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Read the whole articles. They are beyond belief. Show your breast to pass your koan. On top of that: “Outside the sexual things that happened,” the woman now in San Francisco said, “my relationship with him was one of the most important I have had with anyone.” Sure thing. Because he cared. What’s almost worse is how many of his disciples defended him. Can anyone really believe that such a person would have integrated a genuine spiritual insight into their daily life? If you do, I doubt you’ll want to read my book or have anything to do with this center. Here I give a quote from Cabeza:

 

"Yes, I too was once one of those suckers—I mean acolytes. Not that bad, but still. But before we begin I want to make two things absolutely clear. One, I am not, nor have I been for over two decades, a Zen Buddhist. I am not a anything. Two, Zen is not all bad. And it is hard for me to find fault with the core teaching that what we really are, our True Nature, is an overarching Reality of inestimable importance. And that meditation is of great help in coming to understand that. Some people who have “practiced” Zen have, to one degree or another, experienced . . . Truth . . . the Whole . . . the IT. It’s just that . . . unfortunately, as always when humans are con­cerned . . . the devil is in the details. Those “minor” details, of course, of wanting and fearing."

 

The five “Masters” I discuss are hardly on the same degenerate level as this one. But still, for all of them, it comes down to nobody is practicing what they preach. And what is even worse, it seems none of them are reflecting on the contradiction — which suggests they aren’t even sitting much — between their words and actions, and their preaching. Why?

 

I take that back: exhorting one’s students and the Japanese people to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the Emperor and so the Japanese people can control the world is pretty darned degenerate. Cabeza, the chapter Guru II, discussing what I’d learned about Philip Kapleau’s two Japanese Zen “Masters,”  who were praised to the hilt in The Three Pillars of Zen (I’m comparing Japan to a hive of bees):

 

Zen at War, by Brian Victoria, himself a Zen priest. I wonder if Kapleau put it on his reading list before he died. I kinda doubt it.

      Harada Roshi, 1934 (p137): “The Japanese people are a chosen people whose mission is to control the world.”

      Harada Roshi, 1939 (p137): “The unity of Zen and war . . . extends to the farthest reaches of this holy war [then against the Chinese and soon against the world].”

      Harada Roshi, 1943 (p138; the war is not going well): “We must push on in apply­ing ourselves to ‘combat Zen,’ the king of meditation.”

      Harada Roshi, 1944 (p138; things are getting desperate): “It is necessary for all 100 million subjects [read drones and workers] of the Emperor [read queen bee] to be prepared to die with honor . . . isn’t the purpose of zazen [meditation] . . . to pre­pare . . . for this?”

      And his chief disciple Yasutani Roshi (p167) “was, in postwar years, ‘no less a fanati­cal militarist and anti-Communist’ (i.e. anti-Chinese).” But Victoria adds, Ya­sutani (no dummy he) carefully edited and tailored his pronouncements to his Western students (he led meditation training in United States a number of times). I suppose such statements he made in Japan as “The universities we presently have [in Japan, supporting peace in Vietnam, etc.] must be smashed one and all (p168)” might not have been that big a hit on American campuses.

      Finally, Harada Roshi, 1939 (p137): “[If ordered to] march—tramp tramp; or shoot—bang bang. This is the manifestation of the Highest Wisdom.”     

      Yes. Be one with the moment. Right.

      Kapleau, in The Three Pillars, writes that in addition to his deep spirituality Ha­rada Roshi had his human side. He loved children and dogs. Just like his ally Adolf Hitler (nice blue-eyed, blond-haired children for the latter; black-haired, brown-slant-eyed children for the former?)

      Ah yes, the fundamental unity of all life. In more ways than one.

      And here again we see that the whole purpose of religion, or “religion” . . . is for reproductive suc­cess.

 

Reproductive success, you ask? Well, we’ll get to that. For those of you who have read Philip Kapleau’s Three Pillars of Zen, note that 1935 was when Harada was counseling his ardent disciple Yaeko Iwasaki with all sorts of beautiful and inspiring words about Buddhahood and enlightenment. Kinda hard to reconcile with the above. . . .                    

 

 

I rejoined the Zen Center seven years later and then was one of the founding members — and joined staff — of the Springwater Center, formed when Kapleau’s chief disciple Toni Packer decided to split and form her own center. But, for reasons detailed in the chapter Guru III, I left in 1986. More on the Springwater Center below.

 

So getting back to sitting, if you read The Three Pillars of Zen you’ll find it described precisely how to meditate: First you count your breaths up to 10 and start over, then you follow, or experience, your breathing, then you work on a koan (which I won’t attempt to describe) or practice shikan-taza. The last literally means just sitting and is closest to what I do . . . except. In all of these practices you are supposed to perform them ardently, with the most intense possible concentration. For example, Dogen, who is credited with bringing Zen to Japan from China in the 13th century, wrote: “Must we not pursue the way of seated meditation as urgently as if rescuing our heads from a fire?” And in The Three Pillars of Zen it’s described similarly: Philip Kapleau would say one must struggle with all one’s might and main. And at retreats (sesshin) the little Zen ditty would be repeated: “Strive through the night / With every breath / That you may wake / Past day, past death.”

