Do We Really Know What Matters?

I was recently reading a text about Mindfulness and came across a chapter entitled “Know What Matters”. In the context of this specific book it was referring to knowing what is important so as to take mindful action upon rather than reacting aimlessly to any thought, feeling or situation. While the advice offered in the book was based on good intention I feel it was flawed because it makes an assumption that we actually know what matters in our lives.

The question begs, “Do we really know what matters?” In Pure Land Buddhism, as in Buddhism in general, this is a vital question. It was a question which confronted me at the beginning of my journey into Buddhism.

My first teacher in Buddhism was a rugged old monk from Mt Putuo in China. I had just come through a relationship break up and was searching for answers and relief from my suffering. I recall asking the question in an almost demanding type of tone. “But what do I do?” to which the answer came: “Do what really matters”. Now, that only added further to my confusion as I did not know what really mattered. I thought I did. What mattered was my peace of mind, my happiness, my career, my income. What really mattered, I thought, at the time was earning enough money to get myself back to Australia and resume my career. These thoughts spinning through my head were quickly intercepted by the follow up question as if my teacher knew that I did not know the answer. “But do you really know what matters?” My mind drew a blank.

You see, we think we know what matters based upon our desires and cravings. The world that matters to us is our own world full of ignorance. Now in Buddhism, ignorance has less to do about intelligence or education but more to do about knowledge of a wider and higher world and the skills to live in it. It was not long ago in the history of our world that people believed that if we travelled too far we would fall off the edge of the world. People believed that if we went too far into unchartered country there would be dragons and all types of monsters. Of course, we smile, because we now have the scientific knowledge of our planet and its environment and we have skills to live within it. However, Buddhism brings us to a whole new terrain and unchartered waters that challenges our ignorance.

So often when we pursue the things that we think really matter we find ourselves like dogs chasing their tails as we end up suffering again and again. We end up often making the same mistakes over and over again then blaming ourselves in the process for our perceived stupidity. We need to be a little more compassionate on ourselves at this point. We would not expect a grade three student to be able to solve algebra equations with limited maths skills. In the same way we cannot solve the problems of life and suffering with our limited life skills. Buddhism teaches us a new set of skills to live life skilfully and thus dissolving ignorance.

I could have walked away from the old monk from Mt Putuo thinking he was a fool. Instead he helped me see life from a far different angle. In fact if it had not been for the breaking up of the romantic attachment I was craving at the time I would never had been in the set of circumstances that lead me to meeting this monk in the first place and the subsequent journey into Buddhism which was to change my life.

In Pure Land Buddhism we have a process called Inner Meditation or Naikan as it is called in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism (Jodo Shinshu). In this very powerful meditative process we examine our entire life based upon only three questions. (1) What have I received from person X? (2) What have I given to person X? (3) What troubles and difficulties have I caused person X? In essence these three questions lead us to what really matters in life.

The first two questions address the gift of life, of giving and receiving. The third question upon which we spend two thirds of our time in meditation hones in on what blocks us from the gift of life. Life is a gift to be discovered. The Buddha discovered that gift under the Bodhi tree. It is no mere coincidence that the Buddha after acetic practises that left him weak and emaciated met a young girl offering the gift of milk curds. We often overlook this part of the story of Buddhism. The Buddha was offered a gift which sustained him and changed him. There is a gift for us too which will sustain and change us. The awakened life is seeing the gift in life. This is what is really important. Life is a gift to be unwrapped and shared. It is in the unwrapping of this gift that we also discover our own giftedness. The gift of life connects us to all of life in all its beauty and abundance. This is Pure Land. This is not some pie-in-the-sky ideal; it is the only way to live life. What is the alternative?

The Naikan process also trains us to see the obstacle to life in our own attachments, anger, frustrations and greed and in the harm we cause others. When we are aware of this we are more attuned and awakened to a path that only causes continued suffering.

In our practise we learn what really matters in life and can then orient our lives and values accordingly. When we acquire the skills to live the gift of life we also become the gift of life to all sentient beings. This is being awakened. This is living life to its fullest and ending the cycle of suffering. And that is what really matters.

