The Practice of Freedom

by Jan Chozen Bays

Think of the times in your life when you have had life and had it abundantly, the times when you were truly awake, truly alive, and everything around you seemed alive. How did that occur? There are very particular conditions for that to happen. We have a misunderstanding of what abundant life means. We think it means having abundant material possessions, but I'll bet that if you remember a time in you life when you felt truly awake, very present, where everything was crystal clear, it had nothing to do with material possessions.

Freedom cannot be imposed or guaranteed from the outside because then it is not true freedom. We know the truth of impermanence, even though we try to deny it often in our actions. But, in our life, deep down, we know the truth of our impermanence and that is one source of our suffering.

If we think that our freedom is controlled from outside of us, that is a misunderstanding of freedom. Freedom involves our facing each situation in our lives directly and finding our freedom inside of it, inside of us.

We often think that if we could just change something on the outside, or if we could change other people, then we would be happy. There is an interesting exercise to do to help us see our tendency to think this way. Several times each day, especially if we sense that we are starting to feel unhappy, it can be helpful to think to ourselves, "I would be happy right now if only I had…"

For example, our thought might be, "If only I had a new car…" When we look more closely at that thought we can ask ourselves, "How long does a new car give us delight? Perhaps a few weeks, a few months maybe, and then we find dissatisfaction arising again. Or, we may feel that if we could just change the people in our lives who are making us unhappy, then we could find happiness.

But, even if we could rearrange a situation, it would change again because everything changes. We know this deep down, but we keep pushing that awareness out of our mind. We continue to think that if we can make everything be just the way we want: our surroundings, the people around us, our possessions, our job, then we will be happy. But these things cannot be the source of our happiness because they are always changing. We may find a mate whom we love dearly, we are happy in our relationship, but then that person becomes sick, they die, they may leave us for someone else. Another person cannot be the source of our happiness if we do not understand that nothing is unchanging.

The Buddha taught that there is a natural state of happiness that arises in meditation practice. It is not the big, bouncy happiness that we look for in amusement park rides because that kind of swinging happiness will always swing down. We will always come down from that kind of happiness and then we will want more of it. In our grasping for that kind of happiness, we often end up in difficult, unsatisfying situations. The Buddha taught that there is a form of happiness that will not cause difficulties for us, and that is the happiness that comes from our practice of meditation; from letting our mind settle down, open up, and shine with its natural luminosity. It is a very quiet and gentle source of pleasure and delight.

That is the promise of this practice, but how does it happen? What do we want to be free from? We may be free from hunger and thirst; we are generally well fed, are clothed and well housed. We are free of any great material wants. If these basic needs are met, what continues to keep us in bondage? Where is the real tyrant that is the source of our suffering even when our external conditions are satisfactory? The source of our suffering is within us and the solution to the end of our suffering is also within us, it cannot be found outside of ourselves.

The first truth taught by the Buddha is that suffering exists for everyone. Many people think that is a very pessimistic teaching and it would be if it were not followed by the second truth taught by the Buddha that states we can find the source of human suffering and bring an end to it.

The teaching of the Buddha about suffering simply states a fact: to be a human being is to know suffering. The Buddha said, "Investigate this suffering very carefully." Only through investigating it where it deeply touches us, will we find its source. That is the second part of the Buddha's teaching about suffering. He taught that the source of our suffering can be found in our clinging, our aversion, and in our unawareness. Greed, anger, and ignorance are called the Three Poisons and they need to be closely investigated in our lives. These mind states are very revealing subjects for our investigation.

Knowing the source of our suffering, just as knowing the cause of a disease, gives us the information we need to work on a cure. The cure for our disease of suffering was prescribed for us by the Buddha's fourth truth: the Eightfold Path.

The first truth taught by the Buddha is that human beings suffer; the second truth is that there are causes for this suffering, the third truth is that there is a life possible that is not defined by suffering, and the fourth truth taught by the Buddha is that there is a way to eliminate the causes of suffering.

The fourth truth taught by the Buddha is the teaching of freedom. This life of freedom is traditionally called nirvana and it is a teaching that is much misunderstood. It does not mean that you will no longer experience pain. The Buddha experienced severe back pain in his later life; he probably had knee pain as well! Because we are a human body, we will experience pain. But we do not have to add suffering on top of that pain which is what we often find ourselves doing. The freedom of the third truth taught by the Buddha is that we have the freedom to choose how we will respond to our physical pain, our emotional pain, and how we will choose to work with these experiences in our lives so these difficulties won't make a mess of ours and other people's lives. This is a beautiful aspect of Buddhist teaching. If there were nothing else than incomprehensible suffering in life, that would be a hopeless situation, a very pessimistic truth. Because Buddha's teaching goes on from the identification of the presence of suffering in our lives to a way to end that suffering, the Buddha Way becomes a very optimistic teaching.

If you know the path, then you are not condemned to suffering. When you are aware of the path, you are aware that liberation is possible. But, knowing that awareness can bring joy in our life can also be the cause of our feeling sadness. There is a grief associated with liberation. To know that liberation from suffering is possible yet not present in our lives or in the lives of others causes a sadness in our life. Seeing the truth of liberation from suffering and experiencing the fact that we are still in bondage in so many ways can make us sad. To see the suffering caused in ours and others' lives due to greed, anger, and ignorance, and having tasted the liberation of nirvana can be itself a cause of sadness. To be a human being and to be happier than someone else, freer than someone else, makes us a little sad. Happiness and sadness are mixed together in our practice. That's part of being a human being.

