Good Enough Zen
A Dharma Talk by Carolyn Atkinson
October 6, 2004
All of you here tonight are going to be really glad that you came, because in the past week I have discovered the answer to all the problems in our lives. And--I am going to share it with you! When you walk out of here tonight, you will know what to do! As is fitting in our society--it is possible to purchase your way to those "complete moments of mind, body and spirit." You too can reside in "serenity and calm in your busy world." It is now possible to buy a breakfast cereal called OPTIMUM ZEN. (a trademark of Nature’s Path Foods Incorporated)
Now, it really helps if you are youthful, gorgeous, slender, buffed and willing to meditate half-naked, as are the young people pictured on the box. Then, you can more easily, "Look forward to morning again. Bring back the peaceful sigh of being in tune with yourself, those carefree days when all you have to do is enjoy physical and mental harmony. That’s a ‘Zen’ moment, where health, mental balance, spiritual fulfillment come together and you can ‘be’ the best you are. . . . A great way to find a healthy balance, inner harmony, peace--Optimum Zen. "
Isn’t this wonderful? The only problem I see is that most of us don’t look like that to begin with. And . . . most of us do not have, "carefree days, when all we have to do is enjoy physical and mental harmony." So-- how can we ever hope to attain Optimum Zen?
I was thinking--how about if we settle for Middle-Way Zen? Good Enough Zen? Maybe "carefree" is not going to happen. Maybe not everything "comes together." And most of us will never look like that again. Maybe things won’t be "the best," but how about "better than they used to be?" That seems really hopeful to me.
So, I’d like tell you a story tonight about things being "better than they used to be." Not perfect nor carefree, but: GOOD ENOUGH.
We have a member of our sangha who has offered to let me tell his story tonight--suitably changed, so you won’t know who it is. But the essence is accurate. Now, this man is a responsible member of the community. He has been married twice--the first time, they were both young and unconscious. And the pattern--he says, in looking back on it--repeated his childhood experience. That is, he married his mother. He grew up in a classic family--with a raging father and a hysterical mother. We didn’t all get that particular pattern, but a number of us did. It’s pretty common.
His place in the family was first-born, so he was assigned to take care of the younger siblings. And unconsciously, he said he also undertook the care and maintenance of both his parents. He was the one who damped down the conflict. He pacified his father, drew the fire away from the rest of the family. His mother turned to him, and he comforted her. He kept the younger siblings quiet.
So, his first marriage ended a number of years ago. And he remarried. He thought he was choosing someone very different from what he had done before. (You know how that is?) But as the years have gone on, it’s become increasingly clear that this new marriage is a variation on the same theme of his life. He is still the pacifier, the peacemaker, the one who holds everything together. He didn’t think it was that way, but it’s clearer to him, as he watches, that this is once again true.
Now the question can arise--as it usually does in long-term marriages--who is affecting whom here? I watched my parents, and I could see that in a very real sense, Mom created Dad, and Dad created Mom. That is, their patterns interlocked. Each in a sense, enhanced the other. Added to the tendencies. They each became more of their primary pattern, in response to the other.
So once more in this second marriage, our sangha member found that he was not speaking up, he was trying to keep the peace, while his wife became more & more--from HIS point of view--demanding, self-absorbed. She said of him--that he was withdrawn, absent.
Recently, they went home to visit his parents, and his father who is the rageful one--began to criticize our friend’s family, his two children, himself. His mother drew him aside, asking for his sympathy. His wife became hostile; she began disappearing for long periods of time.
Our sangha member said to me--"Suddenly, I noticed some of the undercurrents." He said, "I’ve been doing this meditation for several years, and somehow, I could suddenly feel the interlocking karma of the entire pattern. And most importantly--I could feel how much I just react to everything." He said that he began consciously paying attention to his impulses. Wanting to soothe his Dad, and wanting to argue also. Wanting to comfort his mother, and wanting to get away from her. Wanting to protect his children from criticism. Wanting to attack his wife.
Situations arose--for example, attending a large family gathering--when he could feel his overwhelming desire to react. And so, he began to pay attention to his breath. He slowed down. He kept breathing. He noticed that he was breathing. And . . . he began to be a little more present with his experience. With his body. and with his mind. He noticed his impulses to react. He noticed the pain driving these impulses. And he could actually hear sometimes, the fear underneath the anger in his Father’s voice. He could recognize the manipulative but also very needy statements from his mother--which pulled him in. And he noticed his impulses to react to, to want to blot out, his own pain. He began to actually show up for his life. For his own experience.
Now . . . everything did not, therefore, turn out just fine. It was not a moment of Optimum Zen; he did not feel serene and calm. Certainly, he did not feel carefree! He had trouble expressing himself in a way that felt good. He said actually, he probably felt lots more pain as he saw more deeply into the patterns, the interlocking karma of the whole family, than when he used to just react. And he noticed, he felt actually in a visceral way, how much fear he had in those explosive situations--how he has trained himself to shut off the fear: to just try to manage others. He really noticed how painful his whole story was, but he also felt cleaner in his mind, when he left. He felt less residue clinging to him. He had much less regret. Sadness, yes. Even great grief. But not so much anger, frustration, regret.
It wasn’t perfect. But all-in-all, he said--it was an incredible relief.
Our basic teaching keeps bringing us back to our breath. Sometimes I used to think--why do we keep doing this? This is so boring. And here’s WHY: when we come back to our breath, then we are also coming back to our bodies, to this anchor in the present moment--and in that coming back, we have a better chance of noticing our lives. It’s like the promotional advertisement: You Must Be Present to Win. In this case, you must be present if you want to see your life more clearly.
If we’re not even here, it’s so much less likely that we’ll notice our reactions, our minds. The more we are with our breath, the more likely it is that we can be with our experience, with our lives, with our minds--these admittedly reactive and imperfect minds--but definitely--the only ones we’ve got.
So, our sangha member said--"it was really awful--I had so much fear, all the time. It was miserable, it was dreadful. And it was so much better than it used to be." We could say, actually it was: A PERFECT ZEN MOMENT.
It was OPTIMUM ZEN.
When we really begin to pay attention, to notice our lives--for many of us, we notice how much fear we actually have. Fear that we or someone we love will be hurt. Fear that we are not safe. Fear that we can’t control things. Mostly we turn away from our fear. Mostly, we just don’t go there.
The story is told by Pema Chodron about my teacher, Kobun Chino Otogawa, that when she asked him how he related to fear, he said, "I agree. I agree." Mostly, we don’t learn to agree with our experience. We struggle with the way things are.
How do we relate to our fear, to our lives being miserable and dreadful? How do we relate to feeling helpless and inarticulate in the face of other’s pain? How do we relate to our habitual coping methods of anger, withdrawal, blame? We can learn to just sit still, to notice our breath, our bodies, our lives. We can learn to be present without turning away from these less-than-perfect lives. How do we relate to fear? We agree. We agree.
Our sangha member reported what many of you have shared with me--for most of us, life is not just carefree and glorious. Certainly not glamorous. But interestingly, we can feel so much better when we pay attention. When we show up. When we notice our lives. We don’t have to just react blindly to life--striking out in anger or rage or grief. Avoiding our experience. Trying to just smooth everything over.
We have another choice: We can agree.
I agree. I agree.