The Happiness Hangover

There are many seminars, workshops and techniques about touting their benefits to bring us a happy life. Happiness seminars abound. While it is true that we live in very unhappy times and it seems quite reasonable to find ways to bring happiness into our societies I fear that the quick fix methods will only have superficial results at the least and at the most plunge people further into despair. I recently spoke to a gentleman who was on a quest to find happiness and had just attended his 20th workshop on happiness. He travels the width and breadth of the country in search of the magic formula. In a sense, he had become a happiness junkie getting on a high during a seminar then crashing down in a heap soon after with a happiness hangover. I would have found it quite amusing if it had not been for the look of utter despair on his face.

Many people are turning to Buddhism as a path to happiness. The Buddha has given us a path to supreme and abiding happiness in a well tried and tested method used by countless folk down through the last two millenniums. However, it seems that even many Buddhists are also living lives in quiet desperation almost like closet alcoholics who keep their bottle of misery in a brown paper bag except the brown paper bag is the façade of superficial contentment. The answer is not necessarily in more meditation, more retreats or more chanting because even these can be a way of avoiding confronting the root cause of all our unhappiness. After all, a good meditation, a quiet and relaxing retreat, uplifting chanting can bring calm and peace. . .for a while.

It was once said of the ancient Japanese Samurai that the battle was not fought or won on the battle field against the perceived enemy but rather in the Zen Do where battle was done with the real enemy lurking in the shadows of the mind. The Self.

This is the last of the attachments, well, it is the one we often want to deal with last! In the Four Noble Truths the Buddha shows us that our suffering, discontent or dissatisfaction are a result of attachment. The greatest of all these attachments is the attachment to the Self Cherishing part of us. It is no coincidence that as one enters a Chinese Buddhist Temple the first Hall contains the statue of what is popularly known as the “laughing Buddha” the Maitreya Bodhisattva symbolizing happiness and contentment. He is often flanked by fierce looking Dharma protectors wielding swords and spears – not the peaceful visage one would expect of a Buddhist temple. The symbols speak loudly. The Maitreya Bodhisattva speaks of happiness which is attainable through the Dharma and the swords that cut through delusion to the truth. It can also remind us that our battle begins with the ego, the cherishing self that will obscure our journey.

I am not immune from the shadow lurking ego. Not long ago I awoke to a beautiful day with sunshine and a blue sky. I thought to myself: “I am so happy this is a beautiful day.” Happy for whom? And if it were not a beautiful day? Would I feel sad? My ego had tricked me. Rather than embracing the gift of the day the ego wanted to get in on the act. Without the self cherishing part the day is beautiful because it simply is. And that is real happiness.

We often find the pursuit of happiness so difficult because the self-cherishing part has for so long deluded us that we can no longer recognize true happiness.

Why are the fierce looking Dharma protectors in the “first” hall and not in the other halls? It is because this is the first thing we must do battle with – our self-cherishing part. However so often we want to start our journey in the higher temple halls. The first hall seems a bitter pill to swallow.

So how do we start dealing with this ego? The Buddha has given us many expedients. Tonglen Meditation and Naikan are two such methods. Tonglen helps us develop a mind of selfless compassion and Naikan cracks the hard shell of the ego through introspection. Naikan forces us to look at life from a different angle and not from the usual perspective of the ego. Most often we look at life through the eyes of ego, what has given us happiness and contentment or what has brought us misery and dissatisfaction. Naikan helps us to look at reality not the assumed reality of the ego. Like an optometrist who prescribes a pair of glasses to correct our vision so that we may see clearly, Naikan through its three strategic questions, retrains us to see life from the angle of life’s gift and our obstruction to the gift of life.

Whatever method you use the real battle needs to be done in your own mind. Your external “enemies” are only reflections of your self, your self-cherishing self. Abiding happiness only comes through dealing with this inner enemy. The Maitreya Bodhisattva welcomes us with his happy smile and promise of enlightenment. We can be assured that this type of happiness will not leave us with a hangover but brings peace and life to all sentient beings.