 

But how does one attain that state of ardent striving? It’s an act of will. An act by what Beethoven called the finite being. While I don’t doubt that some may obtain spiritual experiences of sorts in this manner, it leaves the finite being, the self, the little me, undisturbed. Untouched. And this is why none of those teachers practice what they preach. All their sitting has really just reinforced the will, what I call the unfree will which is programmed by  . . . well, I’ll get to that a little bit further down.

 

Here’s a description from Cabeza how I myself, after my first wife left me, used my unfree will to obtain “enlightenment”:

 

She was gone . . . and I was devastated . . . no, terrified . . . of being alone . . .

. . . But [I did not practice] through a koan. I visualized infinite love and compassion. I knew it was there, but I did not feel it. So I imagined what it would be like to know it. I imagined it flowing through me as I rode my bike to work, as I met the other drivers, as I boarded and checked out the bus [I was driving a school bus at that time]. Imagined it flowing through my arm as I opened the door and as I closed it. Flowing through the children as they boarded. Lovingness . . . without object, without self, without resistance, without wanting, without fear­ing. And as I rode home . . . flowing through the clouds, and through the sun, and through the cars, and through the streets, and through the houses. . . . And the shell . . . began to crack. To dissolve. The cage door to swing wide . . . until . . . finally . . . home in my empty house. . . . . .

      I have never known, before or since, such joy. I was crying, laughing, and pound­ing on the floor in uproarious paroxysms of bliss. There was no me! Never, ever, ever, never, ever had there been a me. The oh-so-separate self I’d been defend­ing at such cost: Gone. Only joy and love.

      But. . . . in time . . . I could still feel the old anxiety start to rear its head in the background.

 

The old anxiety started to rear its head again BECAUSE I had used my unfree will try to make the fear of being alone go away. In fact I had really reinforced the unfree will. And I am very certain that that same anxiety was there in the background of all the teachers I discuss — though they would do their best to ignore it; Philip Kapleau would dismissively say things like “How can you fall out of the universe?” to attempt to assuage the fear in others that he never wanted to know about in himself. See Cabeza for more details on this.

 

Other paths suggest all sorts of methods such as mantras, mandalas, chanting Hare Krishna. In the introduction to The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, John Blofeld writes that in China more people came to “enlightenment” by reciting namu amida Butsu (for short, nembutsu) — which means I relinquish myself to Amitabha Buddha. This might not be too bad . . . except, for myself at least (and I’ve tried all of the above methods and more) in time the unfree will would take over, just reinforcing its own defenses. Cabeza:

 

Maybe I’m just too screwed up. Maybe those techniques work for others. I don’t know. But I did see many give it up; I sense that many, including Zen “masters,” sooner or later reach a point of resistance beyond which they are unwilling to go (see the Guru chapters). Those techniques in my view are just something else for the self to cling to. For me it is clear my will would always take over, because I wanted so badly to get out of the trap. I worked very hard at that first retreat . . . reinforcing the bars of my cage. The spiritual co-opted by the material, you could say.

 

And now we come to the ticklish point: what is that unfree will, that finite being, as Beethoven called it? In Cabeza I lead very slowly and carefully into this topic because I know everyone has tremendous resistance — in fact is programmed to have tremendous resistance — into truly accepting how deeply it affects their lives. Evolution. First, reflect on this: life has evolved on this planet for 3.8 billion years. Every one of us has billions of ancestors, leading back to the common ancestor of us all. And all of those ancestors had one thing in common: they got their genes, their DNA, or perhaps for the very first forms of life their RNA . . . into the next generation. They had what it takes not only to survive but to reproduce. But here’s the triple ticklish point: while most people will readily accept that their bodies are the product of evolution, it’s much harder to convince them that their very minds and their most deeply cherished behaviors are also. I go into this in depth but just reflect that the behavior of every creature has to be deeply wedded to their physical characteristics. Hummingbirds for example, have a long bills and the ability to hover so that they can extract nectar from flowers. They are attracted to nectar. Evolution has made them attracted to nectar.

 

Here are three examples for humans: First, all men’s eyes are attracted by women’s breasts. We just can’t help ourselves. Why? Because in humans, female humans, a firm upright breast is a sign of fertility. Men are constantly checking out which women are the most fertile, and therefore the ones most worthy of devoting time to seducing. For female chimpanzees, who have tiny breasts compared to female humans, their bottoms become engorged with blood, turning red, and this is the signal for males that they have entered into estrus and are fertile. Male chimpanzees don’t bother with them until that happens.

