Freedom

The meaning of freedom10/30/11In our culture, we prize freedom very highly, and so when we talk of freedom or liberation in Zenpractice, it is very resonant for most people. And we tend to think of freedom in the ways ourculture has defined it: having or doing whatever we want without any restriction, and having aninfinite number of choices. So this fits perfectly with our consumer culture, whose ultimateexpression is the “big box” store. With vast aisles stocked with every imaginable good, we canimagine that we will be able to choose just what we want. It is an individualistic and very naiveunderstanding of freedom. The freedom to do whatever you will, and to choose whatever youwant. We may even begin practice with this underlying idea, that we have chosen this pathsomehow in the midst of a bustling spiritual marketplace competing for our hearts and minds, sothat we can have something: peace of mind, less anger, enlightenment. I don’t know anyonewho doesn’t enter any spiritual practice with a confused idea of what it really is all about. Welook for the right center, the right teacher, the right people to be in community with. And wecontinue to ask ourselves the two questions that gnaw at us in every aspect of our lives: Is thiswhat I want? and Did I make the right choice?Cognitive scientists are beginning to recognize that every choice carries a cost. Doctors, judges,and pilots, for example, make thousands of choices, large and small, every day. The quality ofthose choices wanes over the course of the day, as cognitive systems simply becomeexhausted. It’s alarming! Our brains become fatigued, and we begin to make mistakes, or revertto rules of thumb or previous decisions, or something that feels safe. Our modern lives havebecome so complex, and entail so many choices that our minds are exhausted. The simplicityand spareness of environments in a Zen monastery, the regular schedule, the focus on theordinary tasks of everyday living clear a space where the cognitive costs of decisions aredramatically reduced, where one can begin to simply breathe and attend to the experience ofthe path. It all feels so appealing, that simplified world. The only difficulty with monastery living isthat it is not so congruent with these messy lives we live, our commitments and responsibilities,our families, and the work we are doing in the world.So we make half-hearted stabs at the practice and worry that we will not “get anything out of it,”we compare ourselves to others (what are they getting that I am not? what do they have that Iam lacking?) And on and on it goes. We are lucky if we can simply stay with a practice at all. It’sso easy to run whenever you encounter something that isn’t what you want, or to resist everytime your choices are limited. The forms are perfect for that, even the minimal forms we havehere. We feel resistance whenever our personal sense of how things ought to be is assaulted,which in Zen practice is about every 30 seconds.But sometimes, and this is true for most folks here, we taste something that engages ourcuriosity, or offers a glimpse of something different. It is not just a slightly different way of---viewing the world; it is like plunging into a different universe, even if it seems a bit familiar atfirst. As we sit, we begin to suspect that our understanding of freedom is much too limited, andeven wrong. There is no freedom, in practical terms, for individuals, no freedom as anexperience I have or a circumstance that I encounter. Furthermore, there is no lack of freedom,only misguided ideas and the residue of conditioning. In zazen as these ideas and traces ofconditioning are revealed for what they are, physical sensations and mental constructions, weclarify the great matter of true liberation, which is not the absence of constraints, but thecapacity for liberating activity in the midst of any circumstances. It’s not the ability to choosefrom an endless array of possibilities, but the immediate and spontaneous recognition of oneliberating possibility. We are not getting free ourselves, we are freedom liberating the situationby revising its meaning, as Hershock says away from samsara and toward nirvana, fromsuffering to freedom for all beings in the situation. How do we do this? What does that mean? Itmeans, of course, that there is no lack of anything needed; anyone can bring this intention andorientation into any situation. Anyone may offer the possibility of turning the situation towardspaciousness, ease, and true liberation and away from suffering and separation. There isabundance in it: not the abundance of myriad choices, the abundance of your own being comingforth and serving this vast liberating activity. In this way, the question of whether we are gettingwhat we want, or whether we are making the right choices, become irrelevant. They simplydissolve in the present moment experience.So many of the circumstances in our lives are thrown down before us and demand a response.We feel bothered or burdened by the requirements or expectations of the situations in which wefeel ensnared: a difficult teenager, a dying parent, a toxic environment, a world seeminglyspinning beyond anyone’s control. We may feel pressured on every side by obligations westruggle to meet, by relationships that are hopelessly tangled in their own histories, and westruggle. This is dukkha. Freedom does not mean getting rid of or straightening these things outso I can do whatever I want without restraint. As we discover when we face a series of impactsin our lives, as I have over the past few months, our practice serves us by helping us staypresent in the situation so that we may be a resource for every being in it. I could not rouse myfather in his hospital bed, I couldn’t even say encouraging words to cheer him or the othersaround him. I could only look deeply into his eyes and connect. In wordless ways I simplyoffered this most human quality: I am here. We would never choose the losses, pain andsuffering we encounter in ourselves and in others. Yet we can meet them with a simple mind, asimple heart. The choices come down to one: the full and complete expression of who you are.And this choice is made every single moment. So don’t worry if you miss one, another is comingalong right behind it. When we are imprisoned in the idea of freedom as having our preferences,we miss the true freedom that is right in front of us. In practice, we rattle the prison door only todiscover it has been unlocked all along.There is no liberation; there is only liberating activity, and everything, everything is carrying itforward all at once, together. Your confusion, your doubts about yourself, your stumbling on the---path are all part of it, not some difficulty preventing it. Your awakened being is constantlyuncovering itself, revealing itself even in your struggles. There is no freedom, there is onlyfreeing. And we turn this liberating activity both inward and toward the world; it can only beaccomplished all together,, with all beings. That is why the Buddha said, on seeing the morningstar, “I together with all beings, awaken!”