Cultivating Intimacy With Life’s Fundamental Questions

I was deeply moved by yesterday’s dharma talk at the Empty Gate Zen Center. Zen Master Bon Soeng, the guiding teacher of Empty Gate, touched me with his presence and with his words, neither of which I will attempt to describe, for this is beyond my ability.

A warm-hearted monk (whose name escapes me) began the dharma talk by telling us that he had just returned from Korea, where August 15th is recognized as a very significant day, as “Liberation Day.” On this day, in 1945, the Japanese surrendered in WW II. This marked the end of decades of Japanese colonization of Korea. The monk spoke of meeting an old Japanese Zen master who, in his youth, had been trained to be a kamikaze pilot in the Japanese air force. His mission was scheduled for 2pm on August 15th, 1945… but because the Japanese emperor surrendered on noon of that day, his mission was canceled. Instead of feeling relief, the pilot felt immensely distraught. Why was he spared, when so many of his friends, who’d already flown their fatal missions in service of their country, were not? The question burrowed deeply into him, and multiplied. “Why do I exist?” “What is the purpose of a human life?” “What can I do that is truly of value and significance with my life?” Questions of this nature ultimately led him to deeply immerse himself in Zen practice, where he became more and more intimate with these fundamental questions.

Skipping ahead, to a point later in the dharma talk, Zen Master Bon Soeng followed up on the monk’s story with this comment:

“A good situation is a bad situation.
A bad situation is a good situation.”

We all hunger for heavenly experiences, but in the Buddhist understanding, the problem with being in heaven is that while we are there, we consume our accumulated good karma, as flame consumes a candle. Another problem with heavenly experience is that naturally, we yearn to remain there, which sets us in opposition to impermanence. As we all know, all things are impermanent, and attachment to the illusion of permanence is the cause of suffering. And so, when attachment, clinging, and resistance to change arises, heavenly experiences quickly crumble into bad situations. The good news is that this isn’t bad news… because “a bad situation is a good situation.” What a potent catalyst for change a bad situation can be! The unimaginably bad situation of the would-be kamikaze pilot, in which the entire meaning of his life was reduced to acting as a human bomb, blew away all the trivial concerns and fixations of his life, which keep many of us lost in a fog of vague, drowsy contentedness. It invoked a radicalness of awareness that culminated in the precious form of a Zen master. And so, the bad situation became a good situation.

The focus isn’t on getting from one to the other, from a bad situation to good one. Rather, it’s about working with what you’ve got, with what you’re given, with what arises, and meeting with openness and intimacy. Even the process of naming situations “good” or “bad” creates confusion and distance from what arises. The point, in my limited understanding, is to pull our experience close, whatever it is, however it shows up – good, bad, or neutral – and to become intimate with it. So intimate that whatever ideas we have about what “it” is are allowed to fall away. So intimate that, ultimately, all that remains is the great mystery… where descriptions no longer apply, where understanding dissolves, where words and thoughts echo into silence…

In addition to Empty Gate’s website, they can also be found online on their Facebook page and their Twitter feed.