 

Hair. Human beings are the only animal for which their hair keeps growing, and growing, and growing. All other animals it reaches a certain length and falls out. This is an amazing trick of evolution called the handicap principle that seems counterintuitive, but we humans are forced to do something about our hair: tie it, braid it, cut it. Imagine, say, a woodchuck whose hair kept growing. It would die. But humans have evolved hands, the opposable thumb, and thus the ability to manipulate their environment in ways unimaginable by every other species. And by using our hands to do something about our hair, we reveal qualities about ourselves . . . our intelligence, our sensitivity, etc. — qualities that are desirable from the point of view of a prospective mate. Just think, what is the first thing you do in the morning, maybe even before you brush your teeth. You brush your hair. You check it a number of times during the day every time there’s a mirror or even a reflective pane of glass. We even have the phrase bad hair day. We know bad hair is not going to impress the opposite sex (or same sex, if that’s your orientation). Evolution has made you do this.

 

Sports. Humans are obsessed with sports. Especially team sports. Why? Because we evolved in hunter-gatherer bands that, just like chimpanzees, were in constant conflict with each other. If your band didn’t “win” you were all set up for extinction and your genes would not be passed on. Jane Goodall, and her student Richard Wrangham, observed this repeatedly in chimpanzees. In fact groups of males from one band would go into what looked almost exactly like a football huddle . . . before going off into another band’s territory. If they found a chimpanzee from that band that had made the mistake of wandering too far off by itself . . . they would attack it and literally tear it limb from limb. And when they were done they would jump up and down with such joy that it reminded the researchers of nothing less than a football team rejoicing after scoring a touchdown.

 

I will add here that if you have any objections with what I’m writing, they’ve almost certainly been dealt with in Cabeza. I just don’t have space here.

 

In discussing evolution in Cabeza I suggest that all human behavior fits roughly three categories: sex, status, and security, and I suggest the formula RS (reproductive success) = S3. But of course those categories overlap. To find a female willing to mate usually requires a man be able to provide her with security (for the children she will raise with him; male chimpanzees don’t bother; the female is on her own). He’s also much more attractive to her if he has high status of one form or another — could be money, could be inheritance, could be high IQ, could be physical strength — but some form of status is almost always required. In most human societies females do have choice of some kind.

 

So this is the root of the unfree will, the finite being. But as I keep saying over and over and over in Cabeza, isn’t there something, Something, more to a human being than what is programmed by the genes? This Something is what Beethoven called the infinite spirit.

 

And all the above masters I talk about are, often so pathetically, just acting out their evolutionary programming, their unfree will. Because that’s what got them their status in the first place.

 

So now we come back to the real meaning of sitting. And here I expect 99 out of 100, or 999 out of 1000 of those still reading this to click on a new tab after this sentence: The meaning, the purpose, of sitting is . . . to suffer. This is why Beethoven wrote, “endure without complaining.” I.e., suffering. Just sitting there, not using any sort of method or technique or practice, really JUST sitting — well, here’s another quote from The Unfree Will:

 

There is a book . . . The Art of Just Sitting, by Guru Shmuru Somebody: “When sitting, put aside all thought.” [It seems like all masters go on and on about how thought is bad.] Right on! I could not have put it better myself. Except. But.

      Why? Why do we think in the first place? Because, very, very simply, this is Homo sapiens’ way—and it has worked gloriously—of ensuring reproductive suc­cess. While it is generally believed our thinking, self-aware brain evolved partly to deal with the unique socially interactive situation of our species, that thinking also quite obviously led to all the technology from spear points to cell phones (which just happen to be our current substitute for the social grooming found in chimpanzee societies). And led to our conquering the planet. We think of ways to get what we want, and to avoid (or destroy, ameliorate, etc.) what we fear. Underlying virtually all our thoughts are wanting and fearing. Guru Shmuru neglected to mention that minor detail. I will add that a very significant proportion of our thoughts, as will be readily apparent to anyone who sits, relates to our performance vis-à-vis others: Did we say the right thing? What did they think of us? What should we have said to make them think better of us? What should we say the next time? How can we im­press them with our wit, our understanding, our erudition, our intelligence, our concern for them, or society, or the poor? Do we look handsome/attractive? How is our hair? One way or another, regardless how trivial, all our thoughts relate to re­productive success: i. e., Yes, we really will clean out the garage—so if someone sees it they won't think we’re a slob. Etc. If you aren't aware of this program operating constantly in the back­ground . . . you are probably living your unexamined life on autopilot. . . .

 

      . . . So, to give up the addiction to thought—if one were free of wanting and fearing, thinking could of course be merely an essential tool—the addiction to reacting to that wanting and fearing, and to abstain from the whole deal . . . feels like, and is from the point of view of the genes . . . death. One begins to sense, how­ever vaguely, that the individual, gene-created sense of self that one heretofore has devoted all ones energies to building up and perpetuating . . . is . . . in fact . . . nothing. Is, in fact, in time . . . doomed to perish. Eliot writes of “The growing terror of nothing to think about.” We think, therefore we are. And if we don’t think  . . . WHO are we then? This is the real wilderness. Most people avoid it like the plague. Eliot [T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets] also wrote: “You must go by a way in which there is no ecstasy.” (Hint: that’s an under­statement.) And St. John of the Cross, of the “Dark Night”: “It is a painful upheaval, stirring up a myriad of fears and delusions that battle inside the soul. . . . The sor­rowing and sighing of her spirit are so profound that they turn into a mighty roaring and bellowing. She is so powerfully wracked by pain that sometimes she cries out and dissolves in tears. . . .” Well, you get the idea. It is truly only for those who have no choice. Or, rather, those who know they have no choice . . . but to let the unfree will wither and die.

