Everyday Zen: Love and Work (Plus)

Then we go further, to the stage of being the witness of our life. It’s all going on, it’s all enjoyable; we’re not caught by any of it. And in the final state of our practice we’re back in the street, back in the marketplace, right in the middle of the hubbub. But seeing the confusion for what it is, we’re free of it. We can love it, enjoy it, ser

If we climb higher and higher and higher, eventually we see that the traffic is just patterns; it’s beautiful, not frightening. It’s just what it is and we begin to see it as a tremendous panorama. We begin to see areas of difficulty as part of the whole, not necessarily good or bad; just part of life. And after years of practice we may reach a pla

Now our third step might be to go into a tall building and climb up onto the third-floor balcony and observe the traffic from there. Now it looks different; we can see the direction of it, which way it’s moving. We see that in a way it doesn’t have anything to do with us, it’s just going on.

The way we usually hold a relationship is that, “This relationship is there, out there, and it’s supposed to give me pleasure. At the very least, it shouldn’t give me discomfort.” In other words we make this relationship into a dish of ice cream. That dish of ice cream is there to give me pleasure and give me comfort.

the patio, they don’t push their chair back in. They have no commitment to that chair. They feel, “The chair isn’t important, I have to get into the zendo and hear about the truth.” But the truth is the chair. It’s where we are right now. When we leave the door open, it’s that part of us that does not want to be in relationship to anything, so we r

Vulnerability means I won’t shut the door even though I’m being hurt. The reason I want to leave the door open is so that if I feel pain, I can get out. The whole point is that I may feel pain, but I’m not going to leave just for that reason. I often notice that when people get up from the table

No, if we really experience anger, we won’t do that. If we believe our angry thoughts, we might hurt somebody. But pure experience has no verbal component, so there would be nothing to do. Pure anger is very quiet. And you would never hurt anyone with it.

It seems that if I am really being my anger, I could get very angry and in that direct experience, I could kill someone.

And so we begin to have an understanding of the necessity for practice. Practice isn’t something we take up, like swimming lessons. People say to me, “I don’t have time for my practice this semester, Joko, I’m too busy. When I have more time, I’ll get back to my practice.” That shows no understanding of what practice is. Practice is being too busy,