Suzuki Roshi's Zen - 2. Faithful Daily Practice IS Enlightenment

As you all probably realize, the Zen school in China was founded on the experience of sudden personal insight into Buddha's mind. There had been many schools of Buddhism in China with many practices and many teachings. Religion does have a way of becoming very refined and complex, and then it may be quite beautiful and satisfying in a way, but it also may remove itself from the simple and profound truths that it was built on. So in China the first Zen ancestors emphasized cutting through complexity to an actual experience of enlightenment that was transformative. This emphasis is both good and bad. It is good because it cuts through scholasticism and gets us to the heart of the matter, our life experience, rather than what it says in the book. But it is bad because it tends to privilege a particular kind of experience, to make us expect and long for such an experience, and become arrogant and therefore confused if and when we do have that kind of experience. We tend to feel that the purpose of practice is to produce a particular kind of experience, and that once we have that experience practice is irrelevant. But for Dogen, and for Suzuki Roshi, the practice and the experience of enlightenment are one and the same. When we do the practice we are expressing our enlightenment, and when we find true enlightenment, we naturally practice.

Suzuki Roshi went to San Francisco in 1959 to be the priest for the local Japanese-American community at Sokoji Temple. He did not take San Francisco by storm. There were no posters, no news articles, no high profile retreats. Instead he did zazen by himself in the mornings, and if someone came and asked him about Zen. he just said, "I sit in the morning please come join me."

His practice was the practice of a simple priest, full of faithfulness and sincerity. He often spoke of how stupid he was, of how his understanding wasn't so good. He said that when he was a small boy at his teacher's temple, all the other students ran away because the teacher was so tough. He said he was the only one who didn't run away, not because he was so good or so strong but because he was the only one who didn't realize that he could run away. He just went on with the practice every day, no matter what happened, for his whole life. And in his teaching he emphasized that kind of steadiness and faithfulness. Not to any ideal or philosophy or belief, but just to the simple life of daily practice. He emphasized routine and repetition. He taught that just doing the practice over and over again, without expectation of any result, but being as present as possible with it, something subtle would happen. He did not travel all over giving sesshin and talks. He just stayed around the temple taking care of things and of his practice.

He was in a way a very ambitious priest; if he were not, he never would have gone to America. But his ambition was not to do great things but just to have great hope and a great faithfulness and to bring that to his practice every day, confident that what needed to happen would unfold naturally, without forcing. He once said that practice is like walking for a long time in a slight mist. You might walk and walk and never feel that you are getting wet, but when you arrive at where you are going you will notice that your robe is soaked. He also said, "if we walk in the mist together and you get impatient with me and want to go ahead, that is all right. Please go ahead."

The longer I practice the more it seems to me that our enlightenment, our insight, our freedom, is in our faithfulness, our confidence, in our Buddha nature, the real nature of our body and mind beyond the appearance we take on in this life. We are not looking for an experience or a knowledge, but only the growing faith that life is life and death is death, and that we are always in connection with this. Because of this, naturally we want to do practice, to bow to Buddha, to make offering, to chant, to sit, to be kind to others and ourselves, and to everything, without making a big deal of it. Our enlightenment is not a state or an accomplishment, it is a moment by moment experience of faithfulness.

It may be true that other teachings and teachers may be much better than ours, more beautiful or wise or colorful or profound. But this really doesn't matter. We are not trying to be beautiful or wise or colorful or profound, we are only trying to practice our whole life through, day by day, with faithfulness. That is all the enlightenment we need, and in the simple daily activity of practice we find enlightenment everywhere.

At the end of last month we had a wonderful sesshin, a silent sesshin. Just to be alive was inspiration enough. One afternoon of that sesshin I was walking to my room and I felt sunlight on my shoulder. It was so warm and bright, almost tender, almost delicious. I almost started to cry it was so beautiful, and I understood then for the first time a Jewish prayer. The prayer says something like, "Blessed are you who creates a whole universe of time that has given me this one precious moment." Something like that. So this is our enlightenment, and I do not think it is just about Zen or about Buddhism. It is about life, real life, life as it is.