Just sitting

Because of my last entry, I suppose, a friend asked about meditation practice. Do I do it? Is it useful? Another friend, a Christian, asked about my spiritual walk and whether I have found a way back to God.

The western and eastern concepts of God and spirituality are so different it's no wonder the first westerners in Asia viewed Buddhists as atheists. As Alan Watts put it:

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

But how does one get there? Or, as I asked before, how does one find peace?

I believe Shakespeare said something like there was never a philosopher who could endure a toothache patiently. The point is that a mental game, or an abstraction, or what someone simply tells you to believe, is never going to save you in a "real way," like when you're lying on your deathbed. Or at least that's my intuition.

If you see your father walking down the street, you don't need someone to tell you so. You don't "believe" he is your father, and it's more than knowing (or less than knowing, in a sense).

I've said too much. There's a Chinese expression that goes something like, "open mouth, already a mistake."

I like how Ryokan put it:

The great way leads nowhere, and is no place.
Affirm it and you miss it by a mile;
"This is delusion, that is enlightenment" is also wide of the mark.
You can expound theories of "existence" and "nonexistence"
Yet even talk of the "Middle Way" can get you sidetracked.
I'll just keep my wonderful experiences to myself.
Babble about enlightenment, and your words get torn to shreds.