Enduring sesshin
There's a lot of advice in books or on the internet about to manage your sesshin experience: what to do about physical pain, how to deal with boredom or sleepiness, what sort of attitude we should have, or how to prepare. All of those things seem useful; after all, sesshin is demanding and you've taken time out of your busy life to attend, so you want to make sure you're ready to have the optimal experience. However, all of those mechanics and techniques fall away when you really understand what Sawaki Roshi and Uchiyama Roshi were doing with sesshin. We can turn the techniques and coping mechanisms with which we sometimes think we need to arm ourselves into toys that simply perpetuate the dream of "me." If we approach sesshin as an endurance test, we're just continuing the story that there's an I that needs to endure something -- and that successfully surviving sesshin makes this I into somebody with certain characteristics. Enduring sesshin, or assuming that we can get better at it, makes it into a project, no less than coming to sesshin with the idea that we'll emerge more content, clear-eyed or kind. Projects require both personal determination and a framework of linear time through which we move from mistake-filled beginning to skilled and competent end. This is not the world of sesshin, which functions only in this moment. In order to avoid getting ensnared by our coping mechanisms, we need to understand both what happens to time during sesshin, and also the nature of our effort.
If all thinking is fabrication, then time is also a human construct. Before we decided to carve up time into minutes and years and centuries, there was only one seamless moment, the eternal now. This is the actual reality of universal functioning, before we poke our heads in and start making observations and measurements. That's not to say that we don't need an agreed-upon concept of time in order to do our work in the world; we just need to remember that we've made it up for ourselves. In sesshin, because we are not in relationship with others and our activities and assignments are very simple, we can let go of time and experience this present moment as the actual, real moment, before we start to think and write a story. How much longer is this gosh-darn period? Did the jikido fall asleep? I can't wait for lunch, and I hope we're having that delicious baked tempeh. Wait -- what am I doing? Let go of that thought. Back to zazen. As soon as we do let go, we stop comparing this moment to any other moment, and time ceases to flow, whether quickly or slowly. Yes, at some point the bell will ring for lunch, and we will do our job and bring in the food, but there is really only now. "When we don’t measure time, it passes of its own accord," Okumura Roshi says. "There is no self which is observed or measures the time. If we sit trying to measure the time, it is really nonsense. The important point is to give up that kind of self power effort."
That brings us to the other reason that sesshin is not an endurance test. If there is no "I" then there is no one making an effort, whether to speculate about time, overcome obstacles, manage pain or avoid falling asleep. This is not to say that we shouldn't take care of our bodies; they are, after all, the ground of our practice. However, it's not a matter of gritting our teeth, telling ourselves we can do it, and getting through somehow using our own willpower. Zazen shows us that struggle comes from our own ideas about difficulty and our resistance to things that are other than the way we want them. As soon as there's a struggle, there's an I struggling against an object. We forget that we don't sit zazen as individuals, and we don't do sesshin as individuals, and we're not in relationship with others. When we give up the separation, we can see the limits of the small self and instead immerse ourselves in the universal self.
What a conundrum! This is why we need to investigate the teaching that the self that doesn't interact with others includes everything. The energy that drives our zazen or sesshin practice comes from the place before we create separation between subject and object or self and other. Until we understand this teaching, we can believe that patience, endurance or toughness is the basis of our motivation to practice. We certainly need intention, aspiration and focus, because practice isn't easy. The problem is that endurance is based on an I that wants to achieve something, and we have to do some careful discernment about our desire to come to sesshin and what we may be looking to get from it.
Since we can't power through on our own, at some point during the sesshin we probably give up the idea that endurance is necessary or even possible, and then the separation can dissolve. As individuals, we can't control what's happening, or make it better or even OK. In fact, much of our struggle is the result of retaining this individual approach and being deceived by our delusions into thinking that liking and disliking will help or that we should be creating some perfect conditions that don't involve daydreaming or sleeping on the cushion. Waking up from the fiction of small self and seeing that zazen is the only reality is the opportunity sesshin offers to us. Uchiyama Roshi called this becoming submerged in zazen, or just sitting. It's possible then to see how "enduring" sesshin doesn't make sense. “I just have to hang on for one more period -- then I can go to sleep,” reflects an important misunderstanding about sesshin.
If all thinking is fabrication, then time is also a human construct. Before we decided to carve up time into minutes and years and centuries, there was only one seamless moment, the eternal now. This is the actual reality of universal functioning, before we poke our heads in and start making observations and measurements. That's not to say that we don't need an agreed-upon concept of time in order to do our work in the world; we just need to remember that we've made it up for ourselves. In sesshin, because we are not in relationship with others and our activities and assignments are very simple, we can let go of time and experience this present moment as the actual, real moment, before we start to think and write a story. How much longer is this gosh-darn period? Did the jikido fall asleep? I can't wait for lunch, and I hope we're having that delicious baked tempeh. Wait -- what am I doing? Let go of that thought. Back to zazen. As soon as we do let go, we stop comparing this moment to any other moment, and time ceases to flow, whether quickly or slowly. Yes, at some point the bell will ring for lunch, and we will do our job and bring in the food, but there is really only now. "When we don’t measure time, it passes of its own accord," Okumura Roshi says. "There is no self which is observed or measures the time. If we sit trying to measure the time, it is really nonsense. The important point is to give up that kind of self power effort."
That brings us to the other reason that sesshin is not an endurance test. If there is no "I" then there is no one making an effort, whether to speculate about time, overcome obstacles, manage pain or avoid falling asleep. This is not to say that we shouldn't take care of our bodies; they are, after all, the ground of our practice. However, it's not a matter of gritting our teeth, telling ourselves we can do it, and getting through somehow using our own willpower. Zazen shows us that struggle comes from our own ideas about difficulty and our resistance to things that are other than the way we want them. As soon as there's a struggle, there's an I struggling against an object. We forget that we don't sit zazen as individuals, and we don't do sesshin as individuals, and we're not in relationship with others. When we give up the separation, we can see the limits of the small self and instead immerse ourselves in the universal self.
What a conundrum! This is why we need to investigate the teaching that the self that doesn't interact with others includes everything. The energy that drives our zazen or sesshin practice comes from the place before we create separation between subject and object or self and other. Until we understand this teaching, we can believe that patience, endurance or toughness is the basis of our motivation to practice. We certainly need intention, aspiration and focus, because practice isn't easy. The problem is that endurance is based on an I that wants to achieve something, and we have to do some careful discernment about our desire to come to sesshin and what we may be looking to get from it.
Since we can't power through on our own, at some point during the sesshin we probably give up the idea that endurance is necessary or even possible, and then the separation can dissolve. As individuals, we can't control what's happening, or make it better or even OK. In fact, much of our struggle is the result of retaining this individual approach and being deceived by our delusions into thinking that liking and disliking will help or that we should be creating some perfect conditions that don't involve daydreaming or sleeping on the cushion. Waking up from the fiction of small self and seeing that zazen is the only reality is the opportunity sesshin offers to us. Uchiyama Roshi called this becoming submerged in zazen, or just sitting. It's possible then to see how "enduring" sesshin doesn't make sense. “I just have to hang on for one more period -- then I can go to sleep,” reflects an important misunderstanding about sesshin.
