ZEN
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Article Links:
Jesus as Zen Master
by Mike Young

Zen and the Art of Dying
by Hal W. French

Some Rambles Inspired by Taoism and Zen
by Raymond Smullyan

The Yin-Yang and Outside Influences
by Don Freda

Resource Links
Books:
A Preacher's Poems
by Mike Young

Zen and the Art of Anything, Third Edition
by Hal W. French

A Spiritual Journey
by Raymond M. Smullyan

Rambles Through My Library
by Raymond M. Smullyan

The Tao is Silent
by Raymond Smullyan

Who Knows: A Study of Religious Consciousness
by Raymond Smullyan

This Book Needs No Title
by Raymond Smullyan

Outside Influences
by Don Freda

Zen and the Art of Happiness
by Chris Prentiss

The Way of Zen
by Alan W. Watts

The Wisdom of Insecurity
by Alan W. Watts

An Introduction to Zen Buddhism
by D. T. Suzuki

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
by Shunryu Suzuki

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert M. Pirsig

Zen in the Art of Archery
by Eugen Herrigel and
D. T. Suzuki

Video DVDs:
Rambles, Reflections, Music and Readings
by Raymond Smullyan (free courtesy of the pianosociety.com)

Zen Noir
a film by Marc Rosenbush

Audio CD:
Out of Your Mind
by Alan W. Watts

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Now that may be stating it a little pushier than most people would be comfortable with, but it is not a uniquely Buddhist or Zen idea. Other traditions have come at it from different angles, from differing analysis, and using different language. But the basic idea is common to most of the great religious teachers of our species.

Jesus said, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you.” He said, “Take no thought for the morrow. Let the evils of the day be sufficient there to.” He also said, “Be ye perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” Then he adds the next line, which the moralists always leave out “. . . for He makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.”

St. Paul says, in his letter to the church at Phillippi, “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.”

The same idea as in the Zen aphorism is in the Power of Positive Thinking material albeit in a somewhat distorted fashion. It is part of the kernel of truth in the New Age notion that you create your own reality.

The problem with most of the formulations of it is that they seem to be saying that your suffering is your own damned fault. Suffering is NOT our fault. It is not that we choose to suffer. It is that no one has ever taught us how to choose not to. Not that we opt for it, but that we don't opt not. There is a way not to suffer. Most of us don't know it. Or, knowing it, don't believe it's possible for us.

Or, we reject it because we demand to be shut out of both pain and suffering or we're not interested.

Or, we reject it because it is couched in language that seems to demand that—like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland—we must believe at least six impossible things before breakfast.

Or, because it asks of us some discipline; and we humans are notorious for presuming to prefer the comfort of familiarity, even if it happens to hurt.

Or, because it is a religious idea, and if I can't do it immediately I must lack faith; and besides, I am not a religious person.

Or, we ask, “Why me?” As if we were somehow singled out for unique and special treatment that no one else has ever experienced. Indeed, for some of us, our special chosenness for suffering may be the only specialness we feel.

There is a story in the Buddhist literature about a lady who comes to the Buddha to ask that her suffering be taken away, for her child has just died. Buddha says to her, “I will take your suffering away; but first I want you to go through the village and ask until you find someone who has never lost a loved one.”

She goes through the village asking, “Anyone not have someone die?” She comes back to the Buddha and says, “Thank you.”

But there is a way not to suffer. It may be possible to hear it anew by hearing it from a different point of view. This is one of the values of inter-religious studies. It often gives us alternate language, ideas, ways of looking and saying, that open up things we already know in some new ways.

Siddhartha Gautama Shakyamuni Buddha began with the recognition that all life entails pain. From the pain of birth to the pain of death; accident, injury, disease, aging, dying. But also hurt feelings, disappointment, not getting what you want . . . and getting it. Fear of what will or won't happen. And also loss; all of the ways in which those ragged holes get torn in the fabric of our lives and the poignant pain of the missing, missing other. The death, abandonment, leaving and changing of loved ones. And, of course our empathy and compassion for all of the above when they happen to those with whom we identify.

