Sitting Quietly, Gaining Ideas, Doing Nothing Extra

I so enjoyed putting together something about the concept of "no gaining", even more so because, in the process, I came across a couple of sayings by Shunryu Suzuki which I hadn't read before.

I particularly liked: "When you sit, everything sits with you." It's what sits with us when we sit which creates our "mind waves". We ourselves make the waves in our mind. If we leave our mind just the way it is, it will become calm. This is called Big Mind.

Zen practice or mindfulness practice is about opening up to, and recognising, our Big Mind, or REALISING our Big Mind, as it is often expressed. Small Mind, in comparison, is the opposite and is strongly linked to our Ego. Which is not a bad thing. We need SOME ego. Some sense of self and self preservation, otherwise we wouldn't be able to cross the road without being knocked down.

Someone once asked Suzuki: "How much ego do you need?" And he answered: "Just enough so that you don’t step in front of a bus." :)

So what is Big Mind? Big Mind doesn’t add anything. It has no gaining idea.

And what is "gaining idea"? It doesn’t even sound possible to live in this work without gaining ideas. Suzuki says living with no gaining idea is getting rid of what is extra.

I always think of the activity of Shikantaza as 'sitting with nothing extra'. Shikantaza is one of my favourite meditations. It's so open and relaxed. If you sit Shikantaza, you just sit. Nothing extra. No particular focus on breathing, on visualising, on insight. Just sitting. A popular saying in Zen to describe the concept of 'nothing extra' is: “If you are hungry, eat; if you are tired, sleep”.

Nothing extra means being involved only with the activity of the moment. If you eat, you just eat. If you hear a sound, you just hear a sound. When you begin to add things and there is extra, it is no longer just sitting or just hearing a sound. If you eat, but your mind is not on the food and the motion of eating, you are not really there. The sitting might become good or bad, the sound becomes good or bad. Too soft or too loud. In all that there is a gaining idea. We want something extra. Something else. That’s Small Mind.

When you have no gaining idea in what you do, then you do something. The purpose of our practice, the main point of our practice, is to be completely devoted to, or mindful of, what we are doing. Completely focussed, involved. On the other hand If you have a gaining idea, if your mind is not working with what is right in front of you, if we are not completely focussed on something , if our mind is careless, then our mind is not there.

If your mind is not there, then you are separated from your surroundings, but when you devote yourself completely to what you are doing, then there is no separation. Then there is oneness.

But in this concentration there is still a lightness, no tension. To have single pointed concentration is not having a sense of tense or tight concentration. The energetic quality of the concentration is light but focussed. Loose enough to relax into sitting, but not too loose so that you fall out of concentration. Tight enough to maintain your focus, but not too tight. The appropriate amount. That is called "ORYOKI". The rough translation is “just enough”.

When we sit with the concept of no gaining ideas, we have to be careful not to go down the road of thinking that getting rid of, or deliberately losing ideas is the same as nothing extra. It is not. A "losing ideas" conversation sounds something like this: "If only my mind wasn't so busy this morning...." or "If I don’t do this and could just stop doing ... " or "If I could just get rid of that" It is the same energetic quality: not accepting what is in this moment and observing it only.

At times when things become very difficult for us, if you look deeply, you will usually find that we are working with gaining ideas. In the background will be some kind of hidden assumption or un-examinded idea. When we are stressed or overwhelmed by difficult times, we are usually very busy adding things, gaining ideas, we want extra. We are then probably completely stuck in Small Mind, and not seeing things are they really are. We cannot accept what is in this moment. We are not living in this moment. Our assumptions and ideas are being challenged - and they are probably coming up short. We spend a lot of time in activities that are based on an idea of ours, or an opinion of how it should be, which is often quite fragile and an opposing idea can easily knock us off our balance.

Q: When a situation is difficult or unacceptable, do you work on this fundamental accepting, or do you, like me, find yourself much too often trying to change external conditions so that the situation can once again fall in line with the idea of what is acceptable?

As Dogen, a Zen Master, once said, "A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it ." this is our life.

Enjoy this soft, grey day.

Mxx