Karen Maezen Miller thinks about how to answer seemingly simple questions.
How is your daughter? How is your husband? How are your in-laws? How is your job? How is your boss?
How is your dog, your fish, your garden, your laundry, your dishes, your life?
How do you answer?
It’s easy to think that Buddhist practice is about the big questions. Birth and death, cause and effect, form and emptiness, delusion and enlightenment, attachment and non-attachment, and whether a dog has Buddha nature or not. I just hope you’re not actually thinking about any of that stuff.
My Zen practice is koan practice, and every time I meet with my teacher in dokusan, or face-to-face interview, I present my understanding, so to speak, of the inscrutable koan I’m working on at the time. I recite the koan and its verse, which by this time I’m pretty well convinced that I’ve nailed.
After we talk a bit about how far along I am, the state of my spiritual genius, he’ll wrap up the interview with what sounds like a simple social courtesy:
How’s your family?
I might catch myself rolling my eyes, drifting back into a rumination about how worried or anxious I am, how awful and terrible they are, how much trouble, what a hindrance or distraction, and then I realize.
That was the big question. That was the only question.
How do you answer?
Thank you!
Rare is it to encounter the dharma…
Awash in the pleasures of a cutting insight,
–Chris
Not so rare as we think, hmm?
And here I thought my attachment to my family was getting in the way of my practice. How many times do I need to hear that my life is my practice? Keep saying it and maybe someday it will sink in and stay there.
Karen, here is the really funny part. I read this during lunch and thought to myself, "I can't wait to get home and practice; I have laundry to do, a baby to feed, a husband to love….I can't wait to get home to them and start practicing." This is funny to me, because at the time, my mind was wandering from my students and I wasn't really putting very much into my teaching. Hello, this is your practice calling! Goodness, keeping my mind in the moment is a full time job. (Is there an intelligent way to say, "duh!")
Thanks, I feel more hope for myself than I have all month. What would we all do without you?
Answers: How many times? Many times. An intelligent way? Intelligence is overrated. What would you do without me? Perfect as you are.
Karen, once again, you stop my mind and my fast fingers. I'll get back to you on that…
Thanks Karen.
imperfect and beautiful and painful. thank you, karen. this is opening me, exposing my vulnerable, tender places. breathe, right?
You nailed it! Thanks for helping me.
oh so simple. right again. thanks for the reminder.