Practice before awakening

There are a number of reasons why "practice" can deceive us, especially, when we still haven't awakened to pure Mind.  One reason that strikes me the most is relying on the practice of seated meditation (zazen) to open the door to kensho (i.e., seeing our true nature).  It is a superficial grasp of Zen that regards a posture dependent practice to be an adequate means towards kensho.  Meditation or dhyana is not about a sitting posture.  It is about coming face to face—all at once—with what animates our physiological body; breaking the hold the animated body has over us.  This requires some intuitive skills not to mention some profound introspection.  Yes, we do have to look within—I mean we are talking subtlety here!

What drives practice before we have attained kensho is a general sense of doubt coupled with our shallow understanding which envisages enlightenment to be just around the corner, so to speak.  Adding to this, we have also learned to lie to ourselves if we try to make a case for doing lots of seated meditation or believing there is no such thing as kensho—no profound experience of realizing pure Mind.  Lying to ourselves comes, I suspect, easiest. Korean Seon master Chinul gives us more insight into practice before we are awakened.   

"When practice is cultivated before awakening, then even if you work unremittingly, cultivating practice every moment, you will conceive of one doubt after another as you go along and will be as yet unable to attain nonobstruction. It will be like having something stuck in your chest, signs of uneasiness will always be present. If curative practices are developed to maturity over a long period of time, then body and mind seem lightened and eased of acquired pollution, but even though you are light and easy, as long as you have not cut through the root of doubt, curative practices are like stones placed on grass, you have still not attained freedom in the realm of birth and death. That is why it is said that when practice is before enlightenment, it is not real practice" (Cleary, Minding Mind, 47–48).

For those people who practice without kensho their doubt sometimes can turn into skepticism.  This is not good.  Doubt turned into skepticism, is difficult to put an end to.   Such practice at this point turns into the cultivation of bad karma.  Tangent to this, this is why I insist that the best practice for those still not awakened is a full retreat, living completely alone for a certain period of time (three months or longer).  No blame can be redirected to others.  We can't blame our teacher.  It is the first part of really learning to face ourselves—not in a negative way, but in an open and spiritual way always looking within going deeper and deeper finally coming to our wits' end, being thoroughly presuppositionless in which the discriminating intellect stops.

Comments

[mathesis]

"Doubt turned into skepticism, is difficult to put an end to. Such practice at this point turns into the cultivation of bad karma."

But on the other hand the acquiring of transcendent Faith, or "Right View", opposed to such a skepticism, is not in turn merely the product of good karma, but is analogous to a sort of Grace which short-circuits the entire Samsara-Karma system, "corrupt nature", the "Law" and "works".

As for the retreat, there is the old Latin saying (the medieval monk Saint Bernard of Clarivaux):

Beata solitudo, sola beatitudo

Blessed Solitude, Only Beatitude !

[Mr.Nobody]

Perhaps a blog on practice after awakening is in order? i've read your posts on the matter on reddit for instance but i'd still like to see you go into more detail if you could.

Of course, i understand what this entails, practicing after awakening to One Mind, Mind-Only, but I love to read about it anyways as what takes up all my time/mental space is this One-Mind, or resting serenely with intuitive knowing; nevertheless it would be helpful to others I believe.