It would surely enrich our practice, as well as our lives, to stay fully present in every moment in all phases of life, especially some of the more unwelcome: washing dishes, the reckless driver who cuts in front of us, the surly store clerk, the noisy neighbor who “disturbs” our meditation. I put “disturb” in quotes because I remember my sense of amazement upon reading many years ago about a Zen master who lived in a Chicago apartment over which an “L” train frequently rumbled and clambered—and this without disturbing his meditation!
To be fully present is an occasion for aesthetic appreciation and enrichment. To pause, to be quiet and still, and to be attentive to the beauty, say, of a lofty eucalyptus tree, a spray of colorful bougainvillea, a pelican diving for fish in the ocean, clouds drifting high up in a blue sky, the laughter of children, or just a momentary drop of experience itself, which brings to mind the famous saying in Goethe’s Faust: “Then, to the present moment I might say, Abide, you are so fair!”1
While fully present we can optimize the moments when we choose and decide—the open moments when we exercise our wonderful power to live a life of freedom and choice. (The great Yiddish writer, Isaac Beshevis Singer, when asked if we have free will, said, “Of course, we don’t have any other choice!”)
In the spirit of unity, knowing that God is in us and that we are in God, we see the love and light of God’s Presence in other persons. There is a Zen saying: “Be very clear about this. A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.”
Speaking of Zen, the notion of being fully present brings to mind the Buddhist idea of mindfulness, one-pointedness, and the emphasis placed on doing one thing at a time. To concentrate single-mindedly and whole-heartedly on one thing or activity—this is the spirit behind Dogen’s shikantaza2 (just sitting). When sitting in zazen, you are just to sit; when working in the kitchen, you are to do just that; when chopping wood, you are just to chop wood. As Mozart might have said, we are to be natural and not be flat.
This state of consciousness—of being fully absorbed in an activity yet, at the same time, to have one’s feet solidly on the ground—has been the occasion for enlightenment for many Zen monks. In The Gateless Barrier, in his discussion of Case 5 of this famous koan collection, Robert Aitken describes such an occasion:
One day the Zen monk Xiangyan3 was sweeping up fallen leaves. The bamboo broom caught a stone and it sailed through the air and hit a stalk of bamboo with a clear sound: Tock! With that tock! he was awakened. Hurrying to his hut, he bathed and then offered incense and bowed in the direction of his Master’s temple, crying out aloud, “Your kindness is greater than that of my parents. If you had explained it to me, I would never have known this joy.”
Xiangyan was fully present in the present moment when he heard the sound of the stone hitting bamboo, thus allowing this unexpected event to accomplish its work, breaking once and for all the spell of space and time. Tock!
擊!4
Notes
1. Goethe’s Faust, Part I, Lines 1699-1700. In the original German:
Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen:
Verweile dock! du bist so schön!
2. Shikantaza (只管打坐).
3. Full name: Xiāngyán Zhìxian (香嚴智閑) circa 820-898.
4 . 擊! is Tock! . . . 一擊意忘 . . . One tock! and knowledge is forgotten.
HyC