The Beautiful Trap

I have included this article by John Kain about his experience of Naikan. It is well written and was worth putting here in its entirety. For those of you considering Naikan practice you will find this a good read.

The Beautiful Trap
By John Kain

I’m sitting for fifteen hours a day in a four-by-four cell behind a shoji screen. Meals are brought three times a day to my enclosure, and apart from a short work period, two brief outdoor walks, bathroom breaks, a daily shower, and sleep time, I never leave my space.

There are only three of us on retreat here; although hardly mainstream, Naikan practice is beginning to catch on in the United States. It is a gracefully simple practice of reflection on your personal relationships—to your mother, father, siblings, lovers, friends—focused on three pointed questions: What have I received from that person? What have I given that person? What troubles have I caused that person? Fifty to sixty percent of your time, however, is spent on the third question, an emphasis that ties the ego in knots and tends to awaken a healthy dose of responsibility—and guilt.

The Japanese word naikan means “looking inside” or, more poetically, “seeing oneself with the mind’s eye,” an activity that triggers a profound shift in the way you view your relationships. Your responses to Naikan’s three questions, which surface gradually, painfully, joyfully—combined with the imperative to see yourself as others do—force you to renegotiate the boundaries you erect between yourself and others.

While I sit on a zafu, surrounded by the clicking of baseboard heaters and the sound of food being cooked in the kitchen below, it was in a cave that the progenitor of Naikan practice sat, over sixty years ago. A devout Japanese Jodo Shinshu Buddhist (a sect of Pure Land) named Ishin Yoshimoto had an awakening while practicing an austere form of meditation and self-reflection called mishirabe. The essence of that experience, molded by Yoshimoto into a more accessible practice he called Naikan, has rippled through the years—and across the ocean—to where I sit now, at the end of winter, in a beautiful old farmhouse in Monkton, Vermont.

Naikan creates—on one level—a very personal, and often painful, existential balance sheet. It gives you the opportunity to see how much support you’ve received from others over the years. It lets you realize your nonrepayable debts, shines a light on what and how you’ve given, and exposes the missteps you’ve made. But Naikan is more than just a personal accounting. Ultimately Naikan practice exists most comfortably in the murky territory between psychotherapy and Buddhism - and between the intellect and the blood-pulse of the body.

As a Zen practitioner, I’m familiar with the routine of long hours on the meditation cushion and the need for sustained attention, but Naikan brings a new flavor to my practice. Zen invites us to empty our minds in order to gain insight into the emptiness of self, and through this emptiness into the nature of the world. Naikan, on the other hand, urges us to fill our minds, through memory and reflection, with the weave of interpersonal connections that we’ve used (both realistically and unrealistically) to define our existence, and through this process it forces us to reconsider what constitutes our “self.” So while both practices are rooted in single-pointed concentration, in traditional Zen practice this concentration creates stillness of mind, sometimes compared to the gradual settling of sediment to the bottom of a glass of muddy water. The three questions of Naikan practice, however, churn up this sediment—of desire, anger, confusion, tenderness—and set it before us, challenging us at once to see through it, and to keep stirring. I spend the first twenty-four hours of the retreat reflecting on my mother—which is how every Naikan intensive begins. Using Naikan’s three questions, I start by remembering my mother from my birth to age six, and then move forward through memory in three-year increments. Each stage of reflection lasts from two to three hours, after which a Naikan “guide” arrives, opens my shoji screen and, following an exchange of bows, listens to what I’ve recalled. This process is called mensetsu, the Japanese word for “interview,” and generally lasts a brief five to ten minutes. It allows the naikansha, or participant, to give voice to all the thoughts that have arisen, which is a powerful component of the process. Yet there are no judgments, no analyses, no offers of absolution. Occasionally the Naikan guide will give gentle advice to keep you focused, or encourage you to be as specific as possible in your recollections—but that’s all.

