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Maybe a year ago now, my friend Dosho invited me to do a dharma talk for his sangha in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was thrilled to go, partly because I love Minneapolis and St. Paul and partly because I've admired Dosho since the first time we met. He has always been one of the "big kids" to me, a formal Zen teacher whose robes are always pressed, someone who knows and follows the protocols of rituals without having to hide crib notes in his sleeves, the one who looks the part of teacher. Anyway, when he introduced me he paid me an enormous compliment. It went something like this: "Geri Larkin really knows how to jump off of a ten foot pole." He was referring to an old and much beloved Zen koan: "You are standing on top of a ten foot pole. What do you do?"
At first I was a little confused by his compliment. Then, looking around the room I saw that most of his sangha was older, well educated, knowledgeable. I saw that he was saying that this path is about throwing ourselves into our lives without clinging to book learning or having the answers to all of our questions about Buddhism and precisely how the process of waking up works. Our job is simply to leap into whatever it is that is this moment with a full heart. I know how to do that. And it is why I am happy even in moments when the world tells me I shouldn't be. That is the power of living in now. And this is how waking up happens.
Buddha used to rant about this. In one of the funniest sutras ever, a follower named Malunkyaputta has apparently been asking for all sorts of information when Buddha finally stops him cold. He yells at him, "Have I EVER said I would answer whether the world was eternal or not? Have I EVER said I would answer questions about the soul and body, whether they are the same or different or what happens when the body dies? Have I EVER said I would exist, or not exist after my death?!
Poor Malunkyaputta can only say no. And when he does Buddha shares one of his most powerful teachings. He tells the crowd that asking such questions is like a man who has been shot by an arrow and instead of pulling the frigging arrow out he starts asking questions: Who shot the arrow? What was his caste, his name, his color, his height? Where does he live? What kind of a bow string did he use; what kind of bow, arrow, feather?
The man will be dead before he gets the answers. The same is true for us. Our questions about the sutras, about protocol, about training will never all be answered. If we wait, we'll be dead. We already know that there is birth, old age (if we are lucky), decay, sorrow, pain, grief, distress.
And we know that this is a path that offers us happiness in the middle of all these things. So where do we start? With what Buddha called heedfulness, which is mindfulness with a big M. Heedfulness is about pulling all of our senses -- our seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, consciousness --into this moment. Heedfulness makes it possible for us to see how, when and where we make ourselves miserable without needing to look around to see who we can blame for our unhappiness. And we can see where we can break these patterns. As Buddha expressed it, "Ill will with regard to things pertaining to (our) suffering produces unhappy states and bad conduct. Being impatient or angry at (our) suffering does not remove it."
Instead we can live moment to moment, fully. Over time what can we expect if we decide to jump off our own ten foot poles moment by moment? Happily, Buddha did answer this question. He said we could expect these things: joy, elation, freedom from anxiety, serenity, peaceful feelings, "living with a gazelle's mind"(how great is that?!), and lightheartedness, whatever our life situation.
Just jump, ok? You can, honest.