      And this is what being “one with the moment” is really all about. All you have to do is allow free won’t to operate, abstain from unfree willing, allow all the feelings of wanting and fearing profoundly programmed by our genes to come up to the sur­face without acting on or reacting to them, allow the whole body-mind to feel, if necessary, as if it’s experiencing nothing less than death itself . . . and there’s nothing to it.

      And, in this person’s view at least, there is nothing of greater import.

 

 

And this is what those noble souls Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert learned for themselves — because they had no choice — and revealed to us. As Beethoven wrote, “joy through pain.” And this is what he meant by “feel his worthlessness”: i.e. the worthlessness of the finite being. T.S. Eliot writes of “The intolerable shirt of flame / Which human power cannot remove.” Human power is ultimately worthless in the spiritual realm. But the infinite spirit? Cabeza again:

 

Now I imagine you, the reader, are likely thinking, “This is ridiculous! I’m not going to go through that!” Well, yes, I heartily applaud those sentiments . . . but . . . you are going to die sometime, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Why not get it out of the way ahead of time? Or at least get your reactions to it out of the way? Like a good Boy Scout: Be Prepared. But I understand. Nobody but nobody really believes they’re going to die. I will add that when sitting it may be helpful, at times, as an antidote to one’s innate resistance to imagine, with utmost delicacy, one’s self dissolving into Something all-loving, all-embracing, all-encompassing—call it whatever you wish:  God, the Whole, the IT—that Something expressed, for example, in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 and the third moment of the Ninth Symphony. Because that is what is happening. See “Me and the Moon,” and “The ‘Supernatural’ Saguaro.” But it is also necessary to allow all the fear of death deeply embedded in that self to come up. It is all too easy for the wanting and fearing will to take over any intentional practice. Perhaps the best antidote is just to listen, deeply and simply, from time to time, to the pieces discussed in this book [and at the Music of Cabeza page at this website]. And avoid as much as possible the stimuli of modern life that so reinforce the will.

 

This reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode I must have seen about 50 years ago. A 10-year-old boy has supernatural powers: he can see into the future. Every week he goes on TV and predicts something — say, an earthquake, a volcano, a stock market crash — and he is always right. Then one week he’s very troubled; he doesn’t know what to do . . . but he still goes on the show. He tells everyone the most wonderful thing is going to happen the very next day. And it will happen to everyone on earth, with no exceptions. The most wonderful, joyous event in the history of humankind. Afterwards his mother asks him to tell her what it is that’s going to happen, that’s so wonderful. He tells her: the sun is going to go nova and incinerate all life on earth.

 

Pardon me, I can’t help laughing as I dictate this. Gallows humor I guess. But this is really what sitting is all about. Allowing that infinite spirit to truly immolate that finite being that we cling to so desperately. That’s what all of those masters are so unwilling to do. So am I. But I’m working at it. I keep sitting . . . and sitting . . . and sitting. And that’s what I hope to convey to the one out of 1000 of you — perhaps my friend John — who is still reading this. Genuine spirituality that pervades one’s life . . . is possible. But it requires what Eliot calls “A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything).

 

I have several notebooks full of what I call Notes to Myself While Sitting. Lately I’ve been writing that the cost of not less than everything . . . keeps going up . . . and up . . . and up. I.e. I keep realizing how pervasive that finite being is, and how much further I have to go. But I keep at it. What choice do I have? See Me and the Moon.

 

So to summarize, when sitting and the thoughts are coming up like crazy, there is always emotion behind those thoughts. And it’s possible to allow oneself to feel those emotions directly . . . without the reaction of thought. Without any reaction. BUT . . . it’s not easy. In the slightest. Because some of those emotions, those fears, can seem unbelievably devastating. Cabeza again:

 

Christian mystic Teresa of Ávila, in The Book of My Life, describes what she calls the prayer of quiet and the prayer of union in very similar terms to what I call sitting. Unfortunately, there is a most promi­nent fly in the ointment of this book where she describes a vision she had of “Hell”: how utterly horrible it was and how grateful she is to God for “saving” her from that fate. I have had similar experi­ences but I know—despite a reaction as profoundly abhorrent as Teresa’s—that this is just the unfree will’s utter ab­ject terror at glimpsing its own dissolution. Teresa was unwilling to go there. So am I to a large degree, but if I am able to allow my mind to enter into these “hellish” states that feel like death, there may later arise a newfound sense of joy and inner freedom.

 

 

Just before I finished Cabeza I started having experiences I call a “descent into hell,” always as I was just dozing off for a nap. These states are like nothing I have ever experienced. They are unbelievably, infinitely devastating — to the little self. When I have them my only thought is, “OH! THIS is really the source of all my fears all my life!”

