Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide

Philosophy, almost by definition, is preoccupied with our craving after some form of certainty or knowledge, a desire to find a once-and-for-all basis of understanding the world. That has traditionally led Western philosophers to pursue a foundation for knowledge. For something to qualify as a foundation for knowledge, that something must somehow b

Yet how many people continue to practice with the implicit goal of someday meeting Buddha? We may imagine we will meet him in the guise of an enlightened master—a qualitatively different order of being than ourselves—or that we will one day, after years and years of hard practice, finally become whatever it is we imagine we want to turn into.

If you think Zen is something lofty and esoteric, the master will give you a shout or slap for an answer. If you think it is abstract, you’ll be told it’s three pounds of flax or the oak tree in the garden. If you think it is beyond words and abstractions, the master may quote the sutras or a poem by Han Shan. If you think Zen is nothing but our ev

we can become attached to our own sense of heroic renunciation. This involves the ego making a show of its own sacrifice, and laying the foundation for a new brand of self-centeredness. Extremes of asceticism, or an impulsive desire to become, or become known as, saintly or selfless may be self-centered parodies of the truly religious life.

There’s an old saying: “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.” Even though the word spiritual comes from the word for breath, which is nothing but air, too many people seem to make spiritual practice out to be something heavy and portentous, rather than something light. How do we manage to get so mixed up about what to take seriously

For most of us, our self-protective, habitual ways of being in the world inevitably reassert themselves.

We all come to practice as clay buddhas. We want to escape something we believe is wrong with who we are, to escape whatever lays us open to suffering. We don’t realize that the attempt at escape is itself an engine of our suffering. But gradually our practice may allow us to come to terms with who and what we are, and we may suddenly realize that

When we sit, don’t we allow all the usual annoying differences like itches or restlessness or an aching knee not to make any difference to us? Don’t we simply keep sitting? This is one way of understanding “oneness.” It’s an important part of Zen practice not to be buffeted about by our likes and dislikes and sitting still regardless of how we feel

that I have. I call this a “psychological” insight because the basic task of all psychologically-minded practice is re-owning the split-off and denied or dissociated aspects of our mind. Through psychologically-minded practice we learn to accept all the contents of our mind.