The Zen of Trust

The world of appearances is filled with the three poisons of greed, anger and ignorance. Sometimes, our closest people have betrayed us. The world as it appears in conditioned reality and ordinary life, is filled with unpredictable and often unexplainable occurrences that definitely go against how we wish things would be. Because of our unfulfilled desires, we suffer. When I was teaching recently at the prison sangha, The Unpolished Diamond Sangha, one man laughed at me and said, “You might be able to trust out there, but in here, that’s seems almost impossible. There is almost nothing and no one that can be trusted.” That has stuck with me. How to respond to that? Is there something unconditioned that we can trust in?

from Byakuren's Zen Practice blog.

I have experienced a lot of conflict and struggle over the past month or so. A lot of it hasn't been centered on me, but because of my connections with those who are at the center, I have been drawn in. And I haven't always handled it all skillfully.

What it comes down to is that the truths of certain situations have been difficult to sit with. Including the truth of not knowing what exactly the truth is, or how to move forward from that not knowing.

Impatience, acting out of old wounds, and a failure to locate and work from a deeper trust have been commonplace features. I've seen it in myself; I've seen it in others.

The thing about times like this is that appeals to simple nuggets of wisdom often don't do much for folks. Saying the world is "ultimately good" or that we "all have buddhanature" doesn't really help.

That "almost impossible" of the man from the prison sangha must be honored. It must be taken in and digested by each of us in order to find whatever is it that we can trust on a deeper level. Because that "almost impossible" lives, or has lived, within each of us. And it's exactly during difficult times that it pokes its head out, challenging whatever trust in ourselves, others, and the world we have built up in the meantime.

From my vantage point, there are a lot of folks trying to come together in the spirit of peace, justice, and reconnection with the planet these days. That's a beautiful thing, and I am one of these people. However, we must keep reminding ourselves how much damage has been done, and how many generations have been warped and wounded by that damage.

The violence of a thousand years isn't going to be healed in a day, or a year. At the same time, no one knows when the tipping point towards peace and justice will come between any two people, groups, nations.

"There is almost nothing and no one that can be trusted," is a place we need to keep returning to, it seems. Liberation seems to require it. I, for one, have never found any short cuts.

Samsara as Dharma Gate

Our head teacher at the Zen Center, Byakuren Ragir, is starting to get into the blogging thing now. She's got three posts up this month, including this one, which contains the following passage:

When Roshi Reb Anderson was at Clouds, the sound byte that stuck in my mind was “You can’t beat samsara”. Then my husband heard that and amended it by saying “You can’t trump samsara.” What does that mean? It is very similar to the first noble truth that human life contains within it; dissatisfaction, anxiety and suffering. No matter how “good” our spiritual life is, we are not divorced from the swirling ups and downs of samsaric life.

How can you truly find peace amidst the vicissitudes of human life? We need to have some deep visceral connection with that which is beyond up and down.

The 8 worldly winds are the vicissitudes that constitute the human world. They are:
Pleasure Pain
Gain Loss
Success Failure
Praise Criticism

How can we practice when the 8 worldly winds have us caught and gripped? Sometimes, I feel, I can’t even sit down to do zazen. My practice at these pressurized points in life, often has to do with Buddhist Prayer, the chanting or saying over and over of certain phrases. Trying to interrupt my habituated energy and compulsive thinking with more wholesome, dharmic thoughts.

This immediately brought to mind the wild fox koan, which I have written about sometime in the past. The myriad of causes and conditions that make up each moment are something that we can't escape, as long as we are here in this body/mind.

But what's funny is that it's possible to take the comment from Reb Anderson in a different way as well.

"You can't beat samsara," instead of meaning you can't escape it or avoid it, could also mean "This is the best training ground you could possibly have for awakening." Do you get it?

I think it's a generally habitual human pattern to think of our sufferings, miseries, and anxieties solely in terms of being hindrances. And yet, when looked at only slightly differently, these same things can become the very medicine that we need to take.

Foxglove, a fairly common garden flower, has a long history of medicinal use, addressing a wide variety of ailments, from serious heart conditions to asthma. It also has a long history of poisoning, as people who were either unfamiliar with the power of the plant, or overzealous in their application of it, overdosed on Foxglove remedies. In other words, the line between medicine and poison is often hard to discern.

This is also the case with our lives. Those "pressurized points" Byakuren speaks of are packed with great liberation potential. And yet, all too easily, that potential becomes a poison to us, as we sway between avoidance and overindulgence.

Too much Foxglove might kill you. However, just the right amount of Foxglove, at the right time, could save your life.

I wouldn't recommend experimenting with Foxglove, but I would recommend experimenting with the sufferings in your life. Can you work with them in such a way as to find the gate of liberation contained within?

I think this is a major part of our practice. Maybe all of it really.