When we become intimate with our own thinking, delusions become the earth upon which the moon of enlightenment shines.
In
Hotsu Mujoshin (“On Giving Rise to the Unsurpassed
Mind”), Dogen wrote, “Thinking is the mystery of the practice by which
we become intimate with ourselves and the universe.” In other words,
when we become intimate with our own thinking, delusions become the
earth upon which the moon of enlightenment shines. We may long to be the
light itself, the moon glowing upon the earth, yet we feel tethered to
our emotions and the thoughts that bring them to the surface. In Dogen’s
vision, the relationship between delusion and enlightenment within our
lives is necessary. Whether we are angry, even enraged, aggrieved, or
content, we are right where we should be. No part of our humanity needs
to be tossed away. We need all that we were born with to navigate life,
and that includes delusions.
This tension is apparent in the second of the four bodhisattva vows,
which Soto Zen practitioners regularly chant: “Delusions are
inexhaustible. I vow to end them.” Many a Zen student has chuckled at
the absurdity of vowing to end something that is inexhaustible. How
could we ever meet this vow? Instead of declaring endless war on our
delusions, though, we can simply stop trying to banish them from the
path of enlightenment. We can end the separation and lack of intimacy
with our thinking minds, and through that encounter with delusion we can
come to know the enlightenment that previously seemed as distant as the
morning star.
We may fear, deny, ignore, or refuse to accept this marriage of
enlightenment and delusion, longing to hold company with our favorite
friend, enlightenment. After all, the intimacy of delusion with
enlightenment can be difficult to fathom. Enlightenment doesn’t negate
delusion, yet a willingness to experience intimacy with our thoughts is
crucial to attending to the suffering of our times. As the fires of
suffering burn in our country and in the world, it is high time we fully
examine our collective thinking in order to move toward a humanity that
can truly see itself and can therefore transform its greatest ills.
Like so many others on the Buddhist path, I was waiting for my life
to be the way I wanted it to be and wasn’t fully engaging with the way
it actually was. Over time, through the practice of zazen, I began to
see how this mixed-up dream had separated me from the life I was living
every day, every moment.
I saw this dance in action one day, when an aspirant who had been
practicing with me for some time opened up and shared memories of being
abused as a child. As she spoke, I noticed both her feet were moving,
tapping, shaking. Several times she sat upright, then fell back into her
seat. Her head moved up and down as she described the trauma. Seeing
her agitation, I asked, “You have been learning so much. What could you
teach that child right now from your practice of zazen and yoga?”
It took her a moment reply. Her eyes darted around as she considered the question. “To breathe,” she finally said.
“Then let’s do that right now,” I instructed.
We sat quietly together and breathed. After five minutes, her feet
stopped shaking, her hands sat still on her lap. Suddenly, she jerked
her head back and began to moan and cry. Her body stiffened. She had
been using the movements, which were momentarily absent, to fend off the
pain from so long ago that was still lodged in her body-mind. I asked
her to continue breathing, as she had been practicing for five years.
“Show the child how the breathing is done,” I told her.
I breathed in and out with her, holding her in my heart as she dove
into herself, developing the capacity to overcome her limitations by
seeing the thoughts she lives with. We were not breathing into calmness
but creating the inner environment through which the work of just seeing
can occur. (Please keep in mind this practice may not be appropriate
for everyone. Consult an experienced Buddhist teacher or a therapist
when working with trauma.)
Her direct experience of her body-mind moving and settling, moving
and settling, allowed her to see and know herself directly, without
someone else telling her what she needed to know. Once her breathing had
slowed, I asked her to bring that same earnestness to her zazen
practice, to enter each path that she follows—yoga, Buddhist retreats,
therapy—with the somberness of her suffering and not to see them as
escapes from home or from the world. I asked her to enter the zendo from
now on as if coming into a dark cave with her thoughts. As the thoughts
arise, I told her, surrender to them and come to know the process as
illumination taking place.
The deeper our life is illuminated within delusion, the more clearly
we can see our own limitations, struggles, and suffering. This is the
true intimacy of Zen practice and the mystical nature of zazen.
In Mahayana Buddhism, there is a notion that once the Buddha became
enlightened, we all did. This teaching points us in the direction of not
trying to acquire or gain enlightenment but rather allowing it to meet
us along the way. Enlightenment is neither given nor gained, so we are
bound to tango with the deluded body-mind. And what a dance it is!
In
Sokushin Zebutsu (“The Very Mind is Buddha”), Dogen
wrote, “Thinking is said to be exerted by the mind of the entire great
earth, the mind of the trees and stones, of mountains and rivers, the
sun, moon and stars and by the one mind of all dharmas…” Thinking, then,
is malleable; it’s adaptable and resilient. The intimacy between the
self, the universe, and our thinking is indelibly part and parcel of
Dogen’s Zen. Enlightenment is “ever intimate” with, and transparent to,
delusion.
When we dive deeply into the tension between enlightenment and
delusion, we go beyond our mere ideas of them. Dogen wrote that, if we
even think of enlightenment, there will be an aspiration for it. Thought
is not an enemy to our endeavors for enlightenment. In fact, it’s
impossible to dance with enlightenment without the intimate knowing that
comes from opening fully to our deluded, thinking minds.
Yet another, more subtle form of resistance is thinking and talking about practice rather than actually experiencing our life. Thinking and talking about practice are easy substitutes for the real effort that a practice life requires. We resist facing life as it is because that would mean abandoning our views of how we think it should be. The most basic form of resistance is wanting life to be other than it is. 
We should never underestimate the extent to which we equate feeling better with being awake. But a key point about spiritual practice is that we don’t have to feel any particular way. Nor do we have to be any particular way. All we can do is experience, and work with, whatever is arising in our life right now. No matter what is going on or how we feel about it, the essence of practice is to honestly acknowledge whatever is happening in the moment and stay present with our experience of it. In this way we can come to feel a true appreciation for life just as it is. 