Why wait?

Zen talk June 2024

Years ago, I introduced a Zen teacher to a professor of Christian mysticism here at the University of Antwerp. As a simple Zen student, I dared to join the conversation and brought up the idea that for me Zen meditation was primarily an experience. During the ensuing interaction, I discovered that the word "experience" can be heard in two very different ways, and both gentlemen used the word differently from what I had meant.

When I walk along the beach, I experience the beach. And on a sunny summer day I experience the beach differently than during a storm. My experience is about the beach, the sea, the weather… But I can have a panic experience, or an ecstatic experience, or an altered state of consciousness under the influence of some chemical substance. Then it is all about the experience itself.

The Zen teacher and the professor found each other in the latter, the special mystical experience. The big difference, in which they did not find each other, was that for one that experience was groundless and for the other divine. What I had learned, however, was that in meditation you make space for whatever arises, pleasant or unpleasant, calm or restless, ecstasy or boredom, hope or despair. That no single feeling is inherent to meditation. It is letting all that be without striving for a special "experience”.

So even in Zen, not everyone is on the same page. According to Robert Sharf, the notion of special experiences was introduced into Zen only at the beginning of the last century by D.T. Suzuki, after reading “The Varieties of Religious Experience” by William James. Suzuki made the experience of satori the central element of Zen, very different from, for example, Shunryu Suzuki, who did not talk about such experiences at all.

The "experience of groundlessness" can also be understood in these two different ways. You can conceive it as a special meditative experience. Or, quite simply, as the experience that there is ultimately no solid ground in reality.

Someone once received the instruction from his teacher to respond to everything that came up in meditation with: "I doubt that”. After ten days of intense meditation, lightning struck and he had a powerful experience. His teacher recognized this experience as satori. From that day on, there was an unbridgeable gap between him and the rest of humanity. The teacher stated that by living in groundlessness, he was now able to point out the blind spots that others still had and to bring about that experience in others as well.

Suddenly discovering that there is ultimately no solid ground in reality can be intense. Elevating that intensity to a special meditative experience creates a new, equally illusory ground. Nagarjuna already warned about this: Groundlessness means letting go of all concepts. But for those who cling to the concept of groundlessness, there is no remedy anymore (MMK 13.8).

Why would you want to have an experience of groundlessness so badly? The day you hear from your doctor that you have an incurable form of cancer, your world collapses. That is an experience of groundlessness. Or when you discover that your partner has been cheating on you for 25 years, and everyone else already knew except you. I have worked my entire professional career as a psychiatrist. I can tell you a thousand horror stories you do not want to hear.

This is the theme of Pema Chödrön's book: 'When Things Fall Apart'. Everything that seems solid can burst like a bubble in an instant. What makes it so difficult to face this? The simple answer is: fear. It is everything we do not want.

I have long wondered why people then inevitably ask the question: why me? Why does this have to happen to me? It's a question you never get an answer to. And yet we cannot escape it. Actually, it's not a question, it's a statement. It is the ultimate attempt to reject groundlessness. There must be something beneath it.

But why wait until your world collapses? It is not that difficult to understand that the world as we see it is not the world as it is, but as we try to hold it together. It is not that difficult to understand that it can fall apart at any moment.

Why wait? Why not start from that simple observation and create moments in which we do not have to hold everything together? Moments in which reality can show itself in its impermanence and instability. Moments where we do not have to be busy surviving. That is what I mean by the experience of meditation.

In this experience, we discover, little by little, how the fear of the abyss slowly gives way to an equally groundless confidence. So many times I have heard people say at a moment when something very awful happened: "I am so grateful that I have my meditation practice. I would not know how to deal with this otherwise." And it is not that it is no longer awful anymore. Precisely because it is awful, it is good to become still and be open and present.

And in that presence, we discover a natural compassion, from a deep awareness that we share this groundlessness with all living beings.