Heads and Tails

Last time I was back in Atlanta, I was able to find some time to attend iconoclastic Zen teacher Brad Warner's introductory lecture to our monthly meditation retreat. However, I didn't find the time to attend the monthly retreat itself beyond the introductory lecture.

Too bad. The retreat sounds like it was very interesting, and Sensei Warner had some very kind comments about our center, stating,

"Just this morning I finished sitting a retreat at the Atlanta Soto Zen Center where I am right now as I write this. It was a great retreat, one of the best I've ever done. They've got an amazing group down here. I did three talks, one of which was recorded. I'll see about getting a pod cast of that up here once I get a copy."

He apparently did get a copy, and put the talk up on his website here. Check it out if you're interested or if you've always wanted to know what a "Zen talk" sounded like but were afraid to ask. The 3 minute intro at the beginning and leading the chant at the end is that of the Atlanta Center's roshi, Taiun Michael Elliston. I recognize many of the other voices during the Q&A portion, at least those that I could hear, but I won't bore you by trying to identify them all.

The gist of the talk is also summarized on Warner's blog. He discussed the concept of the ego-self, and the twin fictions both that the ego-self exists and that the purpose of Zen is to destroy the ego-self or at least to dispel the delusion of the existence of the ego-self. He nicely concludes, "Anyway, it's not that we seek to destroy the ego, so much as to realize it's just a useful fiction. Shunryu Suzuki said that we have a personal self that appears and disappears. It's not a fixed thing. It exists in order that the universe might express itself, not in order that I can express my self."

Several recent posts of mine expressed frustration and impatience with the airport experience - how I couldn't re-route my trip as easily as I would have liked, or how the time of my departure wasn't to my liking. In short, I couldn't change the universe to suit my own individual preferences, and I experienced frustration as a result, and expressed that frustration in this blog. There are those who might read this and say, "Hmmm. I thought the point of Zen practice was to learn to be more calm, to be more patient. How come you go flying off the handle when your flight gets bumped?"

Actually, there is no "point" to Zen practice at all, and if you thought all Zen practitioners should always appear calm and peaceful, you wouldn't have recognized me as one last night. After arriving at the airport and turning in my rent-a-car, I found out that my 10:55 pm flight had been rescheduled to leave at 1:40 am, not arriving in Atlanta until 9ish Sunday morning. Upon learning this, I experienced anger and frustration, and a realization that I couldn't control the situation and an associated sense of helplessness and victimization.

Of course, I also knew intellectually that the reason for the delay was due to severe tornadoes that had hit downtown Atlanta that day, and my inconvenience was minor compared to the problems and suffering of those who had lost their homes, or were injured, or lost a loved one. But that still didn't take relieve my impatience over having to hang out at the airport for three and a half hours at the end of a long day, and after most of the shops and restaurants had already closed. That frustration, that feeling of victimization, was the only emotion that I could directly experience, since it was what was happening to "me," while the suffering of those in Atlanta was only second-hand information, the suffering of "others."

And that's the gist of the paradox - only I can experience my own suffering, and while I can feel empathy and compassion for the suffering of others (and often feel it greatly), I can only experience those emotions (empathy and compassion) and not directly feel the suffering of others. And yet, I also understand that "self" and "others" are not two different things but one, just like "heads" and "tails" are not separate things but more like the two sides of one coin. But heads is also heads and tails is also tails, and when I flip a coin I get one or the other. That's how we experience the one thing, the coin - as either heads or tails, depending on the flip of the coin. So is the way we experience self-and-other - as one or the other at any given moment. Zazen gives us a method of directly realizing this unity of self and other, and how our minds experience this unity as two things, not one.

Standing at the airport, part of me felt that I should suppress my anger, but suppressing it only made it feel worse. "Damn it," I thought, "I've been inconvenienced and now I can't even allow myself to express my own frustration over it." So I gave in, walked around the airport sulking, and maintained a facial expression somewhere between abject boredom and soul-crushing fatigue.

But after a while this got tiresome and I saw the negative effect it had on those around me. So eventually I gave in, sat and read my book until my flight was called. Upon finally boarding, I was pleased to find that no one took the center seat between me and the pleasant young lady in my aisle, and I managed to use my fatigue to allow me to sleep most of the way back home. It wasn't all so bad after all.

But if I had bottled up all that earlier frustration, suppressing my natural reactions and emotions, would I have felt as equivocal about the experience as I do now?