As I dredge up specific memories of what I received from my mother in early childhood—the German chocolate cake she made for my birthday, the gentle way she taught me to swim—I am filled with a palpable sense of appreciation. I feel more permeable, less armored. The idea of myself as “solitary” no longer plays. I can see my existence as an accumulation of layers, like colorful sedimentary rock, deposited through the acts of others, the acts of nature.

Yet my expanded sense of appreciation is hard to accept. I struggle to reconcile all of these wonderful memories with my long-held idea that I’ve suffered in the past; I want to be able to feel simply grateful. I stare at the light coming through the shoji screen two feet in front of my face, feel its elemental warmth. I stand up, stretch, and sit back down on the zafu, adjust my legs, take a few breaths. I move on to the second question: What did I give to my mother? Blank. I can’t stop the incoming memories of what I received. Eventually, I manage to dredge up a memory of making her a small table in wood shop, a couple of homemade birthday cards; I once wrote her a poem . . . the self-centeredness of childhood rolls right into my adult years. I move on to the third question: the troubles I caused. Once again, a deluge of memories. When I take my bathroom break I find, taped above the toilet on a fresh sheet of white paper, a written account of a previous participant’s reflection on his mother. He, too, felt he had given so little and caused much pain. I am somewhat reassured, yet when I return to my zafu it seems I can almost see the memories of my selfishness hovering above it, like a swarm of mosquitoes buzzing around a favorite camping spot. I sigh and settle back down. Any conceit I might have come with is rapidly deflating; even flushing the toilet seemed a symbolic act.

In Japan Naikan moved quickly away from its religious roots as its memory-dredging effect and deep reflection proved it to be a successful therapy technique in prisons, hospitals, psychiatric wards, and addiction clinics. Although Naikan was still practiced in Buddhist temples, for lay practitioners the traditional weeklong intensive retreat was more popularly supplemented or replaced by outpatient Naikan practices such as journal writing, daily reflections, and counseling sessions.
Naikan was introduced to America through a man named David Reynolds, an American schooled in cultural anthropology. Reynolds began studying Naikan and Morita techniques in the 1960s (developed in the early 1900s, Morita therapy is a Zen-based awareness practice focused on changing behavior by acknowledging and accepting emotions). In 1981 Reynolds conducted the first weeklong Naikan intensive in America at a Jodo Shinshu Temple in San Luis Obispo, California. Eventually Reynolds de-emphasized the religious aspects of both practices and placed them under one umbrella that he called Constructive Living. The ToDo Institute in Middlebury, Vermont, run by Gregg Krech and his wife, Linda Anderson Krech, is the only center in the country that offers traditional Naikan. Krech was introduced to Naikan through Reynolds, yet he also practiced with a number of Japanese Naikan teachers and was a student of Pure Land Buddhism for over ten years. To Krech, Naikan’s religious lineage seemed entirely compatible with its use as a therapy. This holistic perspective was one of the primary reasons Naikan appealed to me as a Zen practitioner. I wanted to be able to explore the “blind spots” in my spiritual practice as I gained a more secular insight into my personal relationships. When you’re in the midst of intense self-examination, however, the question of whether Naikan is closer to a religious practice or psychotherapy seems irrelevant.
Yet a concern for that distinction still hovers around Naikan’s proponents and practitioners. Krech tells me that he doesn’t consider the Naikan retreat to be “religious,” per se. “Some people attend Naikan retreats solely because they have psychological or emotional problems,” he explains. “Others come for spiritual practice. And still others just because they are seeking something to help them move forward with their life in a very practical way. Naikan will accommodate you at any, or all, of these levels.”

Back on my cushion after a short walk, I hear a tapping sound and see, through the crack in my shoji screen, a cardinal pecking at the windowpane. The red is like a flame against the frozen landscape that stretches beyond the frost-laced glass. I imagine it must be tapping at its own reflection, perhaps frightened of it, and I empathize. In the face of all the self-deprecation the morning has unearthed, I find myself wanting to answer a conspicuously absent fourth question: How about all the troubles my mother and father caused me?

