The Zennist: Practice doesn't always make perfect

If I practiced for a year doing full prostrations everyday, like they do in the Tibetan practice called ngondro, would it eventually add up to Bodhicitta for me or complete Buddhahood as in anuttarsamyaksambodhi? The real answer is most likely it would not. Along the same track, if I practiced zazen for 20 years doing it every day for several hours, would this add up to Buddhahood? Again, most likely it would not.

If you are beginning to get the picture that ‘practice’ doesn’t always make perfect, especially if the practice is intransitive so as to end in itself, or the same, becomes the goal, you’re on the right track.

Today, especially in Zen circles, one is considered a great Zennist who practices a lot of zazen, i.e., seated meditation. Perish the thought that they haven’t actually won Bodhicitta or have the slightest clue as to what the great Zen masters of the past meant by the expression, Buddha Mind, the One Mind, the Unborn Mind, etc. Foremost, these masters were concerned with comprehending the Buddha Mind which had nothing to do with sitting. In fact, ‘sitting’ shouldn’t always be taken at a literal level the way it is today. The Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng certainly had a different take on sitting than the modern Zennist.

“Now, this being the case, in this method, what is meant by sitting in meditation? In this method, to sit means to be free from all obstacles, and externally not to allow thoughts to rise from the mind over any sphere of objects. To meditate means to realize the imperturbability of one’s original nature” (trans., Wing-tsit Chan).

Hui-neng certainly knew the importance of seeing one’s original nature which is pure Mind. In fact he also said: “The Way is comprehended in the mind; how can sitting in meditation be concerned with the Way?”

Ajhan Chah Thera sums up what real practice should be. Namely, it is about trying to engage or get in phase with the Original Mind or if you like, the Buddha Mind.

“Our practice is simply to see the Original Mind. So we must train the mind to know those sense impressions, and not get lost in them. To make it peaceful. Just this is the aim of all this difficult practice we put ourselves through.”

Practice really begins when we take up the search for the Original Mind with every fiber of our being. This mind is immediate with us. It is utterly luminous or as I like to put it, animative. Yet this mind remains hidden from us by layers upon layers of defilements (âsrava) something like thick mud on the windows of our house that act to block out the sunlight. Until we wash off some of this thick mud—we remain clueless as to what terms like ‘luminous’, ‘pure’, and ‘animative’ mean.

To be sure, one can sit in zazen and raise up all kinds of deluded thoughts, essentially daydreaming, for example, about a house they just saw, or the baby they want. This is not by any stretch of the imagination, practice. One can even suppress unwanted thoughts or count breaths. Again, this still isn’t authentic practice. Even doing 118,000 prostrations is not going to help!

Truth be told, with wrong practice we will never be able to paddle our Dharma boat to the other shore of nirvana by sitting on this shore doing practices that have little or nothing to do with the great crossing.