 

Also, the last few years I’ve been having what I call “wringer” nights. I sleep an hour, but then utterly devastating feelings start flowing through me. Again, it’s almost impossible to describe but I feel as if my mind is somehow being purified. In Handel’s Messiah one of my favorite parts includes the words from the Bible: “But who may abide the day of His coming. And who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner’s fire. And He shall purify. . . .” (I list the Messiah on my music page.) You could really call it a crucifixion of the self, a burning at the stake of the little me. Only in this way can there be an allowing of “the boundaries of the self to dis­solve, allowing Being to permeate being, and mind to know Mind. Nothing more . . . and nothing less. . . .” Of which, as I wrote above, Schubert showed me the way. And these wringer nights really, as I put it, wring out the self, and ring in the Truth. They pave the way for other experiences I have in sitting . . . of Mind . . . of Being.

 

And now we come to the ultimate ticklish point which nobody but nobody wants to know about. Cabeza: “. . . our lives . . . are not our own. . . . Never have they been . . . nor ever shall they be. . . .” In the description of spirituality in all Eastern paths that I have read about, there is always the emphasis to practice what they preach, and then you will know joy, you will know peace, you will know truth. You, you, you, or, as George Harrison so aptly put it: “All through the day, I me mine, I me mine, I me mine . . .” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with joy, or peace, or truth. They will come, in time. But to say this is why we are here, to have these groovy feelings, well, this is something I learned for myself — THE HARD WAY— is way off base. And this is why I included the second quote at the beginning of this page:

 

We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself. . . . that Cosmos,

ancient and vast, from which we spring.

 

—Carl Sagan

 

In all of Eastern religion there’s always the emphasis on the individual soul, or self, knowing God, or experiencing itself as one with the universe. Countless lifetimes we’re supposed to go through, over and over and over, until we find Nirvana and are released from Samsara. But how did this individual soul or self get here in the first place? Nobody mentions that. Well, I go into this deeply in Cabeza. Many scientists are convinced that this universe had to be tuned precisely right for life to evolve. SOMETHING made that possible. Stephen Hawking writes, in The Brief History of Time, “But what is it that breathes fire into the equations. Why does universe go to all the bother of existing?” I go into the latest and unutterably profound discoveries of neuroscience, relativity, and quantum mechanics. And also, most importantly, evolution. ALL of these point precisely to Sagan’s quote: “We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself . . .”

 

This is something that I, again, had to come to myself, on my own, starting several decades ago: That it just did not matter . . . what happened to me. That I was really just the representative of Mind, the vehicle, here on this tiny pale blue dot of earth in the vast emptiness of space, really just doing the best I could to “allow mind to know Mind. Allow Being to permeate being.”

 

Beethoven, on the sketch the first movement of what is probably his greatest work, the Ninth Symphony, wrote: “Despair!” Cabeza:

 

 The first movement begins with a quivering pianissimo of “open fifths,” i.e. cords without a major or minor third so, like parts of the last movement of the Schubert Sonata it’s beyond either “happy” or “sad.” And out of this little bit of al­most nothing . . . arises an immensity of such boundless proportions that it can be likened to nothing less than the creation of our Universe in the Big Bang.” And this immensity . . . is devastating . . . to the little self. Over the second movement which is similar Beethoven wrote: “Farce!” meaning all the concerns of ordinary human life . . . are a farce. Compared with this immensity. But without having gone through the devastation of the first two movements, he would never have come to the third. “And the third . . . the third. If you want to know; if you need to know; if you have to know . . . what Love, not “love,” but the Love that “passeth all understanding” really is . . . well, you can start by listening to this movement. . . . . . . I have just taken a break from writing to listen again to the third movement . . . and cried my guts out, as is my not uncommon response.

 

Someone I once played this music for told me, “To listen to this music you’d think there was nothing wrong in the world.” Well, if you really listened, in a quiet room with no distractions, you wouldn’t think; you would know, to the very core of your being . . . there was NOTHING wrong. The 14th-century English mystic Lady Julian of Norwich “heard” God “saying” to her, “And all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” And if all shall be well, then All is well, right now . . . we just don’t see it. Remember Einstein’s “A human being is part of the Whole, called by us ‘Universe’ . . .” The “optical delusion” of our con­sciousness keeps us focused on the “part” . . . and all may seem very wrong. But if we could experience the Whole . . . we would know the Real Truth.

 

My tears came with the first notes and my eyes are not yet dry. Infinitely tender. . . taking in the whole of human misery . . . yet . . . All is well. Toward the end we come to a point of great stillness where the music is almost motionless, going no­where because there’s nowhere else to go, and out of what Eliot calls “The still point of the turning world” arises a great crescendo led by the brass. All, All, All . . . is re­vealed here, and I feel that I have traveled the length of the Multiverse to find myself . . . at the very Heart of Creation.

 

Here, as nowhere else, is revealed that infinite love and compassion, talked about so much in Zen, which Beethoven somehow, had no choice but to find his way to, and reveal to us.