But Naikan is a beautiful trap; it leaves little room for the ego to wriggle. No matter what happened in the past, the practice tells us, we are now solely responsible for our own freedom—or our own bondage. Blame can find no purchase.
When a Naikan guide arrives to hear my reflection, my words feel forced and phony as I try to summon feelings of gratefulness to compensate for the raw guilt that gnaws at my center. I confess this to Krech later, and he advises me to focus on remembering as much detail as possible—the colors, the smells, the textures of things—and, most of all, to stop analyzing. “That’s not a part of Naikan,” he reminds me. His guidance helps, yet I continue to swing back and forth between what I feel is “real” and what I feel is forced by my desire to be a “good” Naikan student, filled with newfound humility. A couple of times I actually invent memories, telling them to the guide to complete some requirement I’ve made up in my head: “Be good, be humble.”

Over the course of the week, I reflect on my father, my brother, my ex-wife, my best friend, and my girlfriend, Kathryn . . . it’s like seeing myself from countless vantage points. The key is just to watch the memories, the emotions, and the body sensations. It is not punishment and it is not an attempt to heal. As in Zen, at its core is the persistent probing into the nature of self. But instead of returning to the breath or to a koan or to “just sitting,” the Naikan participant continually returns to one of the three questions and the reflections it gives rise to, asking, Where in all of this enmeshed exchange of giving and taking do I stop and others begin? Miso soup, salad, and two slices of homemade bread with melted cheese are brought to my “cave”—and, surprisingly, it is this simple offering that finally causes me to break down and weep. I walk outside and look at the Green Mountains, to the south. I see bobcat prints in the snow. Confronted by the presence of the still white landscape, a chill wind flushing my cheeks, I find the momentum of the morning’s practice penetrates even here, that somehow it has broken into my mind, limned my thoughts. I remember that my sister once paid for my flight home for Christmas when I was broke. I remember screaming at my mother, calling her terrible names. I remember helping to pay for and organize my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. I remember how little affection I’ve given to Kathryn over the last month. Later that day, a gift arrives from a friend and another from a Naikan participant whom I’ve never met (a not-uncommon occurrence at these retreats), and I experience a flood of emotions, from unworthiness to tender gratitude to a more open awareness of how I’m supported every day by ten thousand different acts of giving.
I think of how different this process is from Zen meditation—one looking inward, one looking outward—yet how they both ultimately point to the emptiness of self. I find that Naikan repopulates my Zen practice, which has a tendency to drift into abstraction, with the specificity of my personal relationships. The treasure of sangha (one of the more difficult—because least controllable—aspects of my Buddhist practice) is revealed. Community nourishes humility, a trait that I tend to forget in my recurring myopic vision of enlightenment. Which is to say, Naikan makes me a better Zen student. Most importantly it helps me (as does Zen) to forget myself by shifting focus onto others. This makes me more aware of how I treat the people I love, and more aware of how much grace is involved in my existence. On my return I express my newfound appreciation to my mother, and it opens a door that had been shut for years. We still have our usual problems, but there’s more trust involved, more honesty. I also tell Kathryn how bad I’ve felt about being so distant. She smiles and says I should go on more of these retreats.

Driving home at the end of the retreat, I take the route through Middlebury and stop at a pottery shop to buy Kathryn a gift, but I find nothing she’d like. I decide to get her some flowers at the florist closer to home. On the road, I admire the late-winter sun’s glow against the fading snow banks. Large patches of dark earth, a red silo, and a string of horses slip by the car window. Suddenly, a strange thought enters my mind: “Naikan has nothing to do with me.” I say it out loud: “Naikan has nothing to do with me.” Tears well up in my eyes, and the landscape blurs. It makes no sense. When I get to the florist near home, it is closed. At first I think I’m returning empty-handed. But then it hits me.

