Modern Wood Chopping

In our Thursday evening sittings at University of Toronto, I like to keep things simple and easy to understand. When we sit, we are completely sitting and present; when walking, we enjoy the process of walking as though it were "for the very first time". As I was saying to one of the other members and volunteers in the group, there are times when the students will leave for quite a while and then suddenly come back to practice, after many years in a "hiatus" from meditation. We mutually concluded that the complexity of life and its changes can often take a person away from a daily or regular practice of anything, not only meditation.

In Chan and Enlightenment, Master Sheng Yen reminds his audience of a time when life was much simpler for the ancient Chan masters (p.191). He suggests that ancient Chan masters had to practice flexibly in their daily lives by applying their methods to chopping wood, and other chores. While this is wonderful in its simplicity, I do still wonder how the principle of doing things one at a time can apply to certain creative endeavors, where people often think "in parallel" or synthesize different ideas across different disciplines. It can become harder to find time to calm the mind when we are often asked to market ourselves to think beyond our current ways.

 It almost seems as though, in the absence of huge blocks of time to go on retreats or even meditate regularly, individuals do need to find ways to at least extend a basic discipline or attitude into their daily life, whether it's mindfully and slowly turning on one's computer at work (as our recent visiting teacher Chang Hu Fashi suggested) or just dropping what we are occupied with to listen to the person beside us. These moments of time are so important because they remind us that we are not our thoughts, as one of the practitioners tonight was suggesting. We may have negative thoughts, but those thoughts are not our true selves.

I may not be exposed in my work to "chopping wood" or carrying wood, as Chan Masters did, but what would be the equivalent in modern contexts? Perhaps it is going to the photocopier to make copies! This too requires full attention and a meaningful presence to prevent our minds from going on autopilot. There are certainly always ways to extend the simplicity of doing one thing at a time, even in our technological world.

Sheng Yen (2014) Chan and Enlightenment. Taipei: Dharma Drum Publications