Dogen: On Need and Activity

From August 2004 to August 2005 I lived, read, meditated, wrote, walked and tutored (to name a few principal activities; lingering in various cafés and tea rooms was another) on a high-desert mountain in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For the geographically challenged, New Mexico is one of the fifty US states, another stolen one.

Having formally studied Western thought at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland throughout the two calendar years ending in December 2003, and spending the next seven months in England, I returned to the College's second campus in Santa Fe in August 2004 to continue my exploration of Eastern thought, perhaps in part as an antidote to my Western philosophical, or liberal arts, education.

Eastern philosophy had long had a hold on me, and I had been a meditator for years.

I can recall being lulled to sleep as a very young child (two or three years of age?) by my yoga-practitioner mother. She would have me close my eyes as I lay on the floor for an afternoon nap. Then she would have me imagine that the blanketed floor I was lying on was a warm, sand-strewn beach, with soft, billowing clouds drifting high overhead and the sun warming my skin. I would drift off into a deep, deep sleep. She would tell me that I would wake up at a particular time, and I remember that I would do just that.

There were times, too, during my adolescence when I was effectively practicing Vipassana, or Buddhist, meditation.

Unbeknownst to me for twenty years, this is what I was doing when I would try, and succeed in, stopping the onset of an allergic reaction which would sometimes make parts of my face swell to grotesque proportions: my upper lip, the space just below my cheekbone, or the space between it and my eye. I learned, then, that if I reacted with anxiety to the tingling feeling and the solidity that would form during such an outbreak, the condition would worsen.

After becoming fed up with the tranquilizing effect of antihistamines like Benadryl, which would linger throughout the remainder of my day, I learned that if I would watch the tingling sensation and neither feed it with worry nor wish it away -- but simply observe it -- it would go away. Soon, the outbreaks ceased altogether.

Yet, not until I was in my mid-thirties did I learn that this practice is the (essence-less) essence of Vipassana meditation: learning to simply observe without passing judgment, with the understanding that all phenomena (including fat lips) are transient, that they, too, shall inevitably pass. All in nature lacks permanence. It is our job simply to observe phenomena with an open and equanimous heart and mind, or heart-mind. As an aside, neither the ancient Greek (phrên) nor classical Chinese (xin) languages made a distinction between the blood-pumping circulatory organ and that which we associate with thought. They were one and the same.

I had long wanted to delve further into Eastern philosophy, even before studying Western thought. However, I considered the latter perhaps more crucial from an intellectual point-of-view, as a means to better understand the roots of my own culture. So, I decided to study Western thought, first, followed by Eastern thought if I could possibly manage, or indulge in, back-to-back master's degree programs. Each required the equivalent of two years of full-time graduate study (though the Eastern program was compressed into twelve months), and I was in the latter half of my thirties, with a wife and daughter, and scarcely getting by, financially.

I had already left behind my business career, first, as a senior financial and marketing analyst at a Fortune 100 company, and, then, as an entrepreneur and independent management consultant. My business ventures had provided me with true wealth: just enough money to redeem myself via uncommon amounts of freedom and time. Money well spent.

Little by little, I removed myself from the day-to-day "busyness" of the modern world. I, literally, began to regain my footing. I walked and found that the ground beneath me was informing my spirit, my mind. An awareness of my trespassing on native lands, my native Massachusetts, seeped in through the soles of my feet. I had no sooner told my wife, Rebecca, of this strange stirring when that evening I met a native American gentleman at a lecture on the Smith College campus (where we were living, as Rebecca was an undergraduate there) on the topic of right of return. Specifically, the lecture was organized around the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. Yet, here was this eminently poised, articulate man speaking of the right of return on behalf of his fellow native peoples of North America. He exuded peace, wisdom. I went up to him after the lecture to tell him what had happened to me earlier that day. I felt I had to apologize, to at least let him know that I understood.

I walked on, and read, and biked, and meditated, and wrote, and continued to awaken to an appreciation for the realm of thought, for the classics, antiquated languages, literature, philosophy, for the human, and non-human, condition. I became political, not in the political party sense, but in terms of a growing awareness of the state of domestic and foreign affairs, of institutionalized corruption, and of the polity, generally, which I saw as degenerating into a mindless morass of consumerism, of commodification, of corporatism. As a highly skilled and experienced thirty-something entrepreneur-consultant, I was perfectly positioned to profit from the status quo. Indeed, I had been doing just that. However, I could no longer participate in the madness, in the profit-maximization imperative.

A devout atheist and critic of religion, a sense of spirituality was percolating within me. A sense of compassion grew, and with it a sense of outrage that those who have the most often seem the most willing to harm others in the pursuit of ever more. My awareness of world goings-on once a trickle, thanks in no small part to the mainstream media's sheltering me from reality, the floodgates now came crashing in.

I had an incredible urge to learn, to acquire a greater understanding, to participate in the great and timeless conversations, to think and to act well. All else paled.

Thought, if it is to be of value, requires action. Right action, likewise, requires right thought. The profound wisdom which Dôgen (1200-1253), the founder of Japanese Sôtô Zen Buddhism, passes on to us, below, refers to such thoughtful action.

The above discussion is included herein as a sort of personal prelude to an email which, earlier today, I rediscovered (while packing for our imminent move to a lovely country cottage which a friend from our village has generously offered to share with us). I wrote the email on 12 May 2005, from the St. John's College library, to my wife who spent the year with our daughter, Luka, back home in England. I post it to iNoodle.com as a small offering to you, my reader:

dear rebecca,

i would like to share the following with you. i just
read it for this afternoon's preceptorial ...

"fish swim the water, and however much they swim,
there is no end to the water. birds fly the skies,
and however much they fly, there is no end to the
skies. yet fish never once leave the water, birds
never forsake the sky. when their need is great,
there is great activity. when their need is small,
there is small activity."*

this, to me, is wisdom in a nutshell, and perhaps the
only way that i can live. i think you'll agree that
this is how i accomplish things, in bursts of
activity, and then, like the shy fish we once saw on
tv which lives in a barnacle, i retreat from activity.

i love you ...

sean xoxoxo

______________

* Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, ed./trans., The Heart of Dôgen's Shôbôgenzô (Albany NY: SUNY Press, 2002), Fascicle Four: "Genjôkôan" (Manifesting Suchness).