John Kain is a freelance writer and poet living in the Catskill Mountains. His articles and poems have been published in such magazines and journals as the Rocky Mountain News, Terra Nova, and the Mountain Record. Image: Lance Letscher /McMurtry Gallery

http://www.tricycle.com/-practice/the-beautiful-trap?page=0,2

Naikan

Imagine yourself enclosed by a small space within traditional Japanese screens. In complete silence and isolation you examine in minute detail your entire life, especially important relationships like mother, father and siblings within the boundaries of the three strategic Naikan questions. Gradually over seven days of silence and deep introspection interrupted only by the Naikan therapist entering your space, bowing giving you food and drink and asking the three questions to the portion of your life you have been examining, piece by steady piece the meditator dismantles the ego that have hovered like dark clouds blocking the blue sky. Like awakening from a dream the meditator opens his/her eyes to the light of day. This is Naikan.

Naikan( From the Japanese Nai = Inner Kan= looking) is a therapy developed in Japan by Yoshimoto Ishin (1916 -1988). It was adapted from a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist practice of a meditation of deep introspection and self examination. Although the basic structure remains the same it has been further developed to be used in modern therapeutic settings.

There is emerging a palpable curiosity towards the Eastern and Buddhist psychology. With the emergence of the now evidenced based “Mindfulness” therapies (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapies etc) Naikan stands to be re-examined with energetic curiosity.

I must add a note of caution here. It is easy to confine the Mindfulness based therapies, of which Naikan belongs, to the therapist’s clinic. This would be a huge mistake. Naikan is essentially a way of life for everyone who wishes to live a more fulfilling and happy life.

Naikan is essentially a method of deep introspection. It is a way of examining one’s life from a different angle by asking strategic questions and arriving at a deep appreciation of life the way it is. The big mistake most people make with Mindfulness based processes is to expect the process to eliminate life’s problems. This is not the aim. After all, none of us are immune from life’s struggles or to put it in plain language: “shit happens”. What Naikan does is to help us look at life’s sufferings from a different angle – one of deep gratitude. It does this by radically placing us in front of our self-centeredness. When we do this a new energy begins to flow and we become better equipped to face life’s issues.

Naikan does this by asking three strategic questions:

 What have I received from person (or event) x?
 What have I given to person (or event) x?
 What troubles and difficulties have I caused to person (or event) x?

In Naikan we examine our entire life in minute detail from the time we were born to the present moment. We focus primarily or relationships rather than events as we are formed by our early childhood relationships and relationships in general. It is a Naikan principle that our mental health is based almost entirely upon how we relate with one another and our environment.

In Classical Naikan the client spends an intense seven day period in meditation on one’s entire life guided at regular intervals by the Naikan therapist. There are shorter versions of this process to suit the client’s schedule. It is often said that one of the “down sides” of Naikan is its intense seven day meditation. However, we must ask ourselves, what is seven days in what often has been a lifetime of struggle with certain issues?
Ideally Naikan is done with a “Naikan Guide” or therapist. However it can also be performed by oneself on a regular basis.

Gratitude in Naikan

The concept of “gratitude” plays a crucial part in Naikan. In Chinese the word for gratitude is “gan ji gan en”. The English word “gratitude” does not do justice to the Chinese words which convey a different concept. In our daily speech we can say we are “thankful” for something but still inwardly hold resentment or grudges. I can say “thank you” to someone for something even if that someone has annoyed me greatly. I do it out of politeness. The Gratitude in Naikan goes far beyond the concept of thankfulness. It is a realization of the “gift” of life and a sense of deep contentment with the way things “are”. . . an acceptance of the “is-ness” in all things. When we have this sense of deep gratitude we are free. Many say after Naikan they experience a feeling like a ton of bricks lifted off their shoulders. This is a happiness which goes beyond what “happens” to us.
Personal Responsibility
Naikan is a therapy and process that places responsibility squarely upon the individual challenged with their issues. Throughout the Naikan process the therapist will not give “advice” but guide the client to take responsibility for their own healing. In this process there is tremendous empowerment.

Much more

There is much more to Naikan than these few words can give justice to. Like all Mindfulness studies – they need to be experienced rather than didactically analyzed. We invite you to join us at the Introductory Naikan Workshops and Naikan Therapist Training in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and China and come with curiosity for a deeper way of living and a compassionate way of helping others. www.taishendo.com