Mountain Record of Zen Talks (eBook)

Chapter 5: Are You Awake?
What is 'taking responsibility for our lives'? We usually think of taking responsibility in the sense of meeting our commitments and obligations, keeping our word, paying our bills, taking care of things—,our business, family, home, health. But there is another way of looking at responsibility. 'Taking responsibility for my life' literally means that I am responsible for my life, for who and what I am, for what happens to me. I am responsible for what my experience is and how I experience it.

But how can we be responsible for all of this when we are constantly tossed to and fro by circumstances? This happens not only to us, but to everybody around us. We have a disappointment, a setback, an accident, an argument, a loss, we do not get what we want or we do get what we want. Or the cause is more mysterious—,it is something to do with the stars, or our biorhythms, or the vibes in this place, or that we didn't eat right or get enough sleep. However you cut it, you find yourself one day wishing you were dead, and two days later happy to be alive, ten feet off the ground—,and maybe the circumstances are the same. Sooner or later you are tossed back in the other direction. How can we be responsible when we are not free, when we are bound and restricted in this way, living at the mercy of circumstances?

In a famous koan from Mumon's Gateless Gate, Master Zuigan talks about being master of one's life:

Every day Master Zuigan used to call out to himself, 'Oh, Master!'
And he would answer himself, 'Yes?'
'Are you awake?' he would ask.
And he would answer, 'Yes, I am,'
'Never be deceived by others—,any day, any time.'
'No, I will not.'

That question, 'Are you awake?,' is the same as 'Are you enlightened? Are you aware of your life?' The word others refers to circumstances. If you are not 'deceived by others,' you are not tossed back and forth by conditions. You are in charge of your life. Of course, it is not really the conditions that toss us back and forth, it is our conditioning, which is based on our particular circumstances—,where and how we grew up, what school we went to, who our parents were, what we learned from friends, books, TV. We find ourselves living out that conditioning, that programming, for the rest of our lives. Most of us are conditioned in very much the same way, which makes it easier to live together in society, to get things done, to understand the rules. Our conditioning is what makes advertising so successful, making it possible for people in the advertising industry to get us to respond to their products the way they want us to. The whole point of advertising is to create a need where none exists, that is, to stimulate desire. Desire is fundamental—,a basic underlying force in our life. Once we desire something, we can be led around by the nose.

Desire arises from the belief that something is lacking, that somehow we need something we do not have, that we are incomplete. The origin of desire is in the discriminating consciousness that makes us distinguish 'this' from 'that,' 'self' from 'other.' That separation of self from other is based on ignorance, on not knowing what is real, and it creates all our suffering. When there is self, there is other, there is gain and loss, something we want to get, something or someone we can not bear to lose. That is how we create greed, anger, confusion, despair. When we believe that our 'self' is whatever is inside this bag of skin, we feel incomplete, cut off from everything else in the universe, and our desire is really the desire to...