Resistance in Practice

1 of 4Resistance, Ideals, and Expectations2/1/15We are now several weeks into the Practice Period that began January 4. Quite a few peoplehave signed up for tea with Laurie already, and I see people for practice discussion regularly.This is when the difficulties start showing up for most of us. We usually start the Practice Periodwith a sense of renewed commitment and energy for our practice. In the beginning, we createan agreement that is a positive expression of what we hope to engage in over the course of thethree months of the Practice Period. It may be quite ambitious, or it may be, or seem, quitemodest and doable.Then, typically, we almost immediately encounter obstacles and difficulties. A new responsibilityat work takes more of our time, we struggle to wake up in the morning for zazen, we feel sick, orwe can’t seem to work out the time to do one more thing. This creates a whole host of otherproblems: maybe you berate yourself for falling short, or feel shame or give up indiscouragement. You don’t even want to talk about it, because it is painful to face. You begin toavoid the whole thing, and find yourself in even more confusion.So this is probably a good time to revisit what a Practice Period is and is not, and how tonavigate the inevitable struggles it brings up. Why should we even bother to have a PracticePeriod? Why not just go along as usual, and follow our comfortable patterns and routines? Whyset ourselves up for the possibility or even likelihood of failure and disappointment?I think the value of the Practice Period is precisely the way it reveals so much about the way weconstruct our experience, and offers us a stretch of time to experiment with new models andapproaches. We encounter the edges of our practice, but we also encounter patterns that affecteverything we ever set out to do or learn in this life. So it is worth taking some time to reflect onthis stage of the practice period.Resistance is usually the first thing we encounter, sometimes it even prevents us from setting upthe Practice Period agreement in the first place. I call this the “difficult teenager” in myself.Moody, restless, and rebellious, it is self-involved and not particularly interested in helping outaround the house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll clean my room, right after this video game. And whereare you going? Out. We resist something we are interpreting as making demands on us. So wedon’t even explore what this conditioning really is.The truth is we all set tacit horizons that limit our view of what is possible. Practice Period invitesus to look beyond those horizons in order to discover the world outside our habits and views.But this is necessarily a bit uncomfortable, as we set an intention that challenges our routinesand habits, even in a very small way. That is the experiment we undertake. The question is notwhether we “live up to” our practice period agreement. it’s not that kind of contract.---2 of 4Rather, it is a kind of illumination, like a flashlight, that helps us see better the patterns andbeliefs that limit us. Resistance is extremely valuable, an almost essential pointer. What does itpoint to? Most people think it points to our laziness, our stubbornness, our lack of commitmentor some other character flaw. Some people think it points to the difficulty of their lives, theirstruggles and failures. If this is your interpretation of resistance, you will spend quite a bit ofyour life discouraged and despairing. It doesn’t really matter whether the topic is “my exerciseprogram,” or “my diet,” or “learning to play the piano,” or “making a difference in the world,” thesame patterns will arise.So why is resistance so valuable? Because it exposes our inevitable tendency to set up idealsand to create expectations around them, and ideals are toxic on the spiritual path. When we setan ideal, no matter how modest, we have created a problem for ourselves. Why? What does anideal represent? [wait for answers]Every Zen teacher you will ever encounter will kick the props out of your ideals. And yet we stillcling to them and often believe that having ideals is what makes us a “good person.” You shouldalways be striving to be better, right? Much of our yearning and even our dedication on thespiritual path comes from those ideals. Or so we believe. Yet setting up and striving for ideals isantithetical to Zen.We tend to believe that without ideals, we would have no aspiration, and we would sink into themire of a dispiriting life. So why are ideals so toxic on this path? They necessarily create asense of separation from your present moment experience, and a deficit that you somehowneed to remedy.Along with ideals come a whole host of unwholesome constructions. The first is that sense oflack and deficit. Not only am I not “there” but I lack the capacity to be there somehow. This inturn congeals into a set of expectations.Now expectations are interesting. We tend to either externalize them—project them into otherpeople—or internalize them, creating them for ourselves. They are the chorus of “shoulds” weare constantly harried by. It is really important to distinguish expectations from reasonableresponsibilities, but we seldom do that. If you are a parent, reasonable responsibilities includefeeding and caring for your child, taking an interest in his or her development, serving as aguide and guardian, for example. But to those ordinary responsibilities we add expectations,fraught and charged; what will others think about our parenting? How can we be really goodparents, even ideal parents? And what would that even mean? Oh dear, it is really hopeless,and we end up just trying to muddle through. It is the same with almost everything we turn to.