Suzuki Roshi's Zen - 1. No Expectations

I think most people come to Buddhist practice with great expectations. We don't go to Christianity or Judaism or Islam with these kind of expectations, and I think in Asia most modern people do not go to Buddhism with the kinds of expectation we have.

What do we expect? I suppose we expect some enlightenment or some peace of mind or some sense of happiness or relief or profundity for our lives. Maybe we expect some kind of sensational experiences or some serenity of deep wisdom. Maybe we don't even know what we expect, only that we do expect something. Maybe we are excited by the expectation that something will happen and we don't know what it is. I think we have these expectations because Buddhism, and especially Buddhist meditation, is completely new to us. We see it as a possibility for our lives. This is probably true, but then again every moment is full of possibility, only we have become jaded to the possibilities. Since Buddhism is new to us we haven't yet becomes jaded, although maybe some are approaching that! This is our practice, to try not to become jaded even though we are very familiar with the teaching and might not have too much idealism left.

In a way, our expectations are good, our freshness is good, and I think Suzuki-Roshi appreciated it very much, He said we have beginner's mind: in other words, we have great expectations but we don't really have any preconceptions, at least not any preconceptions founded on experience. Since we don't know what we are doing when we do Buddhist practice, we are free to expect the impossible. All our preconceptions are fantastic and imaginary. This is a fresh mind for practice. [Since being a child], Suzuki Roshi wanted to come to the West to practice with people who had that kind of fresh expectant mind.

Naturally then, he taught us non-expectation, non-hope. And this was and is a good teaching for us --exactly because we have so many expectations. If we can use the energy and enthusiasm of our expectations for practice, and transmute it into non-expectation, then we will be able to practice quite well. The strong point about expectation is that it produces energy and enthusiasm, but the weak point is that it leads to grasping and attachment and distraction, which are the opposite of Buddha's teaching. If we expect something we must be completely mistaken about the nature of experience and the nature of self and the nature of time. We think we need something and that later we might get it. Or we think we have a problem and later we might not have it. We think that Buddha lived a long time ago and that we live now. But actually none of these things are true, they are only persuasive projections of our mind. What is actually true is that this moment arises now independent of anything, and everything is included in this moment. Buddha and self are here, and problem and no problem are here. If we persist in having the expectation that things will change and that we can somehow make them change, we won't really understand things or change. When we can give ourselves completely to this moment of our lives --and then to this moment and this moment-- without any expectation, then we can have some happiness. We do not need to get mad at ourselves for having expectations, because it is good that we have expectations. But we have to use expectation to go beyond expectation. Maybe we can say that having no expectations means that we always have expectation but that what we are expecting is nothing. One of my favorite sayings of Suzuki Roshi is something that he shocked people with in a lecture once. He said, "The problems that you have now you will always have." He also said, at another time, "I have found it necessary to believe in absolutely nothing."