The Simple Essence

Recently one night, I was trying to find a quote from my first book, Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life, and in the course of searching for it, I ended up reading whole sections of that book that I hadn’t read in years. It was like a visit with my first teachers, Mel Weitsman and Toni Packer. I was reminded of the precious jewels they offered to me, and I felt how much I’m still a beginner, still just beginning to hear and appreciate.

I’d like to share two passages that I came across that night, passages that describe meetings with Mel and Toni that had a deep impact on me when they happened, and then again the other night as I read about them.

The first is the one I was looking for. It’s a dialog in a formal dokusan (teacher/student meeting) between me and my teacher Mel Weitsman at Berkeley Zen Center on the morning I was leaving for Springwater, the retreat center in rural New York founded by Toni Packer, where I eventually lived for five years. I would go back and forth many times between the Zen Center and Springwater. And in the years that followed, I would work with many different teachers in many different traditions.

When I was practicing at Berkeley Zen Center, Mel often talked about settling, and in my mind, I interpreted that as settling down in one place, with one teacher and one practice, and not going all over the place the way I was doing. I had the belief that I was doing it wrong. There was a restlessness to my endless comings and goings, a seeking energy that I longed to be free from.

So here’s the exchange I had with Mel that morning:

The morning I left California for Springwater the very first time, I went for dokusan with Mel. It was before dawn, and I bowed to him and sat facing him in the tiny candlelit room where we had met so many times before. He gave me a figure from the altar to take with me on my journey.

"What is settling?" I asked him.

"Settling is waking up moment to moment," he replied.

There it is: the heart of it all, the message I keep getting, again and again, year after year. Simple, simple, simple. Waking up NOW, in this one bottomless moment. Nothing more, nothing less.

The second excerpt is from a meeting with Toni Packer during the years I lived at Springwater on staff.

"There's too much pain," I tell Toni. "I'm not sure I can stand it."

Rain is splattering on the roof, sputtering in the gutter, splashing, tapping—wet, delicate sounds—washing over everything. Toni and I are sitting at opposite ends of her living room sofa talking. It is late afternoon, already growing dark. There is the energy of listening together quietly, the vibration of that, the stillness, the sounds of the rain.

"It takes enormous patience," Toni says at last, "to see the sorrow. To be with it. To not move away. Or find easy comfort. To look. To see human history. Because it's not just one's personal pain that is contacted. It's humanity's pain, the universal sorrow of human beings."

The rain turning to snow now, the snow beginning to cover everything over.

"Can we touch that pure sorrow?" Toni asks, "not wallowing in it or running away from it—but just touching it, understanding it in depth, without being crushed by it?"

Silence. The room growing darker. The clock ticking softly. My meeting time is almost up.

I stand in the north field at twilight, huge black clouds blowing in above me, so low over the ground that I almost have to duck. Four deer run right in front of me, very fast, and I smell them afterwards in the night air.

There it is: the invitation I got again and again from Toni to simply be fully present, without ideas or ideologies, without beliefs or certainties, without anything to grasp or hold onto—simply being here, alive and awake, as this whole happening, just as it is. Not trying to escape the sorrow or explain it away, not judging it, not seeking something else, not looking for a way to numb it out or distract myself from it. Not telling any stories about it or putting any kind of comforting, feel-good spiritual spin on it. Simply being present.

Waking up, moment to moment. Just this.

Lately, I’ve been touching a deep sorrow at times. I’ve felt a great uncertainty about what I’m doing—the writing, the meetings. This uncertainty feels important, not like something to overcome. I’ve also felt deeply happy much of the time.

Sometimes, I’m totally open and present in the way Toni embodied and pointed to so beautifully—completely open, undefended, vulnerable, holding on to nothing. Totally available. Awake. The heart so tender and open.

At other times, I can feel that I’m more in a mental world of thoughts and ideas, the bodymind tighter, more defended, holding on to something, seeking something, wanting something—a state of inner (and sometimes outer) conflict.

And then at times I touch this deep sadness—it has no particular content, although sometimes it includes seemingly random memories. Perhaps it has something to do with the ways we so often don’t see what’s in front of us until it’s gone.

Toni and Mel are both gone now. My mother and father are gone. As W.S. Merwin wrote, “Now all my teachers are dead except silence.”

Somewhere in Bare-Bones, I have an epigraph quote from the Anglican solitary Maggie Ross:

“It becomes more and more simple. You begin to know that just the fact that you're alive is prayer.”

A whole lifetime passes very quickly. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been writing books and holding meetings for some thirty years now. I feel how often I have missed the mark, how often I’ve offered something to grasp rather than the listening silence, the open presence, the aliveness of this one bottomless moment.

I sometimes wish I could talk with Toni or Mel again, or with my father, or my mother. How clueless I was in so many ways, and undoubtedly still am in ways I don’t yet see.

There is an immense sadness in life—the way it slips away, the ways we don’t see the wonder in front of us, not to mention all the cruelties and horrors that human beings perpetrate—the sorrow of humanity, personally and globally. Toni was no stranger to that. She grew up half-Jewish in Nazi Germany in a city that was bombed during the war. The horrors of all that started her on a spiritual quest, and as that quest unfolded, she let go of more and more. She didn’t want comforting answers or diversions.

One of my favorite quotes from Toni:

No matter what state dawns at this moment, can there be just that? Not a movement away, an escape into something that will provide what this state does not provide, or doesn't seem to provide: energy, zest, inspiration, joy, happiness, whatever. Just completely, unconditionally listening to what's here now, is that possible?

And here’s one last passage from Bare-Bones Meditation:

Toni urged me to go deeply into listening itself. Just listen, she said. Don't try to hold on to the things heard or seen, but instantly allow the next perception. Don't stop to analyze, or go back over them, or try to figure them out or clarify them. Just go on. Listening, holding on to nothing. Allow listening itself to unfold without interference of any kind.

It boils down to waking up moment to moment. Being present, open, unprotected. Allowing the tenderness, the heartbreak, the vulnerability, the love, and the wonder. The mind can make it all very complicated, but it’s really so very simple.

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Love to all…