In a way, Buddhism is not a religion at all. The Buddha had no intention of founding it as a religion. At its start, the practice taught by the Buddha resembled an educational activity more than a religion. Since that time, over the past two thousand five hundred years, all sorts of religious and devotional aspects have been added by practitioners who felt deep gratitude for the teachings they were given and the freedom they found in their lives in this practice. All of the bowing and chanting that we do is an expression of gratitude that this practice is available to us. If you take that part away, what remains is basically education about the nature of mind and body and heart. The practice is basically a purification process to bring us back to the original state of our heart, body, and mind.

It helps us in our practice to have a guide, it helps us a great deal to have a sangha, a practicing community to support and encourage us in our practice. Even the Buddha didn't practice by himself even to the end of his life. He practiced with five companions, he practiced with large groups, and he practiced with a number of teachers. When he felt that he had understood everything that those teachers had to teach him, he went to look deeply into his own mind by himself and, with that wealth of experience, he was able to discover the truth of his life and a way for all of us to discover the truth of our lives.

So, we need a path, we need a guide, and we need a community of fellow practitioners. Then we need the right tools to work with. There are many tools for awakening. The fundamental tool we use is meditation. But, within meditation, there are many ways of practicing awakening. Each of us has a particular path that we will walk and find our way into our inner truth. The tool that works for one person may not work for another person. In our practice, we use the tool that is appropriate for the task at hand. To settle into our practice, our goal is to quiet our mind and the most effective tool we can use to do that is breath practice. But there are many ways to do breath practice. In our practice, we can each discover more and more ways to bring awareness to our breath and to settle our mind.

We also need to have a clear direction to guide us in our practice. At the beginning of the year, the members of the Zen Community of Oregon do an assessment of their life direction and we make practice-related commitments for the coming year. If we don't have a clear life direction, then it is easy to wander off from our purpose.

My teacher, Maezumi Roshi, was asked, "Is there a belief in Buddhism in a soul, or something like a soul that continues after we die?" "Roshi replied, "No. Rather we would refer to this continuity as a vow. When we set a clear direction in our life, that is what keeps this life energy moving in a particular way." An analogy I use is as if we were going to drive from Vancouver to New York. The driving itself is just driving. It is stepping on the brake and the accelerator and turning the steering wheel and following the road. It's a moment-to-moment process. But if we don't keep checking to make sure that we are heading in the right direction, then we could take a turn and end up in Mexico! That is analogous to what can happen with our life as well. We have to keep our compass needle aiming in the right direction. What is the purpose of my life? The purpose of one's life doesn't particularly have to do with the job that one does. That is just the outer from of our life. The purpose of one's life is different from that. One's purpose underlies everything that one does. If the purpose of our life is to awaken, then we have to keep that purpose clear. We look at what we are doing and we ask ourselves, "Is this helping me to awaken or not?" Once we set our course direction clearly and continue to hold it in our mind, then we will begin to experience changes in our life that will facilitate our awakening from suffering and from causing suffering for others.

We need to make the commitment of a vow in our life and the central vow in our practice is the great vow to become awake. This vow could be expressed by saying, "I will go to this many retreats this year; I will meditate this much each day." We want to make our vow practical so we may not vow, for example, to do zazen every morning and evening for forty-five minutes. If our vow is unrealistic in our life circumstances, we may fail and then give up trying altogether. So, we may vow to do zazen every morning for twenty-five minutes, but if that isn't always possible due to circumstances, then for five minutes, or two minutes, or one minute. The vow gives us something tangible that reminds us to come back to our quiet mind; it is a touchstone before we go out into our busy life. This vow has a specific task associated with it and it serves to keep our direction clear.

To become free, we need to know what is going on in the place where we are truly not free, which is inside of ourselves. Once we know that really well, we then begin to become free. Once our inner tyrant, the one who is always chattering, judging, desiring, repelling, being unaware, is under control through our awareness and our vow, then we find freedom. Once we realize that the thoughts we have continually arising in our minds are not so important, that most of them are irrelevant to what really needs to be done, then we will experience freedom from this inner tyrant. When we are the happiest, when we are the most effective and alive, when we are the most free is when our mind is quiet and peaceful and we are just doing the thing that we are doing.

I call this closing down the thinking function and opening up the awareness function. When thoughts arise, we have a way of examining whether they belong to the past, to the future, or are fantasy, and how they help or hinder us in fulfilling our vow of awakening from the experience and the creation of suffering.

Another way I think of this process is to draw a little balloon around thoughts and sensations like a cartoon character has around their dialogue and then let it go like a helium balloon. "Whee!, Away it goes…!" What is happening right now in this moment? "Ahh! A breath. Ooo, a twinge in my right knee." It may be hard to believe, but bringing awareness to these experiences is where we will find our life, our liberation, our happiness.

Our life emerges from the unborn mind that is free, that experiences delight in the simplest things: a breath, a touch, a taste, a smell, a colour and then it becomes clouded over. Our practice is to let go of whatever clouds this mind so that its wisdom and compassion can shine forth and in our life bring an end to suffering for ourselves and others.

Jan Chozen Bays is the resident teacher at the Zen Community of Oregon. This article is an excerpt from a Dharma talk she gave at a Karuna weekend retreat in Vancouver in November, 1999.