11

                                Anxiety
                                ~~~~~~~


        With narrow views and doubts,
        Haste will slow you down.

 Those who take up the study of Buddhism before their views have
 expanded are subject to fears and doubts. They doubt the method and
 whether they can reach their objective. Like those who have narrow
 views and only see what is in front of their eyes, it is a shallow and
 limited perspective.

 This is a common problem on retreat. Everyone should believe that even
 if they cannot become enlightened this time, they can do so in the
 future, either in this lifetime or the next. Do you have faith that
 your method can lead you to enlightenment? Or do you think that it is
 just the beginning, that later you will learn more advanced methods? Do
 you believe that Ch'an practice is reliable? Some people may think: "I
 just came here to take a look. Later, there will be things to learn in
 other places."

 Over the years I have met many people who lack faith. Because of this
 they reach a certain point and cannot go any further. They may have a
 partial faith. They may have confidence in themselves but do not trust
 the method. Or they have faith in the method but do not entirely trust
 the teacher. Some people may trust the teacher but doubt what levels
 can actually be reached with Ch'an. This mixture of faith and doubt
 prevents them from having a deep experience.

 Of course, if there were no sense of doubt in the beginning, you would
 not be motivated to practice. After practicing diligently, you will
 gradually resolve the problem of doubt. It all depends on your karmic
 roots. When those with deep karmic roots come in contact with the
 teachings of Ch'an, they quickly accept them.

 But those with shallow roots have obstacles which prevent them from
 believing in themselves, the method, or the teacher. The first
 requirement of Ch'an is faith. You should believe that you are the ones
 with deep karmic roots; otherwise, why would you have come to this
 Ch'an retreat? Compared to the multitude of people in the world, those
 who can undergo Ch'an training are very few.

 Perhaps you still do not believe in yourself, the method, or what I am
 talking about. But, beginning now, I hope you will start having faith.
 It does not matter if you are not enlightened yet. Just like a blind
 person being guided by someone who sees, a person who is not
 enlightened can borrow a teacher's guidance and experience. It does not
 matter if you started out with narrow views, as long as you can emerge
 from them. When you try to understand or judge matters that are beyond
 your background and experience, it is natural to have some doubts. Use
 a mind of faith to cure your doubts. It is very important to give rise
 to a great faith to achieve results. You should have complete faith in
 what I am teaching. As to the environment, it does not matter whether
 this is the ideal place to practice.

 But the sooner you want to get results, the longer it will take to get
 anywhere. Once someone was driving me to an appointment. Since he
 wanted to get me there as quickly as possible, he decided to take a
 short cut. Though the road was shorter, it turned out that the traffic
 was heavier than on the normal route. Another case was a person who was
 required to take the English equivalency exam in order to apply for a
 U.S. visa. She thought of a quick method: Before she actually wrote
 anything down, she would first skim through the entire test to weed out
 the answers she did not understand. But by the time she went through
 this first reading, the time was up and nothing was on the answer
 sheet.

 It is the same with practice. If you keep asking yourself, "When am I
 going to get enlightened?" you will always be in that state of mind and
 never get anywhere. It is the same when you have trouble getting to
 sleep and you look at the other people sleeping soundly around you. If
 you become anxious and keep worrying, "Why can't I sleep?  Let me
 sleep!" you will never get to sleep.

 The more you want benefits from Ch'an, the further you will be from
 obtaining them. In fact, you will only increase your vexations. You may
 be a highly intelligent person who works very hard and has good karmic
 roots. But if you are anxious to get enlightened, you have created a
 barrier between yourself and enlightenment. A tree should be watered
 very gradually as it is growing. Do not be in a hurry to eat the fruit.

 Consider the story about an inexperienced farmer who planted a field of
 rice. After the crop sprouted, he kept going out to look at it and
 saying, "Why isn't it growing any faster?" Then he thought of an idea
 to help it grow. He pulled each stalk out a little taller. The next day
 he said, "I think I'll go out and help them again." But when he
 surveyed the field, all the shoots had died.

 There is a Chinese saying: "You can't dig a well with one scoop."
 Another one is: "You can't eat a cake in one bite." It is better for
 the digestion to chew food until very fine before swallowing. It is the
 same with practice. Don't try to swallow your practice in one gulp;
 chew it patiently. You have to be careful and meticulous.


        Attach to it and you lose the measure;
        The mind will enter a deviant path.

 When you grasp onto something, find a happy medium. For example, if you
 grasp the incense board too tightly, you will hurt the person you are
 hitting, and may even break the board. But if you hold it too loosely,
 you cannot aim accurately. You have to hold it just right -- not too
 tight, not too loose. In any activity, you have to find just the right
 way to do it. This is difficult to accomplish without practice.

 I constantly tell people on retreat to relax -- mentally and
 physically. But some people do not know how to do this. Others are too
 relaxed. As soon as they sit down, they slump over. You cannot practice
 this way.

 Even though your mind is relaxed, you should hold tightly onto the
 method. Stick to the method and do not let it go. But sometimes people
 take this advice and become nervous and tense. For instance, in
 counting the breath, some may become so intent on holding to the method
 that they end up holding onto the breath itself, thus breathing
 unnaturally.  Or they try to get rid of stray thoughts by counting and
 breathing faster and faster.  This tenses the body. You should hold
 tight to the method, but at the same time you should not let yourself
 get tense. To illustrate this, suppose you are walking along a road and
 it starts bearing to the right. If you keep to a one-track frame of
 mind of just sticking to the present thought, you will not allow for
 the bend in the road and walk straight ahead into a tree.

 Once I gave someone the hua-t'ou "What is wu?"  I told her to keep her
 mind on this one thought, moment to moment, to never leave this
 question. After a while, her mind jumped to something else, and it
 became, "I am wu." Rather than correcting herself, she thought,
 "Shih-fu told me to stay on the present thought." She kept repeating
 the statement, "I am wu." Finally, she said to me, "There's really no
 point in this. I already know the answer. There is nothing." (The
 literal meaning of wu is "nothingness.")

 When I tell you to hold onto the method, it does not mean to grasp it
 blindly. Sometimes you have to adjust. I am teaching one method but
 everyone is unique. Their background, physique, age, experience, are
 all different. If you just take what I say literally, it could be that
 you heard it wrong, or that you start practicing it wrong. Therefore,
 you cannot go by that entirely. You have to test it out by experience.
 You must be aware of what is going on. If your breath is not flowing
 smoothly, that should be a signal that you are not practicing
 correctly. Ask me about it. There was a student who was sitting in the
 "correct" posture, but his backside became very painful.  He was
 putting too much pressure on his tailbone. I advised him to lean
 slightly forward and straighten his back so that this bone would not
 touch the cushion. If you come across a problem like this, you should
 not continue on in pain because you think that you are doing as I
 instructed. Of course I would not teach you something that causes you
 pain. You just sometimes have to make your own adjustments.


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