 

Practice in Daily Life

 

Cabeza:

 

Of course you don’t have to “meditate” to meditate. Any endeavor or activity can be performed with a “meditative” mind, something Zen preaches constantly. But without an inner dying to the will there may not be much point. Plus it’s so im­portant in Zen to prove how ardent you are. That you are with it. But it is obvious to me that the very greatest artists, perhaps only a few select souls, were able to enter into a state free of wanting and fearing, a state where they abstained from their hard-wired drives for reproductive success and S-cubed, when they created their most profound works. Or, rather, al­lowed them to come into being. And they understood and said as much. . . . Anne and I find our own artistic endeavors an important, and even an essential adjunct to our sitting. And vice versa. We both have had, at times, an intuition of sorts into the IT [the word I use for Truth, Reality, The Great Mystery, or whatever you want to call it], but to express that accurately in art [for Anne, abstract watercolor; for myself, the piano], even if dimly and feebly . . . we immediately realize how chained we are to the self of reproductive success. How limited. How weighed down. How almost hopelessly imprisoned. . . . . . . Backpacking and camping are important too, for at least Anne and me, in our way. Immersing ourselves in what is not man-made, not made for man’s reproduc­tive success and S-cubed, dealing with all the difficulties of exertion, discomfort, cold, heat, bugs, and—not least—relating to another human being in very close proximity 100% of the time . . . may, at times, if we are open and unresisting to the best that we are able, effect a letting go: an allowing of the IT. My experience the night before jury duty was, like as not, made possible by a trip we had made the month before.

 

 

Unfortunately I’ve heard too many people say, “My daily life is my practice.” And they would give the impression that they felt that they were too advanced to need sitting. Maybe, someplace, somewhere, somehow, there is some advanced being who doesn’t need to sit. Anything’s possible. Theoretically. But for the vast majority, in my opinion, sitting, a significant amount of daily sitting, is an utter necessity in order to even begin applying it to daily life.

 

Because I consider the four hours I spend daily at the piano an important adjunct to my sitting (I know of nothing that so requires being fully in the moment, without reacting to one’s wanting and fearing, as playing Bach’s fugues) I have included a page for anyone who might have the slightest interest called Learning or Relearning the Piano as an Adult: A Spiritual Endeavor.

 

My Cousin Nell

 

My intention is to eventually write another book, the working title of which is: Nell: The Short, Sweet, Sad, Sublime, Life of My Manic-Depressive Cousin. She was practicing transcendental meditation and tai chi, especially a posture she called the circle stance (which I can’t find online) she would do for hours at a time. She wrote an extraordinary poem I entitle This Body which includes the line: “I must say this body because ‘I’ is something more now. Vast, oh so big.” She had earlier written about joining “the starry vastness.” But great fear started coming up in her and she had a premonition, sadly terribly accurate, of what was to come, for she wrote in the last line of This Body: “If the Chi warmth leaves while I sleep, there’s no telling, no telling. . . .”

 

And it did leave, leaving her full of fear. Fear of that devastating immensity Beethoven described in the first movement of the Ninth, which the masters I write of make very certain they kept out of their consciousnesses. And she started running from that fear, trying desperately to escape what is ultimately inescapable. She knew it was the wrong thing to do, she even wrote a note (found later by her mother): “should have meditated.” That running led her to be hospitalized, given shock treatment . . . and to buy the gun.

 

So this is what I want to pass on, briefly, here. If that fear starts coming up in any of you, see if it’s possible to not react to it. Keep sitting. Listen to some of the music. Read Cabeza. Email me. I’ve been through it. To the nth degree. Believe me.

 

I have read numerous books about, and by, manic depressives, schizophrenics, and autistics, as well as other mental “disorders.” The more I read the more I’m convinced the root of most mental “illness” is fear, or rather, the reaction to fear. I write in Cabeza that fear is really our link to the infinite. The finite being is terrified, but the infinite spirit within us all knows deep down this is what we really are. Below is from Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant, by Daniel Tammit (who earlier in the book had made clear that he withdrew from people because of fear):

 

 

Page 222-223: “I still remember vividly the experience I had as a teenager lying on the floor of my room staring up at the ceiling. I was trying to picture the universe in my head, to have a concrete understanding of what “everything” was. In my mind I traveled to the edges of existence and looked over them, wondering what I would find. In that instant I felt really unwell and I could feel my heart beating hard inside me, because for the first time I had realized that thought and logic had limits and could only take a person so far. This realization frightened me and it took me a long time to come to terms with it.” Page 226: he has a “perfect moment. . . . All of a sudden I experienced a kind of self-forgetting and in that brief, shining moment all my anxiety and awkwardness seemed to disappear. . . . If a person can somehow collect [all such moments]. . . . I think in that hour or day he would be closer to the mystery of what it is to be human. It would be like having a glimpse of heaven.”

