Dharma Talk: Caught in a Self Centered Dream

This is the chant we say each time we sit together. It is unique to the Ordinary Mind school of Zen, written within the school, and, as far as I know, not chanted by any other group. The founder of the school, Charlotte Beck, formulated these four principles, as restatement of the Four Nobel Truths taughts by the Buddha. The beautiful words of the verse itself were written by one of Joko's students, Alan Kaprow. It crystalizes very nicely the emphasis of practice in our sangha. But there's a danger as well as nourishment inherent in the way we repeat the verse so often, because we can go on automatic pilot and just mouth it and not see what it teaches. So today I'd like to talk about this chant and reflect with you on what it means for our practice and our lives.

What human condition does it refer to when it claims we are caught in a self-centered dream ? The dream it talks about is not the dream state of our sleep, but the waking dream we all walk around in. This dream consists of the fog of thoughts, the stories we tell ourselves, our psychological patterns. It's the way we live in our heads disconnected from our bodies and feelings, from the concrete sensory reality of our surroundings. All of us without exception do this. All day long our minds are busy churning out thoughts, plans and worries. A common experience for people who first sit down to do zazen and begin to tune into the monlogue in our minds is shock, becuse often we aren't aware that we're almost constantly talking to ourselves -- our heads an avalance, a whirlwind, of words and images. But it doesn't take long when we begin to sit before we're vividly aware of the distracting chatter of our minds. This chatter is a dream, because it is purely subjective and exists only in our heads, but nonetheless sweeps us away so that we are unaware either of the specific thoughts we are having or of the ordinary life around us. Our bodies are present in each moment, but our awareness is often blotted out, and we are far away in a world of thought. Because we are so often AWOL, awash in mental activity of which we are largely unaware, we talk to people without really focusing on them, we walk down the street unaware of the sights and sounds around us. Instead we're caught in our thought-dream. It's this condition that gives the unfocused, inauthentic, dreamy quality to our lives, that often gives us the feeling of being unsatisfied, benumbed, alienated.

Why is this dream "only suffering" ? At first we may feel that the suffering arises from the mere presence of thoughts and we figure that the way out of suffering is to just get rid of the thoughts, to have an empty mind. But in our sangha we don't worry so much about the existence of the thoughts themselves. The suffering doesn't come from the thoughts but from our clinging or pushing away of the thoughts. We try to hold on to that wonderful Zen insight we had just a moment ago, but it is fleeting and we can't grasp it. We try to push away that sneaking little feeling of shame we had as we remember the lie we told yesterday. As our thoughts leap from the sublime to the ridiculous, from memory to planning, from regret to anticipation, from restlessness to contentment, from anger to joy, from shame to self-righteousness, we project on this mix a reality which it really doesn't have. This is where our sense of being a solid self comes from. We retreat into this solid self we think we are, like a fortress, and try to protect it from hurt. This mistaken sense of self turns out to be the dream itself; because when we think and act as though we are an unchanging self, instead of an ongoing process, this is contrary to the deepest reality of who we are.

As long as we're caught in the self-centered dream in our heads and we think that's reality, there's very little room for reality itself. But to let our thoughts arise and fall without interfering with them, shows us ourselves as the ever changing moment. We get to know ourselves, the pettiness, the anger, the jealousy, the fluffiness of our minds, the self justification, the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. And the less we want to look at any particular aspect of this flux, the more likely it is to have the most to teach us. It teaches us how human we are, how imperfect, how in need of compassion. And it teaches us about others, because more and more we realize that although the specific content of the thought stream will be different for each person, we also see that all of us are rendered self centered by its hypnotic power to convince us we are solid and static in a way we aren't. There aren't so many ways to be human, after all.

As we continue to practice, we're never finished with the aspect of practice that teaches us about our everyday human selves. We continue to have thoughts as we meditate but we see both their provisional reality and their ultimate unreality. Our obsessive self absorption in our thoughts, ideas and judgments, dissipates, and we find that zazen has another aspect as well. As we get to know our minds and are less caught up in our own thought loops, a certain amount of space opens up. The thoughts sometimes become less of a cascade, and in that space and quiet the world around us comes flooding in with new vividness. We wake up from our dream. We actually get out of our heads and hear the dog that barks outside the zendo, fully feel the stiffness in our neck, experience the explosive sound of a sneeze by a fellow sitter. Our minds join our bodies in the present moment and inside and outside are harmonized rather than having our bodies in the zendo and our minds at our work place. This aspect of life as it is, also teaches us. We don't waste time resisting and denying what is. We see it; we respond to it. Clear awareness of each moment takes us out of our subjective delusion and puts us clearly and openly in life itself. Because we're not caught up in ourselves we notice the look of distress or fear on another face, and respond. Because we're paying attention, we call ourselves on the blame we direct toward others and see what our own part in an argument might be. In this way we learn the value of each small thing, its connection to everything else, its wholeness. We see how to respond to life in more direct, simple, skillful ways. Life as it is, this shifting chain of subjective thought and sensory input, constantly teaching us.

From this process of awareness of being open and attentive to the world around us, seeing under the conventional view of what we are and what the experience of human life is, comes compassion. When we are grounded in each moment, we are not adding anything to life, but simply taking it in just as it is in all its homely everydayness. Each moment presents an opportunity for teaching. What we learn is compassion. Really taking in all aspects of that dream we are so often lost in, we acknowledge those things that are difficult to come to terms with as well as giving ourselves credit for the benevolent humanity of what so often lies hidden behind the more thorny aspects of our lives. In this way we open to the teaching of each moment, to compassion's way.