Eric on Surrender, Zen Buddhism, and the Final Crushing of Self-Sufficiency

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. This morning I would like to talk about surrender. I'd like to talk about what it is, how we do it, And why it's important for us. Most of us know something about Sprender. We've had some experience with it, whether we called it a moment of clarity or whether it was a deep and profound experience for us and most of us also put some type of a label on it. We said it was something about when we got sober or it was something about the first step. And we had that kind of a label. But for those of us who are still mystified by it, as I am, surrender is more than just a label or an event in life. In fact, it's a very deep and profound experience that's beyond intellect. it's a very calm and open space, kind of a vast space, a very welcome place to be. But this varies for all of us, each in our own way. For some, it's no more than an aha. Are you able to hear me? Not well enough. Not well genug. I'll try and speak up. Does anyone in here know how to work the PA system? For some of us, as I say, it's really no more than an aha. For others, it can be very gut-wrenching. It can be a very deep and kind of a profound experience all in all. And I'd like to read a passage from the 12 and 12. For those of you who are alcoholics, you probably know this book. In the seventh step, there's a nice little passage. And I've changed a little bit of the wording from humility to surrender, and I hope you won't mind, but I think it reads essentially the same. And it goes this way. For us, the process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful. It was only by repeated humiliations that we were forced to learn something about surrender. It was only at the end of a long road, marked by successive defeats, humiliations, and a final crushing of our self-sufficiency, that we began to view humility with something more than a condition of groveling despair. So it's something more Than A Condition Of Groveling Despair. so it goes on just a little bit longer and it says so it is that we first see surrender as a necessity but this is the barest beginning to get completely away from our aversion to the idea of being humble to gain a vision of surrender as an avenue to true freedom of the human spirit to be willing to work for surrender as something to be desired for itself takes us a long, long time. So I think those are rather nice words from the seventh step. And it has been this way you know in my life interestingly enough that passage that I read you was almost the first thing I heard when I entered sobriety and here I was on the verge of sobriety I had known that I was an alcoholic for about 18 years I mean, I really knew it and I didn't have any question in my mind and I had been 15 years since I'd attended my first AA meeting I'd been 5 years of working AA no, you're not ready or five years of working on a regular weekly basis as we all do now, you know, without success. And here I was, you know on the verge of my sobriety. People used to tell me that I didn't understand the first step. But I did. I studied it. I studied very hard. I knew exactly what it was. I cataloged my experience. I just listed it out. I knew powerless. I knew unmanageability. I knew all of those terms. I had them well defined. I even looked in my own life and understood it. And people said to me, I don't understand. But as the seventh step predicts, I had arrived at a final crushing of my self-sufficiency. I was homeless. People in AA had given up on me. I was going to be one of those who didn't quite make it, right? And then there was this grace, this sort of wonderful, wonderful grace. I didn't know what it was. I wasn't exactly sure where it had arrived from. I knew one thing for certain. It was not a product of my intellect. it simply wasn't there it didn't come around that way it had arrived at the final crushing of my self-sufficiency and Zen has a similar type of a refrain you know it's often heard around but importantly life is beautiful even my memories of those days you know are always with sunny skies I don't know why it didn't rain or anything for those first three years. It must have been a nice sort of difference in climatology, but that was what it was. I lived moment to moment with a great freedom. It was just wonderful. All of those kinds of drives that I'd had earlier on about financial success and whatnot had sort of dissipated into thin air. They had no substance any longer. Most importantly, I could see myself for the very first time and I had a deep hope. And I learned the very First Lesson about surrender. And that is that surrender is not an abstract concept. Surrender is always surrender into something that is real, that is very real. There is nothing unknowable about it. And surrender is not only for gut-wrenching pain that we oftentimes have at the beginning of our sobriety, but it is the path as the seventh step says to true freedom of the human spirit years later I would run into a teacher known as Dogen Zengi and on his discourse and how we practice as in how we sit this way he says devote your energy to the way that points directly to suchness a real request to us to see life as it really is, in our real reality. We'll talk about