 

This is why, as Jamison points out in Touched with Fire, so many if not virtually all of the greatest artists, musicians, authors, and even scientists (one of Einstein’s sons was schizophrenic, showing that he likely had some of those genes also) were not exactly “normal” mentally. Some, like van Gogh were driven to the limits, or rather beyond the limits, of sanity and even to suicide. (Click here to read more about van Gogh, and scroll down to two of his greatest paintings.) As T.S. Eliot (himself manic-depressive) wrote: “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.” I.e., the finite being. But it is possible, if unimaginably difficult, to find freedom from that finite being. To this, to the best that I have been able . . . I have devoted my life.

 

Exercise, a Spiritual Necessity

 

It seems like most of the people I have known at spiritual centers were into some sort of alternative medicine: homeopathy, acupuncture, Rolfing, shiatsu, massage, you name it, and a number of them made their living at it also. For anyone reading this who does likewise, I would most strongly suggest reading Do You Believe in Magic: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine by Paul A. Offit, MD. Just to cite as one example, he discusses homeopathy in which the original substance is so totally diluted that none of it exists in the little bottle you buy. But somehow this substance is supposed to have magically imparted its essence or whatever to the water molecules . . . and cure you. He says, imagine if this were really true: all water on earth has been recycled over and over and over and through countless organisms. If all of those really imparted their “essence” to the water — YUCK!

 

But there is a truly magical elixir guaranteed to either cure or significantly ameliorate virtually any and every disorder. Exercise. See this website page. Steve Jobs, as I read in Walter Isaacson’s biography, instead of undergoing the standard treatment for his cancer which almost certainly would’ve cured it, tried one form of alternative medicine after another. This is WHY he died. But the one thing he didn’t try was exercise. Interestingly, Isaacson wrote, when he first came up with the idea for the iPod he had to be convinced to make it so that people could carry it easily while working out — because he didn’t exercise himself. Well, regular exercise, especially when done intensively (even if only for relatively short amount of time; I include an article about a vigorous seven-minute workout that provides very significant benefits, much greater than far longer periods of moderate exercise) can reduce one’s risk of cancer by 30% or more. And even after one has had cancer, exercise can significantly reduce the chance of its recurrence.

 

More importantly it has very significant effects on the mind, stimulating the growth of brain cells, preventing Alzheimer’s disease, etc. It treats depression better than Prozac. Exercise before a mentally demanding task can help one perform it. Exercise afterwards can help one remember what one has learned.

 

But from my point of view what is most important is its spiritual aspect. The reason why virtually nobody likes to exercise is that this is the way we are evolutionarily programmed. Our ancestors on the plains of Africa got tons of exercise. What they lacked was enough food, enough calories. So most of the time — the exceptions being competitions between males either for status in the band or for females — evolution made us significantly disinclined to go running around in circles or lifting rocks up and down for no good purpose. Now we are in the reverse situation, but our evolutionarily programmed finite being just doesn’t like to do what study after study after study says is the best thing. So in doing exercise — not gritting one’s teeth, but openly, just allowing all the feelings of resistance to come up into one’s mind without doing anything about them, and continuing with the exercise — one is helping to diminish the power of the finite being and allow the infinite spirit to reign. Exercise has been proven to add years to one’s life, and make all of one’s years considerably more disease and disability free. The infinite spirit needs all the time it can get.

 

A few years ago I had a problem with plantar fasciitis and couldn’t run, so I devised indoor exercises that were quite vigorous (vigorous can be defined easily as just that level of effort at which one would find it very difficult to carry on a conversation), but did not aggravate the condition. I did these throughout the day, 3 to 8 minutes at a time, so I still ended up with a total of 30 to 40 minutes of exercise daily. I would especially do these before and after rounds of sitting and/or before and after playing the piano (I practice four hours daily, in two sessions), and I found I liked this routine; it helped break down tension that might build up, especially at the piano.

 

But at one annual meeting at the Springwater Center (see below), when I suggested, due to my personal experience, that they might institute OPTIONAL three or four minutes of exercise as part of the 10 minutes of walking in between rounds of sitting, well, virtually nobody wanted to do that! Even if it was optional. And I had made the suggestion in part because much of the membership did seem to be letting themselves go physically. This in fact even included the teacher, Toni Packer, who told my wife she was supposed to do exercises for a back problem but, she stated with pride as if she enjoyed defying her doctor, “But I don’t do them.” It was those very back problems that caused her to become disabled and eventually to die at age 86. With exercise she might have had another decade. An active decade.

 

More and more studies have been coming out these days about the detrimental effects of sitting. According to a recent Time magazine article (Stand up for Yourself: All-Day Sitting Hurts the Body. Here’s a Novel Way to Undo the Damage, by Alice Park) too much sitting could actually increase your risks of several cancers by 20 to 30%, even if one did some moderate exercise. Now I can’t prove this — but numerous studies have shown that vigorous exercise is much more beneficial than moderate — but I think these 3 to 8 minute vigorous exercise periods I do about 10 times during the day very greatly counteract the negative effects of sitting. My foot is better and I can run now, but I still find I like the short bursts of exercise during the day. I don’t feel right, mentally or physically, without them. (I have a special pair of “house” running shoes that are laced loosely, with a piece of duct tape in the heel that goes under the insole and splits in half where it goes over the top of the heel and down the outside a couple of inches. this allows me to slide in and out of them very rapidly for my exercises.)

