Dancing in space
Clad in clouds
Eating the sun and holding the moon
The stars are my retinue*
While living in Boulder under the shadow of the Flatirons in 1982, my neighbor and running partner Paul Harris and I would chase across the Enchanted Mesa daily from Chautauqua Park to Eldorado Canyon testing each others limits of pain and suffering while exploring lofty existential questions from a Buddhist perspective. Paul was studying at the Naropa Institute under the tutelage of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. It was a heady time in my life and instrumental in steering me toward further studies of the Buddha's path and meditative practice. Paul continued as a practicing Buddhist while I have continued to live a life of physical action in line with the Buddhist off-shoot of Zen.
Who am I? Where do I fit within the scheme of things? Am I following the right path? There are times during a long run or race when I receive the clearest understanding to these inquiries of any other time in my life. I've always said the mountains were my sanctuary and trail running my prayer. In that sense my running has always been a time outside of the daily routine where I steady my mind and practice an actionable form of meditation.
We live in a world where we are bombarded with information, where we are constantly pressed to produce and achieve. The practice of mindfulness, essentially Buddhist meditation, is increasingly taking hold in the West, contrasting with the otherwise violent frenzy of our culture. I hear other runners referring to receiving similar spiritual benefits during physical activity. People are looking for a non-reactive stillness or serenity to balance or stop the world and counter the stressful overload that is undermining and preventing us from living fully. People sense this; they don't want to have a life that is just dictated by cultural expectations.
Buddhism employs practices that can be done in a secular fashion, as opposed to ritual practice of traditional religion, without all the ideologies attached. You can be a Christian, a Jew, an atheist, or a Muslim and these practices are just as applicable, accessible, and fruitful. The institutionalization of religions has led to a well-formulated set of rigid answers. Buddhism is a living response to living questions, and therefore melds well with all belief systems. Buddhism speaks directly to people of all ideological persuasions; its teachings seem to address the needs of people across time. The power of Buddhism's ability to thrive throughout any culture is not because it has a certain fixed set of dogmas, but because it has managed again and again to reinvent itself. Buddhism's spread has to do with its ability to trigger imaginative transformations in those that are drawn to it who can engage with its ideas and practices. Its teachings continue to have contemporary appeal because they address the perennial suffering of humanity.
Religion caters to peoples' need for security. In a highly contingent, unpredictable, changing, and tragic world, religion provides us with a sort of stable foundation upon which we can begin to make sense of it all. In that regard it has a vital place in the world, but it obscures what is radical, what is original, what is unsettling in what the Buddha or Jesus was saying. The Buddha did not offer a consolidating view of the world to help us better cope with our lives. (and I suspect neither did Jesus). What the Buddha aimed for was to see us be more engaging with our lives without basing them on non-negotiable dogmatic beliefs.
I began by studying the Eightfold Path to enlightenment but gradually migrated from the disciplined practices of Buddhism to the more practical approach of Zen. While the meditative practice of Buddhism led me to inner peace and elucidation, I felt like it took my focus away from the mystery of life. In my youth, the mystery was more enticing. Zen cultivates perplexity and astonishment, wonderment and doubt. As a movement in China about a thousand or so years after the Buddha, Zen sought to rebel against the consolidating certainties of scholarship and belief and return to what the Buddha's own experience was when he left the luxurious life that he was brought up in and went outside the palace to experience the lives of the sick and aging poor. That is where the sense of astonishment, curiosity, and deep, deep bafflement began that led to his awakening as he sought resolution to the primary existential questions he encountered. Christianity too has migrated away from the life of Jesus, with much the same result. Zen seeks to recover the spirit of awe and discovery in life experienced by the Buddha, or Jesus for that matter. Buddhism has become a set of fixed answers to the essential questions; the questions inevitably seem to slip away and get forgotten. Zen returns to the primacy of questioning. While Buddhism is very much an intellectual discipline, the concluding guiding message from Zen for me was to burn my Zen books and just "Do it", which I have been following ever since.
Astonishment, Wonder, Doubt and Questioning are at the root of a Zen spiritual life, nurturing a deep curiosity about the meaning of existence. It is a rigorous intellectual practice of action. Zen has very exotic, metaphysical teachings as well as attractive mystical aspects. It has always filled a void within me. However you term it - existential, agnostic, atheist, secular - Zen provides a path to recover what is at the heart of the Buddhist tradition; it is not religious, but merely seeks a language to address the primary questions that face us all at one time or other in life. It is not just something to believe in, but a way to act within the world.
A person begins to die when they cease to be surprised at every moment, like a child. Socrates said that the source of philosophy is wonder. Buddhism, in and of itself, doesn't seem to have much room for that. I was drawn to Zen where wonder is emphasized as the central point. I seek to be surprised in each moment, with every experience and by each person I meet. This wonderful moment is one I have never lived before. I feel a strong sense to celebrate and express gratitude for the gift I receive at each moment.
I consider the classic Meditation on Death most every day: "Since death alone is certain, but the time of death uncertain, what should I do?" It is an ancient human question that we each face. It is a question that penetrates our primary sense of being in the world. My sense of being in the world is deeply infused with the acknowledgement that this may very well be my last day on earth - today. Reflection on death is neither morbid nor gloomy. The more you ask this question the more it brings you back to the vibrant sense that you truly are alive. It intensifies the sense of aliveness through all your senses, a celebration of being here at every moment - a sense of wonder, a sense of awe, a sense of possibility, a sense of responsibility with what you say, think, and do. Today may be my final legacy. That's where the reflection leads me, making life that much fuller, allowing me to flourish and perhaps approach more of my true potential.
Before us great Death stands
Our faith held close within its quiet hands.
When with proud joy we lift Life's red wine
To drink deep of the mystic shining cup
And ecstacy through all our being leaps -
Death bows his head and weeps.**
* poem by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
** poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
