Engaged Buddhism and Taoist Practice: Prison Zen, Service, and the Wisdom of Water

Journal Notes: A Light Stroke, Executed With Finesse

The highest motive in life is to be like water. It fights nothing or no one. It flows from and back to its source and in the flowing smooths and wears away all resistance.
    - Taoist proverb

Water is a mysterious substance. A magical substance that flows through our fingers, constantly in search of the ocean. All life depends on water. Life flows over and around waterfalls and rocks. Life contains obstacles we go over or around and then pools of rest -- but always, inexorably moving toward the ocean -- the universal consciousness. Then, heated by the sun, it rises up and returns to the beginning again.

We each have a spiritual current that runs through our lives -- a brook. Connected to that current, our work, our life, has power. I constantly ask myself: What is my relationship to that current? Am I letting it guide me or am I forcing my will upon my life? It is so easy to lose touch with that current. When I am connected, my life has a flow. The most amazing things happen. Help comes my way, I meet "fellow-travelers," people whose energy supports mine and we both come away reinforced. Doors open. Bills get paid. In a good month I spend about a third of my time in that state of synchronicity.

When you turn your back on the current of your life, you are on your own. You are coming at life believing that you are strong enough, powerful enough on your own. The other way is to come at life from a place of humility.

Rest certainly plays a role: Do I put living a spiritual life ahead of deadlines and achieving some tangible goal? Silence certainly plays a role. Being in touch with the spiritual current means first being able to listen to oneself, being in sync with oneself. You need silence to get there. Work of the spirit requires strength of spirit.
    - Journal Note

Of all the elements, the sage should take water as the preceptor
Water is yielding but all-conquering.
Water extinguishes Fire, or finding itself likely to be defeated, escapes as steam and reforms.
Water washes away soft Earth, or when confronted with rocks, seeks a way around.
Water corrodes Iron till it crumbles to dust, it saturates the atmosphere so that Wind dies.
Water gives way to obstacles with deceptive humility, for no power can prevent it following its destined course to the sea.
Water conquers by yielding, it never attacks but always wins the last battle.
The sage who acts as water, is distinguished by humility, embraces passivity, acts from non-action, and conquers the world.
    - Tao Te Ching, edited

Perhaps the best river runners are Taoists at heart. Taoism considers a person wise if he accommodates himself to the rhythms of the universe. Likewise, a boater is wise if he accommodates himself to the river's flow: He must paddle with the water, not against it. Through practice and sensitivity comes an intuitive understanding of the water's way. One important Taoist principle is wu-wei, which literally means "not-doing." In practice, wu-wei means letting things be themselves and not forcing them. This does not imply non-action; rather, there is an understanding of how to take the path of least resistance and apply one's strength correctly. This principle is embodied in the martial arts of judo and aikido. It is analogous to cutting up a chicken in the best way: Instead of using a dull knife and cutting through the bones, the wise butcher will use a finely honed blade and apply the needed force at the joints. The boater who understands water does not attempt to force his way through rapids, fighting the water and seeking to overcome it. Rather, he applies his strength at the proper moment and in the most efficient way. A light stroke, executed with finesse, will do more to control the craft than any amount of determined but insensitive flailing. The process is explained by Chuang-tzu, a fourth-century B.C. Taoist sage. He tells the story of an old man who fell into a terrible rapid and emerged safely downstream. When asked to explain his survival, the man replied,

Plunging into the whirl, I come out with the swirl. I accommodate myself to the water, not the water to me. And so I am able to deal with it after this fashion...I was born upon the land...and accommodated myself to dry land. That was my original condition. Growing up with the water, I accommodate myself to the water.
    - Christopher Norment, In The North Of Our Lives

Verlen Kruger is a river runner and canoe-adventurer extraordinaire. He has canoed almost ninety thousand miles all over North and South America, including up the Grand Canyon. Many of his trips start or end from the river that runs past his backyard in Lansing, Michigan. During our interview, he said: "A person who travels the length of a river learns something about himself. It is an experience everyone should have, at least once. Start from where several trickles get together to form a creek. The creeks get together and become a river. The river comes from somewhere and it goes somewhere. Where does it go? Can I go along? I cannot look at a river without wondering where the water is going. Ultimately it goes where all good waters go -- to the great sea beyond." (Verlen hand builds expedition canoes. For information, see the back page).

I am only a ferryman, and it is my task to take people across this river. I have taken thousands of people across and to all of them my river has been nothing but a hindrance on their journey. They have travelled for money and business, to weddings and on pilgrimages; but the river has been in their way and the ferryman was there to take them quickly across the obstacle. However, amongst the thousands there have been a few, four or five, to whom the river was not an obstacle. They have heard its voice and listened to it, and the river has become holy to them, as it has to me....

Have you learned the secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?...That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?

This discovery had made him very happy. Was then not all sorrow in time, all self-torment and fear in time? Were not all difficulties and evil in the world conquered as soon as one conquered time, as soon as one dispelled time?
    - Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (edited)

A couple of years ago, in Middlebury Vermont, I interviewed Alan Coulter, river runner, Outward Bound instructor and ex-Peace Corp volunteer. When I asked him about his longstanding interest in Zen Buddhism, he responded, "Mine is sort of a maverick practice. I haven't stayed with one teacher or really pursued it. Slow to bite, I guess. But the basis of Buddhism, as I understand it, is a direct connection and experience of spirit, of our true nature, unmediated by thought. The idea is that prayer, reading and study are all fine ritual, but the basis is clearing the mind. When the mind is clear of thought, the way is open for experiencing one's connection with all that is. That can happen in the woods or the city or wherever one is. Maybe wherever, but not necessarily whenever....

"There is something earthy and basic with Zen. Fairly simple and unencumbered with stuff. Sure there is a hierarchy and there are monks and lay people and different sects, but the basis is still the individual and his or her experience of spirit." I asked Alan how he defined spirit. "As I perceive it, spirit is the basis of our living. Our own spirit is a tiny part of the giant amorphous spirit. There is an underlying basis behind this physical world, something that is intangible. Whether it has intention or not, doesn't matter to me. I do feel that there is an ideal way of being in the world -- a connection with spirit -- and that most of us, myself included, are not typically there. Or maybe we are, but we are ignorant of it....Spirit is the absence of ego. Spirit is the connection with all people, all animals -- it is all the same, the way I look at it."

Excerpts From the Tao Te Ching, Translated by Stephen Mitchell

He who clings to his work
will create nothing that endures.

The Master does his job
and then stops.
He understands that the universe
is forever out of control,
and that trying to dominate events
goes against the current of the Tao.

Because he believes in himself,
he doesn't try to convince another.
Because he is content with himself,
he doesn't need others' approval.
Because he accepts himself,
the whole world accepts him.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.

I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.

On Stillness, Desire and the Clear Mind

Desire blinds us, like the pickpocket who sees only the saint's pockets.
    - Buddhist adage

Life lives on life. We all eat and are eaten. When we forget this, we cry; when we remember this, we can nourish one another.
    - Buddhist adage

If you let cloudy water settle, it will become clear. If you let your upset mind settle, your course will also become clear.
    - Buddhist adage

Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.
    - Buddhist adage

If you can only rid yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything. But even though you strive for this eon after eon, you will never accomplish it.
    - Huang Po

It has never been more difficult to hear the unflattering voice of the truth -- and never more difficult, once having heard it, to follow it -- because there is nothing in the world around us that supports that choice.
    - Sogyal Rinpoche, as quoted in The Sun

I never get lost because I don't know where I'm going.
    - Zen master Ikkyu, as quoted in The Sun

...Lama Trunghpa Rimpoche described spiritual progress from the ego's point of view as "one insult after another."
    - Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart

There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves. True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude where we allow our minds to settle. Just as water seeks its own level, the mind will gravitate toward the holy. Muddy water will become clear if allowed to stand undisturbed, and so too will the mind become clear if it is allowed to be still.
    - Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao, Daily Meditations

Monks and nuns in both Buddhism and Christianity practice prayer, meditation, mindful walking, silent meals, and many other ways to overcome suffering. It is a kind of luxury to be a monk or a nun, to be able to sit quietly and look deeply into the nature of suffering and the way out. Sitting and looking deeply into your body, your consciousness, and your mental states is like being a mother hen covering her eggs. One day insight will be born like a baby chick. If monks and nuns do not cherish their time of practice, they will have nothing to offer the world.
    - Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ

...meditation masters, monks who spend their lives in the forests, are very very important for us and for society. Even those of us who are in society must return to these masters from time to time and look within. We must practice our meditation, our prayer, at least every morning or evening. In the crises of the present day, those of us who work in society, who confront power and injustice daily, often get beaten down and we become tired. At least once a year, we need to go to a retreat center to regain our spiritual strength, so we can return to confront society. Spiritual masters are like springs of fresh water.
    - Sulak Sivaraksa, Director of the Pridi Banomyong Institute and author of Religion and Development, A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society and Siamese Resurgence, from The Path of Compassion

Vimala Thakar has been a meditation teacher in India and Europe for many years. In many ways, she is a Dharma heir to Krishnamurti. After she had been working in rural development for many years, Krishnamurti asked her to begin to teach, and she became a powerful and much-loved meditation teacher. Then she returned to her rural development work, teaching meditation considerably less. I asked her, "Why did you go back to rural development and helping the hungry and homeless after teaching meditation?" and she was insulted by my question. She said, "Sir," -- as Krishnamurti does -- "I am a lover of life, sir, and I make no distinction between serving people who are starving and have no dignity in their physical lives and serving people who are fearful and closed and have no dignity in their mental lives. There is no difference to me. I love all of life and the way that I give is to respond to whatever is presented to me."
    - Jack Kornfield, The Path of Compassion, Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism

If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is "the quiet acceptance of what is." No judgement, no anger or bitterness, no hostility or remorse but a quiet willingness to go with it rather than to fight it....

The silent empty invisible space that is within all form is called the Tao. It is written that the Tao that can be described is not the Tao. It is beyond description, beyond language, beyond symbols. Paradoxically, it is a part of everything.
    - Wayne W. Dyer, Real Magic

...The Third Patriarch of Zen Buddhism explained that liberation arises when we are "without anxiety about nonperfections." The world is not supposed to be perfect according to our ideas....The Buddha arises when we are able to see ourselves and the world with honesty and compassion....We learn to see with the heart, which loves, rather than with the mind which compares and defines.
    - Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart