I am visiting Green Gulch Zen Center. It is on the California coast right outside San Francisco. Green Gulch is affiliated with the San Francisco Zen Center that was founded by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Along with being a Zen center, Green Gulch is also an organic vegetable farm.
At one time in my life I had lots of opinions about Zen being strict and difficult and authoritarian. I don’t hold these opinions any longer. Opinions come and go. Today at Green Gulch I have enormous gratitude for the work and lives of the people around me. I can feel the care and awareness here in how the structures are built and maintained and how the gardens are tended and the food is cooked. One can go to a resort and find everything clean and trimmed, but it still may not have the presence that is here. This place hums with appreciated life.
When I first began a meditation practice I felt embarrassed about it. I didn’t tell anyone for months that I was sitting. I think I thought other people would see it as a sign of desperation, because I saw it as a sign of desperation. My life seemed out of control and nothing I tried seemed to be fixing this. Coming to meditation truly felt like a last ditch effort, or even a failure on my part. I might get more support and benefit from doing nothing than from all my attempts to do something.
I felt ashamed. I knew it didn’t really make sense to feel ashamed that I was starting a practice of sitting, wise people have been meditating for thousands of years and it is considered a sane activity by most. The truth is the sitting practice wasn’t creating the shame it was just revealing it. Slowly I became more accepting of my sitting practice, or more accepting of myself. In time I began to share this part of my life with my friends and family and even on occasion sit with other people at a retreat center or community meditation center.
During my few days here at Green Gulch I’ve felt renewed joy and appreciation for sitting—just sitting, nothing else to do. And also found such support and encouragement in sitting with others. The physical presence of everyone else in the Zendo fills me with energy to be there alone with myself, intimate with my experience, while at the same time I feel this great connection to everyone else.
Exploration
“Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest the most important thing is to make the soil rich and to cultivate it will.”
—Suzuki Roshi, from the book, Not Always So
Along with the effort you make to add kindness and strength and courage and gentleness to your soil you should also leave your soil alone, not disturb it at all, give it a break from being cultivated. This way you can get to know what it is. Maybe what you discover is not so bad. Maybe, when you do nothing to your soil and just let it be as it is, you discover your soil is okay. Or maybe you think your soil has real problems, is really lacking in a lot of areas—still can you just give your soil a break, do nothing to it and see what happens?
Doing nothing takes no effort; it is a great relaxation of habitual effort. Doing nothing is hard work; it is the ending of all our habitual effort. But no matter what, what we are left with is real soil. And real soil is so much more nourishing than all our ideas of soil we’ll ever have.
Consider taking the time in your life to sit and do nothing, by yourself or with others or both. No need to listen or not listen. You can just be there with yourself and see what happens. You can be with yourself and leave yourself alone at the same time.
There are hundreds of books available to support a meditation practice. Since I’m here at Green Gulch I’ll suggest the most well known one by Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. If you want further meditation instruction or to sit with others you can see if there are meditation centers in your community.
Do you have a sitting practice? Do you wish you did? Share your thoughts.
I wrote this post over a month ago when I was on the west coast. It is part of the series, Cultivating the Seeds of Listening, which also includes the posts, Strong and Kind and Soft and Brave.
At one time in my life I had lots of opinions about Zen being strict and difficult and authoritarian. I don’t hold these opinions any longer. Opinions come and go. Today at Green Gulch I have enormous gratitude for the work and lives of the people around me. I can feel the care and awareness here in how the structures are built and maintained and how the gardens are tended and the food is cooked. One can go to a resort and find everything clean and trimmed, but it still may not have the presence that is here. This place hums with appreciated life.
When I first began a meditation practice I felt embarrassed about it. I didn’t tell anyone for months that I was sitting. I think I thought other people would see it as a sign of desperation, because I saw it as a sign of desperation. My life seemed out of control and nothing I tried seemed to be fixing this. Coming to meditation truly felt like a last ditch effort, or even a failure on my part. I might get more support and benefit from doing nothing than from all my attempts to do something.
I felt ashamed. I knew it didn’t really make sense to feel ashamed that I was starting a practice of sitting, wise people have been meditating for thousands of years and it is considered a sane activity by most. The truth is the sitting practice wasn’t creating the shame it was just revealing it. Slowly I became more accepting of my sitting practice, or more accepting of myself. In time I began to share this part of my life with my friends and family and even on occasion sit with other people at a retreat center or community meditation center.
During my few days here at Green Gulch I’ve felt renewed joy and appreciation for sitting—just sitting, nothing else to do. And also found such support and encouragement in sitting with others. The physical presence of everyone else in the Zendo fills me with energy to be there alone with myself, intimate with my experience, while at the same time I feel this great connection to everyone else.
Exploration
“Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest the most important thing is to make the soil rich and to cultivate it will.”
—Suzuki Roshi, from the book, Not Always So
Along with the effort you make to add kindness and strength and courage and gentleness to your soil you should also leave your soil alone, not disturb it at all, give it a break from being cultivated. This way you can get to know what it is. Maybe what you discover is not so bad. Maybe, when you do nothing to your soil and just let it be as it is, you discover your soil is okay. Or maybe you think your soil has real problems, is really lacking in a lot of areas—still can you just give your soil a break, do nothing to it and see what happens?
Doing nothing takes no effort; it is a great relaxation of habitual effort. Doing nothing is hard work; it is the ending of all our habitual effort. But no matter what, what we are left with is real soil. And real soil is so much more nourishing than all our ideas of soil we’ll ever have.
Consider taking the time in your life to sit and do nothing, by yourself or with others or both. No need to listen or not listen. You can just be there with yourself and see what happens. You can be with yourself and leave yourself alone at the same time.
There are hundreds of books available to support a meditation practice. Since I’m here at Green Gulch I’ll suggest the most well known one by Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. If you want further meditation instruction or to sit with others you can see if there are meditation centers in your community.
Do you have a sitting practice? Do you wish you did? Share your thoughts.
I wrote this post over a month ago when I was on the west coast. It is part of the series, Cultivating the Seeds of Listening, which also includes the posts, Strong and Kind and Soft and Brave.