that a little bit later, but I was defined that to explore that space in Zen, surrender was my primary tool. You know, but I had enjoyed this. The bit was set, right? The seven-step surrender was something, you know, said surrender was something to be desired in and of itself. In and of itself. It was the avenue to true freedom, but I didn't know how to do this. So how was I to understand surrender? How was I to make it part of my own practice? How was I to really enjoy the nourishment of this peace that I had just begun to find? And of course, like most of us, I had reverted to old ways here. What did I do? I studied it. The same thing that I didn't have success on before. I knew surrender was not in any way reachable in an intellectual fashion. It simply wasn't there. That was not my experience. But I didn't know how to do it. Surrender was my piece of meat. I wanted it badly, right? So I wanted to consume it completely, get it done with, put it on the shelf and make it permanent. So early on in my practice of Zen, I ran into a fellow by the name of Thomas Merton and he wrote a book called Zen and the Birds of Appetite. and in the beginning of it he gives a note of some caution to people like me and I'd like to share it with you so he writes where there is carrion line meeting birds circle and descend life and death are two the living attack the dead to their own profit the dead lose nothing but they gain too by being disposed of or they seem to if you must think in terms of gain and loss do you then approach the study of Zen with the idea that there is something to be gained by it this question is not intended as an implicit accusation but it is nevertheless a serious question where there is a lot of fuss about spirituality, enlightenment, or just turning on. You can imagine this was written in the 60s. It is often because there are buzzards hovering around a corpse. This hovering, this circling, this descending, this celebration of victory are not what it is meant by the study of Zen, even though they may be highly useful exercises in other contexts and they enrich the birds of appetite. Zen enriches no one. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be, but soon they go elsewhere. When they are gone, the nothing, the nobody that was there suddenly appears. That is Zen. it was there all the time but the scavengers missed it because it was not their kind of prey so surrender is not that kind of pray surrender is to experience life just as it is when we sit we sit when we listen in AA meetings, we listen. Most of us know when we don't listen, we prepare for ourselves to talk, to be somebody, to be important. But we don' t listen. Our practice is to listen. That was my lesson. And the seventh step caution was that it takes most of us a long, long time. And me in particular has taken a long, long time still. But I ignored it, you know. I moved on. My practice in my weekly AA meetings and my practice of Zen continued. And ultimately I found that when I was confronting something difficult in life, to know that it was difficult was to start just that to know that it was difficult when my knees hurt in Zazen my knees hurt and surrender was the vehicle for that they just hurt that's all nothing more a little more than a year ago about a year and a half ago a dear friend of mine, Liz Tenho gave a wonderful talk on surrender, a better talk than I. She's marvelous. But you can get it here on the website at Clouds, perhaps. If not, I can share it with you. And she told the story of Bahia. Bahia was a wise, wise and holy man who had come to a realization that his practice wasn't right. He wasn't the wise and holy man that everyone thought he was. And this bothered him greatly, and so he went in search of someone to help. And he went into search of the Buddha, the fully awakened one, to ask him how to practice. when he found the Buddha the Buddha was in town receiving alms and he raced up to the Buddha and presented him with his need immediately and the Buddha turned and said Bihya right now we are collecting alms that is our practice but as needs go and I'm sure you can see where Bahia might have been, he pressed the issue and said to Buddha and Buddha said back to him, Bahia, right now we are doing this. Well, Bahia of course would continue to press and he pressed him further and the Buddha said to him then you must train yourself this way in the seen there is just the seen in the heard there is just the heard in the sensed there is just the sensED in the imagined just the imagined then you will have no thereby that is how you must train yourself so going through this again he said Bahia in the seen there is just the seen in the heard there is just the heard in the imagined there is just the imagined in the cognized just the cognizant then Bahia since you will have no thereby you will have no therein and then because you will have no therein, you will know here or beyond or midway between. That is just the end of suffering. I think that's a lovely teaching. This is a practice of seeing and surrendering to the real. Right here, right now. moment by moment. There is nothing as wonderful as seeing this. I find it brings great comfort and peace. Along the way, we hear from people who practice surrender and bring their compassion to our