Ed Gabrielsen

Some years ago, while I was in seminary, I began sitting with a group led by Roshi Ruben Habito. There was a weekly practice, and several other more intensive practices. “Day of Zen” was an all day Saturday event. And “sesshin,” was a week long silent intensive training. These practices were offered in the Zen tradition at Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas, Texas.

I had only read about Zen. When I was 22 years old, the first book on Buddhism I read was Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. For over a year, it was the only book I read. But I never actually connected with a Zen meditation group in any formal sense. My experiences with meditation began with Lex Gillan and The Yoga Institute. It was through Lex’s influence and teaching that I began reading and studying the Dharma. A few years later, I took refuge in a Tibetan lineage and this became the primary source of my Buddhist training.

Mahamudra is the torch of supreme liberty shining forth through all conscious beings.

In the fall of 2018, I was working on my last year of seminary courses while, at the same time, trying to find an internship placement for the following year. I was hoping to graduate in 2020 and find work at a church somewhere in Maine. I was pushing myself, and my mind was a mess. I remember how much stress there was. I could not seem to slow down and relax. I felt myself beginning to panic about the whole thing. I was running out of money, worried about the future, and looking for a more stable situation.

I had gotten away from regular meditation practice, and I knew it would help with the stress, so I decided to attend a full day of sitting practice organized by the Maria Kannon Zen Center. It was called “A Day of Zen,” and was to take place on a Saturday. The Zen Center was renting space in a church. It was a beautiful day in late fall or early winter, and the weather in Dallas was beginning to cool. I had practiced with the group a few times before, attending the regular Wednesday evening practice sessions. But it had been a long time since I had dedicated an entire day to formal meditation practice.

The morning sessions went smoothly. Bow. Sit. Stand. Chant. Walk. Repeat. I felt myself begin to decompress. During the morning Dharma talk, our teacher talked about our true nature and no separation. I knew I wasn’t there because I was still suffering a lot. I was caught up in my thoughts, and they seemed so real. My mind was very heavy.

I continued sitting. The practice got more intense for me. My legs were starting to really hurt. I wondered how much more I could take. And then, finally, the bell rang for lunch.

Walking outside into the fresh air and sunshine, I stretched my aching legs. In the courtyard of the church there was a garden of raised beds with the remnants of summer flowers and vegetables. I lay on my back on a wooden bench and looked up at the sky through the bare tree branches. After the morning meditation sessions, my mind was much quieter. Unbelievably, there were no thoughts. My usual mental litany of worry and anxiety was simply not there anymore. Moreover, there was no visual sense of my body. Looking up at the sky and the tree branches, there was no separation. There was no sense that I was looking at tree branches. Instead, the trees and the sky filled my entire experience. In other words, I was the sky and the branches. The experience of sky and branches was so clear and vivid. There was no distortion. I was that. I was that clarity. It was very simple and very quiet. But it was also shocking because that clarity was such a departure from my normal chaotic mental state. The sky was clear blue, and the tree branches were sharp and crisp lines across the sky. And the whole thing was taking place in me. I was that space in which it occurred. That’s all I was. Just the space for it to happen.

Later on that year, I attended a December sesshin where I worked with the koan, “Mu.” Although I had heard of koans and once read through a copy of Blue Cliff Record, I had never formally worked with them under the guidance of a teacher. Koans seemed so cryptic I could never find a way to connect. I knew there was something there, but the gate was not open to me.

For several days, I tried to figure out “Mu.” During one particular private interview, the talk with the Zen master called “dokuzan,” I asked some questions that were coming up for me during meditation. One important realization that Roshi Habito pointed out to me was about taking on problems that were out of my control. This has been a recurring theme in my life. I am learning that I am a codependent. I grew up in a dysfunctional family where my father struggled with alcoholism and depression. My parents later divorced, and I tried to rescue them. Of course, that did not work.

During dokusan at the sesshin that winter, I told Roshi I had been disturbed by the news reports coming out of Myanmar, about the oppression and genocide happening there. I was struggling with my own depression, and my thoughts were very heavy. Roshi told me simply, “We cannot do anything about that situation. Just keep sitting.”

