Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo.
And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn.
basho
Basho, a master of haiku, is giving some hints to aspiring poets for authentic creativity to emerge and express itself. This is good advice for us yogis as well. If we see and listen inaccurately, internally or externally, our actions will be flawed, and unlikely to be wise or kind. If at dusk, as an ancient Indian story teaches, we perceive a rope to be a snake, fear is aroused in the body. Our reactions, emotions and speech may alarm other people, all because there was not full and accurate attention. How about mistakenly seeing a snake as a rope? Life could be endangered.
Accuracy follows full attention. Inaccuracy follows inattention, absent mindedness and the many forms of mental distraction that occupy inner space. Following Basho’s advice, if we want to learn about the source of the needless suffering that is set in motion by inaccuracy in our perceptions we have to go to ourselves!
Vipassana meditation is a vital part of this curriculum. To know ourselves is NOT a matter of thinking-knowing, nor the intelligence of accumulated knowledge. It is the freshness of a mind uncluttered by a lifetime of views, opinions, wounds, triumphs and failures…by conditioned consciousness. A mind not for or against anything is like a clear mirror reflecting whatever is in front of it accurately, and then completely cleansed when that departs (as it always does). Do you see this incessant coming and going in your own mind? Can the observing mind be intimate with whatever appears next, without reactivity? If there is “like” or “dislike” can we see this? We dust off the mirror with the help of many techniques presented to us by the Buddha and generations of yogis devoted to direct, clear seeing, to the urgency and beauty of the journey of self-discovery taking us to freedom and sanity.
Wisdom practice—Vipassana—encourages us to see ourselves come what may, and in the process, to become free. Of course, the greatest challenge for us is in relationships with other people. When we bring our self-awareness practice to relationships we have to learn to be aware of what they say and do and of our subjective reaction simultaneously, in one sweep of awareness. With practice, awareness can turn a reaction (mechanical, conditioned) into a fresh response and is more likely to be wise and kind. It is one thing to see shattered idealizations in the privacy of our sitting practice, quite another when others witness our unflattering behavior!
I was a university professor for ten years and have been a meditation teacher for over forty. For the most part, these roles are respected, often quite a bit. I saw that I was a bit spoiled by all this. When my wife was not interested in a “brilliant” talk I was prepared to deliver on any subject, I was forced to see my annoyance in her presence. It is clear, at least for me, that nothing flushes out self-cherishing and attachment-like relationships. It has been, and still is, an invaluable meditation practice. As my first Dharma teacher Seung Sahn Sunim often put it—a bad situation is a good situation!
In the misty rain
basho
Mount Fuji is veiled all day
How intriguing!