The Year of the Snake

by Tom Dharma-Joy Reichert

Welcome to the Year of the Snake! The snake symbolizes renewal and rebirth. As Joseph Campbell notes in The Power of Myth:

“The serpent sheds its skin to be born again, as the moon its shadow to be born again… Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That’s an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life.”

Of course, each of us is being reborn every moment, so let us use the image of the snake as a reminder of this constantly returning opportunity to reset our life, and to recommit ourselves to our intention to live an awaked life. As Maezumi Roshi said, quoting Dogen Zenji, in twenty-four hours our life is born and dying, rising and falling, 6.4 billion times—that’s 6.4 billion opportunities each and every day to actualize our intention to wake up. Maezumi Roshi went on to quote Dogen Zenji saying that “even if you live one day with a clear understanding of what life is, the value of that one day is equal to many, many years of living without awareness.” So, I truly encourage you, as we enter this new calendar year and this new lunar year to commit yourself to your practice, to set an intention to wake up and then—DO IT!!!!

On the one hand, we can say it is very hard, but really, which part of it is actually, truly difficult? Take the foundational practice of not-knowing—just emptying yourself out of fixed concepts and being totally open to whatever is arising in this moment. You can practice (“flash”) not-knowing for just a second, can’t you? Of course you can—try it! So then, how about for the second after that? And then the one after that? If we break it down in this way, there is nothing “hard” about it at all! Challenging, perhaps—the brain and its billions of neurons are firing away, the ox is bucking, and our attention inevitably wanders. So, just come back—this moment is always waiting for us.

Sometimes, when people find out I’m involved in Zen practice, they tell me they could never, ever meditate, it’s too hard. But what is hard about it? The difficulty is in our minds, in our conceptual picture of what it is supposed to look like versus how I experience it. Sure, our minds wander. That’s called being human. Our vow is simply that, when the mind wanders, we just return, gently and without self-critical judgment, to not-knowing, over and over and over. This is why we call it practice.

Back in 1968, when we were the “Los Angeles Zendo,” Maezumi Roshi wrote a set of “Zendo Precautions” that one of his students then carved into a slice of tree trunk and placed in the entryway to the Zendo. They are still there today. These “Zendo Precautions” are an adaptation for modern circumstances of a fascicle written by Dogen Zenji, “Procedures for the Hall of Gathered Clouds” (衆僧堂清規 Jūundō Shiki). Dogen Zenji wrote this fascicle in 1239 while he was establishing a monastic training site at Kosho-ji, and it provides a mixture of practical and spiritual guidance to the monks—the “Gathered Clouds”—who were practicing there together. I often go back to both Dogen Zenji’s original text as well as Maezumi Roshi’s later adaptation of it 729 years later to gain some guidance. As we enter this new year, and renew our intentions, they have been particularly on my mind.

“Those who wish to realize and actualize the Buddha’s Way are welcome. Otherwise, you better keep out.”

Maezumi Roshi gets straight to the point: “Those who wish to realize and actualize the Buddha’s Way are welcome. Otherwise you better keep out.” Right there, kan—”barrier!” From the very first, we are being asked: why are you here? I ask this question in my talks all the time, because clarifying this “why?” is important. (Of course, don’t forget that “why” is often a trick question in Zen!) Why are we practicing? We have to clarify it for ourselves. No one can live your life except you, and you can’t live anyone else’s life—every time we try, we raise a crashing wave of suffering. So you have to clarify your practice for yourself. It is important to be clear about this—our practice is our very own, and it is a big mistake to think that someone else can set out what your practice “should” be, what your life “should” look like. Remember, your own experience is always your most important teacher. Ehipassiko!

Now, people come to practice for all sorts of different reasons. Most people come with a transactional mind-set. By transactional, I mean they come because they want to expend some effort and get some result beneficial to themselves. While this is how people arrive—and I include myself in this group for sure!—over time, as our practice deepens, we see that this transactional mindset will loosen and, if we commit ourselves and practice steadily, it will fall away. It’s not that these “good results” may not manifest, but they are not so important. But, to begin, it is these reasons—which are always rooted in the experience of dukkha, of suffering—that bring people to the temple gate. (After all, most people seek out a meditation center are not blissfully happy.) Most people come because they want to get something out of practice—they want to be less angry, or less anxious, or less reactive; maybe they want to be a better husband, or a better father, a better son, or co-worker. Whatever brings you here, I invite you to leave it with your shoes outside the Zendo entrance. Then, enter this Hall of Great Silence, set an intention to just be present to whatever arises, bow to your seat, bow to each other, and sit down and take up the practice of not-knowing, of being present to whatever arises. Again, there is nothing intrinsically difficult in this practice—we flash not-knowing for a moment, for two moments, for a string of moments, and when our discursive mind pops up and hijacks our attention, we just gently return. Over and over and over again.

The gentle return is key. Don’t give up on yourself! Develop the discipline of return, of returning over and over. Aren’t you worth it? When I was in third grade, I became an avid equestrian. I was never accomplished, but I was as devoted as my life circumstances allowed. When you are learning to ride, if you are actually making an effort, you fall off your horse a lot, particularly when you are going fast, or when you are jumping. We were trained that it was absolutely crucial that, whenever we fell, we had to immediately get back up on the horse, otherwise we could develop a fear that would keep us from ever getting back up. So when you were muddy (a lot), when you were in pain (not infrequent), when you were scared (also not infrequent), when you were embarrassed (constantly lol), no matter the circumstances, you had to get back up and return. It is like that with our sitting. When we notice that our thoughts are wandering, we just return, with no added drama, no story. Don’t stay down on the ground—don’t give in to daydreaming, to planning, to reliving that fight, to thinking about lunch—just return to not-knowing, to counting the breath, to following the breath, to MU.

What is this “realizing and actualizing the Buddha’s Way” that Maezumi Roshi talks about? It’s just this! Just returning, moment after moment, to this very moment, to this very life, to choosing living instead of a simulacrum of life. That returning to this moment—that’s it! Dogen Zenji emphasized throughout his writing that practice and realization are not separate. Indeed, he came up with this new word, “practice-realization” to capture his point.

Maezumi Roshi also emphasizes this point: “We do not practice in order to attain realization; in fact, when we practice, we do not need to expect anything. Why not? Because everything is already here! Our life is this wisdom! Our practice is this realization! … All of us have abundant opportunities to experience our life in this way at this very moment. How can we realize the Supreme Way manifesting as our life? Just be! Just do! When we live with this awareness, we realize that there is no division between this life and the Supreme Way, no division between this life and the subtle mind of nirvana.”

So I encourage you to make the effort. And, even more, to do it together in sangha. Sitting and practicing together is much easier than trying to do it on your own—I know this as a fact for myself, but come check it out for yourself! We sit together in the zendo, the Hall of Great Silence, six days a week. Come join us there in this Year of the Snake. Let’s shed our skins and learn to let go together.

Dharma-Joy is ZCLA’s Abbot and Head Priest/Preceptor.