---3 of 4So during the practice period we can at least discover what kinds of ideals we set up for ourspiritual path, and what kinds of expectations we encounter. Since the sangha knows nothing ofour practice period agreement, the expectations can’t be coming from there. And the teachersare bafflingly refusing to scold or shame us, so the expectations that are revealed are the oneswe place on ourselves.This is another opportunity to beat ourselves up, for having expectations, but that would becounter to the whole process of inquiry that the Practice Period is for.But wait, isn’t the practice period about deepening our practice? It most certainly is, but not inthe ways most people imagine. It begins with connecting with our aspiration. An aspiration is notan ideal. Why?What do you think the difference is? [wait for answers]I think the difference is in the location. An ideal is somewhere out there, beyond where you are,and typically beyond where you can ever hope to be. It is something we try to use as amotivator. We set it up that way. What is it motivating us to do, supposedly? To be good, to tryhard, to make us determined and wholehearted. And it is true that it might have a little bit of thateffect. But like a horizon it keeps moving away in the distance.An aspiration is within you, and it is always in the process of being realized, whether we believethat or not. It is the creative expression of the universe as your particular life. Of course thereare times when it is obscured to you, and you are not particularly attending to it, and there areother times when it shines so brightly that it makes everything around you perfectly clear. Thereare no expectations with an aspiration. it might unfold in any of myriad ways. It can meetanything that arises, and nothing is an obstacle, really. Even our stumbles and mistakes are theunfolding of our aspiration. After all, how do we even know they are mistakes? We know fromthe mind of our ever-present aspiration. There is great joy in that.Aspiration is always fulfilling itself, always profoundly joyful, and it does not create expectations.You cannot be disappointed in an aspiration, or discouraged with it. It doesn’t have an outcome,only an unfolding and enfolding. It becomes clearer and clearer with practice, and it is enabling.Practice period is a valuable experiment to encounter and learn about our own patterns andhabits not only on the path of practice, but in the rest of our lives as well. As always, we beginwith the immediate experience. If that is some form of resistance, how useful! We caninvestigate how resistance arises, what “shoulds” it is setting itself against, and how it believes itis protecting us. To do this work you do not need effort, but rather curiosity and absoluteattention.---4 of 4Once we learn how our own resistance functions, what it believes and struggles against, we cancontinue to go deeper. There are so many dimensions of this to explore: shame, anger, oldbeliefs about ourselves and about others, and how we create our own suffering. As we continueto investigate with friendly curiosity, we also discover the ways we are striving to be “good,”“caring,” and “dedicated.” This can also create suffering, strangely enough. Because here webegin to identify the ideals that are subtly undermining all of our work on this path.You are enough. You have enough. You have and are everything the great Zen ancestors wereand had: a human being in a human life. Everything you do, say, or think is the great unfoldingof the only life that really matters: your own. There is no place for expectations, your own orothers. They only get in the way because they are necessarily much too limited. So be curious,be available for life and you can discover, through the medium of the Practice Period, theliberating potential of this profound practice. In this way we begin to realize not that resistance isfutile, but rather valuable. This means an attitude almost like listening, not “doing something.”The whole Practice Period is an exercise in discovery, exploration, and experiment. What willyou learn?Small group exercise:Q 1. Where in your practice or your life do you feel resistance arise?Q 2. How is that resistance helping you?Q 3. What core belief about yourself lies under the resistance?Q 4. What if that core belief wasn’t true?Debrief in the large group.Hilda Morley poem