Buddha recognized that suffering is the result of our habits of mind in responding to that pain. It is not the pain that causes the suffering. It is our habits of mind in responding to pain that causes the suffering.

The point of Buddhist transcending of suffering is not anesthesia. Unfortunately, much that passes for a description of Buddhist thought in our culture for years has seen Buddhism as a way being totally indifferent, of not emotionally responding. Buddhism is portrayed as a kind of emotional anesthesia that avoids all problems by simply not letting yourself become involved in them at all.

It is not a question of getting yourself not to feel pain anymore. Indeed, our usual response to pain, the indulging, wallowing in it, grasping . . . or pushing away, all produce suffering. But these responses also tend to numb us. And, in some ways, this is what we are after in the wallowing, obsessing, the grasping and pushing away. We are seeking the numbing that leaves us not feeling the pain so acutely.

In Buddhism, transcending suffering may well result in our feeling the pain that is inevitable even MORE acutely. Hence, the centrality in Buddhism of compassion, not indifference. But, if it means feeling pain more acutely, it also means feeling JOY more acutely. For, the anesthesia we have the habit of doing to ourselves to shut off our pain results also in shutting off much—if not all—of the playfulness and joyousness of life.

So, how do you do it? How do you not opt for suffering? If pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional, how do you exercise your option NOT to suffer? The discipline involved—and there IS discipline involved—is not some alien, exotic or esoteric act. You are not required to believe ANYTHING. You have only to DO it.

However, it can sound like there is a lot of stuff you have to believe when the discipline is couched in the terms of Eastern Religion. Many a religious entrepreneur couches it so on purpose in their own particular esoteric language on the interesting assumption that you wouldn't buy it without that glitzy wrapping. Just so, many people have bought the sizzle and never tasted the steak.

There are two parts to this discipline. If you do only the first part, the result is mere happiness. If you do both, the result is joy.

Each of you have already experienced part of it. You have all, at some time or other, had a pain. Something hurt! And, for reasons beyond your control, you were distracted from it. Later you realized that while you were distracted from it, the pain went away. That's the key: Learning to make that shift of attention voluntary and conscious.

The habit of mind to which most of us, most of the time, are prone is to cast our attention upon the wind. It flits here. It flies there. It flees into the past to savor old wounds.

My father had a gold tooth. I was fascinated with it. I said, “How do I get a gold tooth?” He said, “It's easy to get a gold tooth. All you have to do is, when one of your teeth falls out, don't put your tongue in the space. . . and you'll get a gold tooth.” Isn't this what we so often do with our cherished old hurts? We just keep sticking the tongue into the space.

Our attention flees into the future to fret about possible new hurts; wrapping our lives in layer after layer of cottony anxiety, might-be's and might-have-beens, re-runs and pre-views. One of the things our attention does with marvelous efficiency is that it locks on pain and sticks like glue. Most of us have never considered disciplining it because we have mistaken that flighty, obsessive “drunken monkey” for WHO WE ARE. But it's not who we are. It is simply one function of your brain, and you CAN control it! You're just not in the habit of doing so.

That's the first step. When pain happens, NOTICE it. It's a signal. A piece of information. Hear it. Do what is appropriately do-able, if anything. If you are sitting on a tack, get off the tack! And don't sit down again until you have removed it.

Having done the do-able, RELEASE the pain. You heard and responded to the message. You do not have to run it again and again like an old tape. You heard it. You responded. Now, let go of it.

And finally, SHIFT your attention somewhere else. Put it on what you need to do next and do that with full awareness.

That's it. Notice, Release, Shift. It works. And it works immediately. Oh, not forever. Some pains return and you'll have to Notice, Release and Shift your attention again. And like any habit or skill, you'll get better at it the more you practice it; and, if you don't practice it, you won't get better at it. But you don't have to wait until all the habits of suffering have been overcome, until you've finally reached enlightenment and Nirvana.