 

And maybe you are 95 years old and totally out of shape and you think you can’t begin exercising now. Not true. Everybody can do something. Just move your arms up and down, straighten your legs in front of you and then lower your feet again back to the floor. Get up out of your chair and then sit down again. Little by little you’ll build up strength. Fitness guru Jack LaLanne did his regular workout the day before he died . . . at age 96.

 

The Wilderness of Mind “Zen” Center

 

At the moment this center, while I have some ideas — best kept to myself for now — about how it might evolve, only exists online. I suggest anyone interested sign up for the newsletter (fill out the contact form and type "newsletter"). For now, I will be happy to communicate by email (and possibly Skype) with anyone who has read Cabeza (and keeps it, as I may refer to it) and is sitting regularly, morning and evening, at least two hours total, day in, day out (my chief aim in Cabeza was perhaps to show the utter necessity of this); and who is exercising regularly — if you don’t have it in you for 30 or 40 minutes a day, or even the seven minute workout, of what is been proven to be the best possible elixir for the body/mind, well, in my view you don’t have what the spiritual process requires either.

 

I also strongly suggest making an acquaintance with the music on the Music of Cabeza page. The last enlightenment experience described in The Three Pillars of Zen is of Philip Kapleau’s wife, Delancey (D.K.). She describes how listening to the third movement of Beethoven’s 15th string quartet helped her open up to a more profound level of understanding. This movement did the same for T.S. Eliot. And myself. As I write there, it is not easy listening— most of the works listed there took me a considerable time to even begin to appreciate — but it is meaningful listening. Far, far, far more so than the words of any master I’ve ever heard. And in the near future I will begin posting a YouTube my own performances of some of the works. Either check YouTube under my name, or check the Music of Cabeza page where I will put links. I will also make my own performances downloadable — again, see the Music of Cabeza page.

 

For anyone who has an interest in attending a retreat of some nature, I would like to suggest the Springwater Center — which I wrote about, and it’s teacher Toni Packer who is now deceased, in Cabeza — and rejoined several years ago. Although I consider her as just as flawed as all the other masters, I have written an epilogue to the chapter on her and Springwater which will be added to future editions of Cabeza:

 

Epilogue: In January 2011, after looking at the Springwater Center’s website I decided to attend a few days of the Quiet Weeks (a relatively recent innovation) period in February, and also to rejoin the Center. I have since attended numerous three-day self-directed retreats and have found these times quite helpful, to say the least. I suggest that anyone open to Cabeza’s message and interested in either a structured or self-directed retreat, on a uniquely beautiful property in upstate New York, may wish to do the same. See www.springwatercenter.org and www.meaningofwilderness.com for more information.

 

Independent of what has been written in this chapter is that the great legacy of Toni Packer, who has recently passed away, is to have created a place where people can come and find out for themselves if it’s possible to simply be with their own mind; allowing mind to know Mind, Being to permeate being. On their own terms. However it works best for them. Without nonsense. Without extras. Without . . . whatever. This is something very precious. I hope it will endure, at least as long as things human are capable of enduring.

 

For myself (my wife and I live a half-hour away from the center), I obtained permission to camp in my four-wheel-drive pickup with homemade camper that my wife and I use on our wilderness trips (tent platforms are also available; email the center for more information). Although excellent vegetarian food is served, I found it simpler to bring my own and eat in the truck. I also ended up preferring to do all my sitting in the truck (I do winter backpacking so I’m prepared for all kinds of weather). Actually, as my routine evolved, I would sit for a couple hours in the truck, and then go out and walk around the property, which is located high on a hillside with fine open views. There are about 10 benches in various locations (because they aren’t that comfortable I fabricated sitting cushions and back supports from foam backpacking pads; three pairs of these can be found just inside the main entrance on the upper shelf to the left) and I would sit at various of them for as long as it suited me, until eventually returning to the truck to do more sitting there. In addition to the fine views there’s also a beautiful little ravine lined with hemlock trees with a lovely stream cascading down. There’s a bench there along with a small platform for a sitting mat.

 

It's also possible to live at the center paying rent, or working as a volunteer.

 

If one desired to go to a formal retreat, I’ve been told the ones at Springwater are quite reasonably priced. Because the center has been lightly attended since Toni Packer stopped her teaching work about eight years ago, it’s almost always possible to pay a little extra and reserve a private room. There are daily morning talks by one of the three teachers (the equivalent of Zen teisho), but possibly one might prefer to sit in one’s room (everything is optional; it’s a laid-back place) and perhaps bring an iPod and listen to some of the music I recommend. There are also group discussion periods in the afternoon; I will just say that I went to one and decided that was enough. Individual meetings (dokusan) with the teacher are also available; again, up to you. But there is a computer available for general use in a room off the basement library. If you wanted to communicate with me by email during that time, I would do my best to reply promptly.

 

I will be adding more to this site in the future.