“You can’t teach someone to walk a tightrope wire by telling them to move their muscles a certain way. The only way to learn is by doing it. Somehow your body acclimates to it, your mind learns, and it seeps into your subconscious. It happens all at once. Is the Dharma any different? Of course you’re going to fail; step after step after step. Yet you will learn every time you fail. You say you’re going to stay with the breath, and pretty soon you start chasing after thoughts. You acknowledge your distraction, you let it go, and you come back to the breath. You keep doing this until you’re able to stay with the breath. After a while you get pretty good at it, but all of a sudden you seem to be back to square one and you can’t stay focused for even five seconds. Your mind is all over the place. Then it comes back.
Repeated practice creates learning. Repeated mistakes create learning. That is why Mistake is in reality called learning. The state of no-mistake is called nowness. It is called “now.” It is called “thus.” In nowness there is no before; there is no after. There are no goals, no agendas, no fixed direction. There is just the moment. It arrives as it departs, simultaneously. It has no before or after. It is so difficult for us to grasp this truth. We need goals. We want agendas. We crave direction. The notion of wandering aimlessly is very frightening for most of us…
The state of no-mistake is called nowness. In nowness there is no before or after, no goals, agendas, or fixed direction. Like the meandering river, it twists and turns in accord with circumstances, but always knows how to find its way to the great ocean. When you are on the river, you may be paddling north for an hour, and suddenly there’ll be a bend up ahead. When you look at your compass, you see you’re going south. You may have to go the same length, except now you’re paddling in the opposite direction. Then you go east, then you go west, then north again. Is the river making a mistake on its journey to the ocean?
It is the Tenth Ox-herding Picture with the old sagely guy stumbling through the marketplace with a bag on his back. He is laughing at falling leaves, playing with children. This is a step beyond the crystal-clear moon of enlightenment. Dogen says, “No trace of enlightenment remains, and this traceless enlightenment continues endlessly.” There are those who seek perfect clarity, yet sweep as you may, you cannot empty the mind. Keizan Zenji said that. Sweeping itself can sometimes fill the mind. The simple activity of emptying fills it.
Remember, the whole thing is hopeless. Taking care of the environment is hopeless, but we’ll do it. Achieving enlightenment is hopeless, but we’ll do it. Clarifying the mind, emptying the mind — impossible. We’ll do it. Just like the Four Vows say: “Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them.” How in the world are we going to do that, if they’re numberless? “Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them. The dharmas are boundless, I vow to master them. The Buddha Way is unattainable, I vow to attain it.” Utterly hopeless. Yet we’re doing it.
We are jousting with windmills. That is our practice. The apparent impossibility does not make one bit of difference in our resolve. What is required is the kind of tenacity, the kind of vow that comes out of this practice. Imperfections notwithstanding, we will ultimately take care of this earth, and of each other. That is our vow.”
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