Intet særligt ved det
Ingen bog har haft større betydning for mig end Charlotte Joko Becks ‘Nothing Special.’ Jeg læste den på det helt rigtige tidspunkt i starten af min praksis, og den ramte mig som en hammer (der var meget i den bog, jeg ikke havde spor lyst til at forholde mig til, men jeg resonerede dybt med den uanset).
Joko praktiserede og underviste shikantaza, en form for zen-meditation hvor opmærksomheden er helt åben, inkluderende og hvor man “bare sidder” uden et særligt objekt for meditationen. Indsigter kommer, men ikke engang de er særligt betydningsfulde i denne tradition. Det handler om opmærksomhed og den ild den brænder med:
“Practice is simply maintaining awareness—of our activities and also of the thoughts that separate us from our activities. As we hammer nails or sit, we simply hammer nails or sit. Since our senses are open, we hear and feel other things as well: sounds, smells, and so on. When thoughts arise, we notice them, and return to our direct experience. Awareness is our true self; it’s what we are. So we don’t have to try to develop awareness; we simply need to notice how we block awareness, with our thoughts, our fantasies, our opinions, and our judgments. We’re either in awareness, which is our natural state, or we’re doing something else. The mark of mature students is that most of the time, they don’t do something else. They’re just here, living their life. Nothing special. When we become open awareness, our ability to do necessary thinking gets sharper, and our whole sensory input becomes brighter, clearer. After a certain amount of sitting, the world looks brighter, sounds are sharper, and there’s a richness of sensory input, which is just our natural state if we are not blocking out experience with our tense, worrying minds.”
Joko taler meget om dukkha (“suffering” i hendes sprog). Og hun bemærker selv, at hendes elever nogle gange beklager sig over det 🙂 Men hendes udgangspunkt var, at vi er nødt til at lære af dukkha. Og så kommer glæden:
“Practice is about dealing with suffering. It’s not that the suffering is important or valuable in itself, but that suffering is our teacher. It’s the other side of life, and until we can see all of life, there’s not going to be any joy. To be honest, sesshin [retreat] is controlled suffering. We get a chance to face our suffering in a practice situation. As we sit, all the traditional attributes of a good Zen student come under fire: endurance, humility, patience, compassion. These things sound great in books, but they’re not so attractive when we’re hurting. That’s why sesshin ought not to be easy: we need to learn to be with our suffering and still act appropriately. When we learn to be with our experience, whatever it is, we are more aware of the joy that is our life.”
Og endelig havde Joko en konstant orientering mod det vi kunne kalde det mere “psykologiske” aspekt af mennesket, og hvordan det i sig selv er en udfordring, vi skal arbejde med (måske i Vesten mere end noget sted):
“The only thing that matters is awareness of what’s going on. When we get into ideals and guilt, decisions themselves become difficult, because we don’t see how we’re caught in our worries: “Is it going to benefit me? What will happen? Is it really a good move? Is my life going to be more secure, more wonderful, more perfect?” Those are the wrong questions. What are the right questions? And what are the right decisions? We can’t say in advance, but at some point, we will know, if we don’t get caught up in the guilt, the ideals, and the perfectionism we usually bring to our decisions. Sitting is about this kind of clarification. “
Joko selv var en interessant, og lidt usædvanlig, dharma-lærer i den forstand, at hun først begyndte at praktisere i 40’erne, men alligevel blev den foretrukne elev af Hakuyū Taizan Maezumi (som hun senere brød med). Jeg ved ikke, om det er medvirkende til, at hendes tilgang til praksis altid var meget jordbunden (der var en klar erindring om livet før).
For mig er Nothing Special en tekst jeg vender tilbage til igen og igen, hvis jeg har brug for klart og simpelt at blive mindet om, hvad det er vores praksis i kernen handler om (i hvert fald hvad den handler om for mig); at udvide containeren, skabe mere plads, leve større, kærligere og mere rummelige liv, at tjene livet bedre.
“Enlightenment is, after all, simply an absence of any concern for self. Don’t come to this center to feel better; that’s not what this place is about. What I want are lives that get bigger so that they can take care of more things, more people.”
“Enlightenment is the ability to give totally in every second. It’s not about having some great experience. Such moments may occur, but they don’t make an enlightened life. We need to ask, “What does it mean for me to give in this moment?” For example, when the phone rings, how can we give? When doing physical work—cleaning, painting, cooking—what does it mean to give totally? Though we can’t make ourselves into totally giving persons just by thinking, we can notice when we don’t totally give. We hide our self-centered motivations from ourselves; practice helps us to realize just how self-centered we are. The truth is that at any moment, we are as we are. We need to experience this, to know our thoughts and bodily feelings, and then slowly our experience can turn itself over. We don’t have to do it. It just turns itself over. We can’t make ourselves be a certain way. To imagine otherwise is one of the biggest traps in practice. But we can notice our intolerance and unkindness, our laziness and the other games we play. As we notice how we really are, things slowly begin to turn—as they are with many of my students. It is wonderful to see. When the turnover happens, the kindness or givingness spreads. That’s what practice is about. Instead of a new ideal—“I don’t want to visit him this afternoon, but I should be giving”—we act, and experience what goes on with us. So please: give, give, give—and practice, practice, practice. It is the Way.”
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