‘Expect nothing. Seek nothing. Just live’
By Oswin Hollenbeck,
The Register-Guard, Dec 27, 2008
Eugene, Oregon (USA) -- I am often touched
by the personal experiences related with spiritual ptactice. At the same time,
for many people, including myself, there can be long stretches of spiritual or
religious practice during which there seem to be no reward or compensation.
We
can think we’re doing something wrong, the method is unreliable or the teacher
is unsatisfactory. However, once having checked out a practice carefully,
commitment, faith and trust are necessary if one wishes to move forward.
When my teacher, Rev.
Master Jiyu Kennett, asked in Japan how she should go about her studies, she
was told, “Expect nothing. Seek nothing. Just live.” Having given up family,
friends, career and country to travel halfway around the world to train there,
she was stumped. But once on the other side of realization, she saw the
teaching’s value and taught it in turn to her disciples.
Experience has proven
this advice true for me. Prone to disappointment, rejection and a sense of
failure, I’ve learned to look beyond how I feel to the cause of the problem. I
set up expectations regarding other people, and then am disappointed when their
humanity surfaces and they act in ways contrary to my ideals.
I want others’ approval, and when not everyone agrees with or
likes me, I feel rejected. I seek things that have no permanent or lasting
value, such as position and responsibility, secure friendship and even
spiritual experience itself, and when I lose them or fall short of my goal, I
feel like a failure.
There is nothing
inherently wrong with such aims and accomplishments. But if we (I) make them a
requisite for our (my) happiness, sooner or later conditions are bound to
change, and we (I) will experience a sense of loss and feel unhappy. The
Buddha’s teaching on craving as the source of suffering I know to be true for
me. And I continue to learn.
“Just live” is meant
in the same way that practitioners are told to “just sit.” The emphasis is on
“just.” It’s not as in “just any old thing,” rather as in “concentrate or focus
only on this,” “don’t be distracted by anything else” and “do it
wholeheartedly, or single-mindedly.”
True living is about
touching, knowing and acting from a deeper place beyond what we can see, hear
or think (and this activity is not separate from the senses and their objects).
Buddhists call this refuge “Buddha Nature”; it’s why we meditate.
Desire is not evil; it
stems from ignorance — not recognizing the consequences of desiring, craving
and clinging. However, we can use greed positively. We simply need to keep
refining our wanting (wants): Hold out for something better, and then let go of
that — again and again and again.
The Buddha called this
refining of desire “having one fortunate attachment” — that of continual
commitment to the practice without concern for results. This attitude will
eventually ripen in positive consequences, a confirmation of our faith and
devotion, a peace of mind and heart that outlasts all fleeting experience.
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The Rev. Oswin Hollenbeck is the prior (resident monk) at the Eugene Buddhist
Priory, a temple of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives.