West when wild personal expression was dominant. He had to have a lot of patience with hippies and other people who would come to the zendo with their own ideas of how to dress and walk and sit. But he was very patient and always amused by what people did. He was not a narrow minded person, and I think he appreciated the colorfulness of people's approaches to formal practice, yet he knew that there was much suffering in the middle of people's so-called freedom, and he knew that the only way to show them that was to help them find themselves with the forms of practice. So, steadily, and with a kindly voice, he encouraged people over and over.

- Norman Fischer