There was so much clarity in his answer. It helped me cut through my thoughts. I dropped all the worry, and I realized “Mu.” I am Mu. I am the present awareness-consciousness in which all arisings occur. Whatever comes and goes, comes and goes in Mu. Mu is the constant. Mu is my true nature. I am Mu. I will never not be Mu. It was simply self-evident.

Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night, I listen to audio recordings of Dharma text readings. One night last year, I fell asleep listening to Peter Coyote’s reading of The Gateless Gate, a famous 13th century Zen text by the Chinese master Ekai, or as he is sometimes called, Mu-mon.

Transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps, the book describes forty-nine cases of transmission, that is, forty-nine enlightenment stories in which realization is transmitted from teacher to student through challenging dialogues, koan practice, which break through delusion.

Those beings constituted by awareness who try to ignore, reject or grasp awareness inflict sorrow and confusion upon themselves like those who are insane.

I had struggled for such a long time with my meditation practice. I had studied the Buddhist Dharma diligently, with devotion for my root guru and respect for all the sangha. And yet, there was still something holding me back. I knew I had not yet attained the goal. I was not free. After all these years of practice, my meditation had still not stabilized.

To be awakended from this madness, cultivate the gracious friendship of a sublime sage of Mahamudra, who may appear to the world as mad. When the limited mind enters blessed companionship with limitless Mind, indescribable freedom dawns.

I’ve had many partial openings along the way. These experiences have encouraged me to stay on the path. They have helped me develop trust in the Dharma, to know that what the Buddha taught is a real and living possiblilty. And so, I have kept going. Even though I have gotten discouraged, finding and losing the path, getting bogged down in my habitual conceptualization, intellectualizing everything, trying to figure it all out and dispairing that I will never attain the promised goal, I keep returning to the Dharma, again and again.

And so, on this particular night last year, I fell asleep listening to Peter Coyote’s voice reading from The Gateless Gate. Sometime around 3:00am, I woke up in a vague state, Coyote’s voice resonating clearly in the quiet night. He was on Case 19: “Everyday Life Is the Path.”

19.
Joshu asked Nansen: “What is the path?”
Nansen said: “Everyday life is the path.”
Joshu asked: “Can it be studied?”
Nansen said: “If you try to study, you will be far away from it.”
Joshu asked: “If I do not study, how can I know it is the path?”
Nansen said: “The path does not belong to the perception world, neither does it belong to the nonperception world. Cognition is a delusion and noncognition is senseless. If you want to reach the true path beyond doubt, place yourself in the same freedom as sky. You name it neither good nor not-good.”
At these words Joshu was enlightened.

Mumon’s comment: Nansen could melt Joshu’s frozen doubts at once when Joshu asked his questions. I doubt though if Joshu reached the point that Nansen did. He needed thirty more years of study.

In spring, hundreds of flowers; in autumn, a harvest moon;
In summer, a refreshing breeze: in winter, snow will accompany you.
If useless things do not hang in your mind,
Any season is a good season for you.

I don’t know if it was because the night was so quiet, or my mind was quiet, or I was half asleep and undistracted by the usual myriad worries, but somehow these softly spoken words from an audio recording of Peter Coyote’s voice went in deep. When he read, “If you want to reach the true path beyond doubt, place yourself in the same freedom as sky,” this jolted me awake and I erupted in tears. I lay in bed convulsing in tears. It was uncontrollable and uncontrived. There was nothing to prove and no one to prove it to. I immediately and without uncertainty knew I had found the truth, I had found my way home. This one line confirmed so many of my prior experiences in such a powerful and direct way that there was nothing left to doubt or question.

The quiet tears of joy continued as I lay in bed, trying not to waken my wife. I listened to the recording again and again, each time confirming what I now understood. For so long, I had been filling my mind with useless things, and these useless concepts and questions, these useless intellectualizations, only served to obscure the clarity that was there all along: the freedom of the blue sky.

If you want to reach the true path beyond doubt, place yourself in the same freedom as sky.

The next day, I wrote to Roshi Habito. He answered, “Did you have a new experience of this lately? Would you like to talk about it?”

When the limited mind enters blessed companionship with limitless Mind, indescribable freedom dawns.

Each day is new. Each moment is new. I will always be grateful to my teachers. Namo Guru.