How To Drink Water

                 I am still reflecting on yesterday’s Buddhist talk, as well as today’s application of Chan/mindfulness at work and in daily life. I admit that I find it very difficult to implement mindfulness and spiritual practices simply by following a set of principles. I think the principles can form a scaffolding through which faith in a practice needs to be the core. In fact, I have a nagging suspicion that faith in mind is far more important to sustaining a spiritual practice, as opposed to simply having intellectual understandings of practice. I want to describe what I mean in terms of my own experiences.

                Ever since I started to practice meditation, I have gradually learned to tell the difference between grasping a thought (which is short lived) and resting upon a kind of bed-rock awareness. This awareness actually is not attained. It is like: if I were to tell you it is difficult to drink water, what would you think? Your first impression might be to say that it isn’t drinking water that is difficult, but it is my thought that makes it difficult! Maybe I am overthinking the process of drinking water, so it seems difficult. But the point of this example is to say that being is natural, and we are always inter-being. We don’t need to make a special effort to connect, when the connection already pre-exists. Then the question  becomes, why do we over-think?

                I believe that the biggest impediment to practicing is the thought that there is an enormous mountain to scale before I can realize the mind that I have. But in Chan traditions, I have heard the story of someone who was enlightened when he realized that his nostrils point downward. Is this possible? But this realization is not as easy as it seems.  It is like realizing what I had all along but forgot through force of habit or a kind of sleep-inducing state. The story inspires me to have more confidence that the mind is not really obstructed by anything. It does whatever cause and conditions require, yet it is not bound by causes and conditions. Here is another analogy: when the water runs down a stream, what does it do when it encounters rocks or a tree trunk? Does the water try to avoid the rocks? Will the water shatter when it hits the rocks? In fact, the water flows into the rocks and finds any possible direction to accommodate the rock. It surrounds the rocks and trees. And as soon as the rock is surmounted, the water goes back to its shape before. But in all this process, is water anything but water? Its nature remains the same, no matter what is thrown into the river. Yet it is so perfectly accommodating of every condition, that one would have to say the water has no conflict with anything.

                When I talk about ‘faith’ in the mind, what I realize is that the mind is going to accord with the conditions, regardless of whether I have faith or not. Water is water, whether I think it is or not. It is the same with belief. The mind doesn’t depend on belief in mind, or any other thought. I don’t need to sustain a certain kind of belief in something for mind to appear. So what would faith mean, in this case? It means, for me, that if I am stuck in the thought, I can be aware that the thought is not the real mind. It is just the thought. The same is true with feelings, and other kinds of phenomena. There is nothing really ‘sticking’ mind anywhere. So if I experience a tightness or tension, the faith is to know that it is like the water and the rocks. Mind accommodates the tension the way water accommodates any rocks in its path, but mind is not stuck in tension. It is just following the function, to be aware of the tension arising in that moment. Then the same goes with relaxation, or happiness, or any other mental and emotional states. These phenomena are just reflections of mind. They are not confining the mind or challenging the mind. In reality, even the rocks are part of the mind. So what, you might ask?

                I feel that it is important to relax and let one’s being go into this experience,  to submerge in this concept, or to be with this concept for a while. Even in the direst state, there is some fundamental knowing that is not contained in that state. It is like in a painting. We see details, but we also need to see the background of the canvas to know the whole painting. I can pretend that I understand everything using thoughts. But this will only submerge me in dualistic thinking. I think “I got it this time”, but what I got was comparing this thought  to a previous thought. What does “I got it” mean without the “I didn’t have it before?” So if I am trying to grasp that ‘I got it moment’, then that is the time to let go. Keep letting go until you can see that your mind is more than the thoughts. It is a kind of elusive ‘more’ that contains everything but is nothing. Again, think of water.

                If I were to worry about changing the current feeling from ‘bad’ to ‘good’, where does that get me? It’s okay because it can help me to be a better person in society, by cultivating pleasant feelings in myself and my surroundings. But I don’t believe that the ultimate goal is to seek these pleasant feelings. I think the main point is to always look toward the true mind, no matter what feelings are there. There is no ultimate value holding onto one kind of feeling or even training myself to like a certain feeling. It is only going to divert energy away from knowing the true mind. This is how to keep going back to the water, instead of focusing on the passing rocks and debris. This debris won’t last forever, and if cling to it indefinitely, I will never understand the nature of mind. I have to remind myself of this every day. And most importantly, that having a practice method in meditation allows me to drink the water rather than just staring at the word ‘water’.