This is one of the excuses we give ourselves for avoiding the discipline involved in this kind of change. We say, “Well, yeah. I could become a monk somewhere and invest my whole life and I'd finally get to the place where people talking cross to me wouldn't hurt my feelings anymore; but that's a lot of investment.” So we don't do it.

I said earlier that there are two pieces. That's the first piece:

Notice, Release, Shift attention. The second is like unto it. That is: Move your attention off yourself.

There is a rare disease wherein the victim literally doesn't feel pain. The sensors that we take for granted in fingers, skin and innards don't send their usual message. It is not a blessing; it is life threatening. Lepers and hemophiliacs have similar problems. These people have to be taught and learn a regular discipline of checking themselves to be sure that they have not inadvertently injured themselves. In a moment—if unnoticed—they could bleed to death. So they must repeat the discipline as a ritual many times
during a day.

But most of us don't have to do that! You can trust the pain. Put it on automatic. It will BEEP! you.

Constantly monitoring our own mere happiness we only notice when we're not. Watching always for lack, all we see is lack. Especially when you're in one of those moods when every single deficit you can possibly imagine seems to flow effortlessly right into your mind.

Move your attention off yourself and onto other people, onto other activities, onto almost anything other than self-monitoring. Lose yourself in something. Sound familiar?

There are two pieces. Move your attention off your pain. Move your attention off your self. The first tends to take away the suffering. The second tends to keep it away. The first yields mere happiness, which doesn't last. The second yields JOY, which does.

Pain is inevitable. We will not escape pain. All of that list we began with . . . will still happen. The Jobs of this world will still sit on the ash heap trying to figure out why it is that pain has come to them. Instead, neither grasping our pain, nor pushing it away—both ways of obsessing and wallowing—we can OPT for less suffering.

Not no pain. But very likely less pain.

We will still die. As Edna St. Vincent Millay says, “I know that I must die, and this I will do for death: I will die. But no more. I am not in his employ.”

We will still get sick. But very likely less often and less severely. It is pretty clear these days that our own habits of mind—those downer, negative, obsessed with lack and deficit mental attitudes—have the ability to cripple our own body's natural healing mechanism. The discipline I have described is one of the techniques used in pain management clinics. In different language, it is one of the ways taught various places for boosting your body's immune response.

We will still age. But we need not stop being alive. There has, indeed, been observed a very high correlation between those who in old age are still alert, attentive and embracing life, and staying engaged, active, involved with other people.

With our attention off ourselves, we will even be far less easily offended or have our feelings hurt. And when we do, we will know whose problem it is.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is a set of habits of mind that we have unconsciously and passively learned for how we will respond to those inevitable pains that life throws our way. Because they are learned, we can learn a different set. We are incredibly efficient learning machines. If I didn't know it before, doing the parenting thing all over again with my grandson, Jot, is reminding me.

In the past, we learned those habits along with the air we inhaled; from parents, each other, the culture out there, from what seemed to work once upon a time. It is possible to take control of your own attention and fairly quickly learn to free your own attention from that flighty wind that flits it here and there. You can free it from that tendency to focus on hurt and pain and lack.

In that moving of your own attention off the pain, and finally off oneself, is the opportunity to become aware of who we really are and how we are really connected; and then to learn to live out of that awareness.

In meditation as in life,
We are forever being drawn into
A past of if-only, of guilt, of nostalgia;
Into a future of anxiety, of anticipation—
Into re-run and pre-view—
And we are forever having to let go
And return to be centered in the moment.

About the author:

Mike Young has been the minister of the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu since 1995. Rev. Young is a graduate of the University of Redlands and of Andover Newton Theological School. Moreover, he has been the recipient of a number of honors and awards for community service.

Although Rev. Young is not formally authorized to teach in any Buddhist tradition, he studied under Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, one of the largest Buddhist sanghas outside Asia. Suzuki Roshi is also author of the modern Zen Buddhist classic, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

This article is reprinted with permission from a sermon delivered by Rev. Young on November 12, 1995. A more complete biography of Rev. Young along with links to his sermons (in either text or MP3 format) are accessible from the home page of the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu.