This is the transcript of a talk I gave to the Zenways community in April 2024.
I recently spent a couple of weeks in Italy, in the house where I grew up. Every time I go back there, I find it an interesting place for practice. I lived there for more than half of my life, and many of the patterns and habits that shaped me developed there. Going back gives me an opportunity to notice them again.
I sometimes treat those visits as a kind of retreat. Not a retreat from ordinary life, but almost the opposite: an opportunity to pay closer attention to each situation and each person I encounter. What am I actually experiencing? What am I adding to it? Am I seeing what is happening, or am I reacting to something constructed from old habits and expectations?
During this particular visit, I went hiking in the mountains, as I often do when I am there. For some reason, I found myself on a path I had never taken before. At first everything was fine, but soon I realised that the path crossed a stream again and again. Because of the heavy rain during the previous weeks, the stream was very much alive and sometimes difficult to cross.
The rocks that would normally have made the crossings easy were barely emerging from the water. Then the path began to include sections where chains had been fixed to the rock — something closer to a via ferrata than the easy walk I had expected.
And the mind started.
Why did I come this way? What happens if I fall? I only wanted an easy hike.
There was fear and discomfort, and there were practical decisions to make. I needed to pay attention to where I put my feet, to the rocks, the water and the chains. But alongside all of that was the mental activity surrounding the situation: the complaints, predictions and stories about what might happen.
I tried to use the experience as part of my practice. Not by pretending that the fear wasn’t there, or by trying to get rid of it. The fear was part of what was happening. So was the discomfort. So was the stream.
There is a difference between noticing fear and becoming completely absorbed in the story that grows around it. The stream was there. The slippery rocks were there. The chains were there. My fear was there too.
What else was I adding?
This brings me to something that has always interested me in Zen practice: doubt.
There is a Zen saying I often remind myself of:
Great doubt, great awakening.
Little doubt, little awakening.
No doubt, fast asleep.
Doubt here does not have to mean becoming paralysed by uncertainty or questioning every decision we make. It can be something much more immediate.
What do I actually know?
What is happening right now?
Who is afraid?
What am I believing?
On that mountain, if I simply followed every thought produced by the wandering mind, those thoughts would very quickly become the whole situation. But if I could doubt them — even for a moment — something else became possible.
I could return to the path.
Where is my next step?
Where is the next rock?
Where is the chain?
What is actually required now?
Perhaps this is one of the possibilities offered by practice. We can become a little less certain about the stories we tell ourselves. We can notice our fixed ideas, our habitual reactions and our assumptions without immediately accepting every one of them as the truth.
In a moment we are going to take a few steps together in walking meditation, and later we will sit together. These very simple activities give us plenty of opportunities for doubt.
Who is walking?
Who is sitting?
Who is talking now?
Who is listening?
We do not necessarily need to find answers. Perhaps the question itself is enough to disturb some of our certainty.
When discomfort appears during sitting, what happens? When boredom appears? When irritation, fear or restlessness appear? Can we notice what is actually happening before the mind builds an entire world around it?
Our relationship with these experiences can change. We do not have to fight them, and we do not have to believe everything they seem to tell us. We can offer them attention and see what happens.
That afternoon in the mountains, I eventually made my way along the path. The stream continued to be a stream. The rocks remained rocks. The path did not become easier because I was practising Zen.
I still had to watch where I put my feet.
Perhaps that is practice too.
Great doubt.
One more step.
And, whenever possible, bring some humour to your practice.
Thanks for listening.
