About Jakusho Kwong Roshi

Whenever I give a talk, the listeners and I may find ourselves in a paradoxical situation: as words and phrases can often become abstractions, I try to explain something that can’t be explained, and the listeners try to hear something that can’t be heard. Since by necessity this is the situation, we can sympathize with each other—me with you for that which you can’t hear, and you with me for that which I can’t say. At the same time I can always strike my stick on the floor, Bam!, so at least this is possible. Maybe I can’t explain it, but I can demonstrate it, and then the rest is up to you. This can cause a certain amount of frustration on your side and loneliness on mine. But the bigger question is, How can we come together? And how can we realize ourselves? When we chant phrases like, “for all sentient beings,” it’s pretty abstract. But it becomes less abstract when we begin to find out what this sentient being is, and that includes discovering that things go into making up this sentient being. All of our dualistic thoughts and deluded feelings, whether they’re good or bad, whether we like them or not, constitute a sentient being. Our meditation practice is not about trying to deny these aspects of ourselves. Many people have this misunderstanding, but the truth is quite the opposite. In Poland, where I have some students, I met with a woman who is in her early sixties. Since the end of World War II all of her memories of the war have been suppressed. For some reason, however, at this time of her life all of her memories are returning and surfacing. What is she to do with them? What are any of us to do with the content of our mind? How can each of us work with our own situation? This is the practice of meditation. Each one of us holds the very same wish and aspiration: to be able to work with the difficulties that life brings us, based on the awareness we cultivate through our practice. As you continue your journey and your practice grows, you will see that there’s a beginning and a middle and an end that, in reality, are all the same. For convenience, or because we are speaking about it, we separate this One, this Same, into three parts, but actually it is just One. In time you will discover this for yourselves, unless you become scared and run off—which believe it or not, happens frequently. But what comes up in our meditation is not new. It’s old stuff, and you can only run off so many times before you realize that there’s no need to run anymore. For many people that’s the moment when their practice begins to engage. The late Uchiyama Roshi explained that there is a seed or cause that has auspiciously brought you in contact with the path. This alone points you in the direction of dharma. This is one interpretation of dharma: looking for something that seems to be missing. Maybe some truth is what is lacking in life, and at a certain point we are actually able to experience this. Either through our grief, or our experience of sickness, or loss, or a change in a relationship, or just a feeling of impermanence that is no longer tolerable, we begin to look and to quest, and we begin to practice zazen as part of that quest. What zazen really is has been explained in many different ways. Suzuki Roshi used to say shikantaza is our zazen, but as I’ve mentioned, the words and phrases used to express Zen practice can sound pretty abstract, and almost any explanation is conceptual. It can’t really touch the experience itself. Suzuki Roshi put it very simply: “Just to be ourselves.” Four words, but what they express is so deep and so subtle that we miss it until we begin slowing down. He said our practice is following our breath. But the true meaning of this, the deep meaning, is that you are vividly alive. The method says to follow your breath, but its meaning is that you are invisibly present and alive, just like a spinning top that goes faster and faster until it disappears. Without method, without expectation, without counting your breath, you are alive moment to moment, alive in this space that is nowhere else but right here within yourself. Others have said that zazen or shikantaza means being present in this very moment, but even that’s not it. It’s being the moment. It’s being each moment after moment after moment—in zazen, before zazen, and after zazen as well. And of course that’s the manifestation or actualization of your original mind. “Just to be ourselves.” This is shikantaza. Every year when I travel to meet with students in Poland, the schedule is very intense. Last year when I was standing beside a window on a hot and crowded train going from Gdansk to Warsaw, just watching the scenery go by, suddenly I became acutely aware that my breath had become naturally deeper than it had been before. After some time I became aware of the sound of my breath and began to follow it. It was very wonderful because I was unaware that more than three hours passed by. I felt only that I was being embraced by the sound’s traveling. You pass a lot of scenery when you’re on a train. In Poland we passed devastated environments, broken-down homes and the families who live in them watching the train while standing or working outside, lots of garbage and litter everywhere (I did see some good graffiti, too!) and also beautiful forests and plains. I was receiving all of this as it passed by, and at the same time I was aware of my breath. Even though I had been standing the entire time, after the train reached its destination I got off and felt completely renewed. When you practice like this, you receive everything you see on the inhalation of the breath. You don’t pretend not to see it. In our contemporary lives we pretend a lot in order to protect ourselves. There’s TV, newspapers with bad news, city noises and so many other things that seem to be assaulting us. But no matter what it is, you can take it in, and because you do receive it, on the exhalation you can let it out. You let it go. This is the shikantaza breath. It can be compared to the alchemy of turning lead into gold. You fill up with your sorrow or anger or any other feeling that you usually try to avoid, and by doing so you acknowledge that it is there. But this is only part of the practice, because the fact that you have done it means that, on the exhale, you release it and let it go. It actually needs this acknowledgment in order to be really released. It’s a little odd, but in general we tend not to be aware of other people’s anger, or even our own anger, despite the fact that our whole meditation practice is about awareness. What you can do, what you can’t do, what you want or don’t want to do, is still about awareness. Our practice is to have the courage to actually feel and accept these aspects of being human. They’re just a small part of us and our practice will help us to make room so that we can receive and feel these things and therefore let them go without attaching to them, just as you receive and release the passing scenery when you’re on a train. I think it’s pretty true to say that we’re all on a train. The scenery is going by quickly and you can’t hold on to anything; you have to stay and keep going down the track. It’s when you hold on to something, or even try to hold on, that you are not on the train anymore. But our way tells us to release what we are holding so that we can keep going and stay on track. What it really comes down to is the wisdom and compassion of non-avoidance. You just keep going, and as you do, you can work with the practice called the compassion breath. Then you know how to transmute what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think every day. Compassion breath involves, on the inhalation, taking in suffering—your own or someone else’s—and on the exhalation letting it go. And the truth is that, with practice, this process helps you learn to be kind to yourself and to all beings as well. We have the capacity to take in an enormous amount of negativity and to let it go its way. We don’t avoid anything because we know we can work with it. Most people don’t know what to do when they notice unwanted thoughts and feelings within themselves, or see a dead animal on the road, or killing on television shows or in the news, or the many homeless and starving people right beside them as they walk down the street. And then there’s drugs, alcohol, AIDS and cancer. People feel overwhelmed, and the result is that often their hearts turn hard and cold. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true. The normal response to these things would be that everyone should be crying—this is the awakening of compassion—but the ignorance of sentient beings causes us to continue to enhance samsara. The practice of compassion breath allows our hearts to remain soft and open while our spirit and life-force are replenished. And our tears are part of this replenishment, an important part. You do not have to be a Buddhist to do this: it is meant to be used by all human beings, everywhere, even while standing on a train. The Tibetan Buddhist nun Ani Tenzin Palmo said that compassion practice is a form of discipline. Most people really don’t like discipline, but it’s necessary. Maybe it would be easier to say it’s preparation, but whatever word we use, we need discipline and preparation for the effort to stay on the train and allow the scenery to go by. Pretty soon, even before you know it, you’ll be sixty, and that’s not so old. Scenery changes quickly. When you’re a child, a day seems to last a long time. Sometimes at the grocery store in town you may see a father holding a baby, and the baby is completely surrendered into the father’s arms. The child’s body/mind shows its purity and trust. As the child becomes older, naturally it wants to grow in all ways. Then in almost no time at all summer holidays don’t come so often, the seasons drift by, new babies are born and at a certain age friends start dying. This is true for every one of us. But regardless of what...

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