difficulties, giving us some warmth and nourishment along the way. we remember that in our practice an important part of it is hope I often times said when I came into this program on step two it was the hope that I was really here for it was so much a part of my surrender Ketaguri Rashi in this book called Each Moment is the Universe wrote a beautiful little section in his chapter on living with great hope. It has these words in it. What is your life? It's very complicated. Your intellect compels you to understand, but there is no perfect answer. All you can do is entrust yourself to the life that is given to you now. live your own life as it really is but entrusting yourself to your life doesn't just mean accepting it blindly it means accepting a profound awareness of something that is greater than the intellectual world it means expecting it and digesting it through your everyday life to digest means to take care of your everyday life by totally accepting that there is something greater than the intellectual world. How do you do this? Through everyday life that is impermanent, you have to actually touch something deep that is eternal. By making your body and mind calm, you can go deeply into the human world and touch your life profoundly. You can feel what is eternal, not in an intellectual way or a philosophical way, but in a practical and realistic way. So it's important to me to realize the deep truth of the seventh step on humility and surrender are in fact the avenue to freedom and more than just a condition. Indeed for me it forms the basis for compassion for myself and others. And category has a few more words I'd like to share with you. Zen Buddhism focuses on day-to-day life, because no matter how long you try to understand life and death intellectually, you will never understand by using your own intellect. You cannot feel how deep your life is. Life is really vast, and you can never get a definite solution. I don't mean you should ignore intellectual understanding. You can take care of your intellect by patting it on the head, calming your body and mind and letting yourself go deeply into the human world that is beyond the intellectual world. That is our practice. It is my main practice. There is an ease to it, which is not to say that I don't have difficulty with life. Clarity itself is oftentimes an issue. But more often, it is that the clarity of my life doesn't align with the vision of my wife as I'd like it to be. That's really what happens with me. So my practice must be at a very fundamental level a surrender to what is real directly experiencing this wonderful life an opening to all the beauty in the world and just a last comment if I may we all know those who struggle with alcoholism they share with us their confusion each of those confusions seem very real to them yet we know they are not we know their fundamental confusion is that they cling to these thoughts and in doing so avoid seeing their alcoholism they cannot see themselves as they really are they are not the problems that surface in their life they are not even the problems that may be haunting their apparent reality they are wondrous beings as we all are who we may help find surrender so that is what I had to say today I think we have a brief moment for a question or two before I turn it over to Judith. Are there any? Yes. Am I using surrender and serenity interchangeably? Am I using surrender and serendity interchangeably I actually think that they're much the same thing but I don't think of them exactly the same way. Surrender to me is actually something that I do. Serenity is perhaps the result of that if I were to make a distinction. Is there any other? Yes, Dan. Did you say a little bit more about the idea or experience of surrender while you're sitting on the cushion? Oh. When I sit on the cushion, what is my idea of surrender when I sit on a cushion? Well, quite often I sit in the cushion and I am bothered with my day-to-day life. You know? And very quickly, one of the very earliest things that I did was I developed a mantra that when all of this activity was all about I just said gently back and that was as simple a practice of surrender as I could muster at the time I returned to my breath thoughts went away it was a lesson that I learned that said those thoughts are my life, they're here they're present but I don't necessarily have to stay with them and I just return myself to my sitting today I practice koans with my teacher and what's wonderful about koans is that I still revert to studying them and they are about as fruitful to study as all the other things I studied unsuccessfully and so I have to surrender that habit of mine yes the surrender of the pain when I'm sitting how does it work for me very poorly at the beginning I think when I first began to sit the pain was more than I was prepared to understand it just simply was there it overwhelmed me I remember my first Tishin on about the third day, I was ready to cry. And I could tell you a very funny story, and I will some other time about that. But ultimately, you become comfortable with the pain and the pain becomes comfortable with you. And you need to go to the pain and not to the avoidance of the pain. Does that help? Well, thank you very much. And if I may, I'd like to turn this over to Judith.