The fifth point in Mind Training in Seven Points is mastery. Whatever the discipline, mastery comes through the blending of two abilities: the ability to move and respond to what arises and the ability to go empty in what arises. The first arises through constant refinement of technique, the second through resting in mind nature.
Issai Chosanshi, in The Demon’s Sermon on Martial Art, writes:
The essence of mind is selfless and without desire, and thus at peace and undisturbed. This leads to moving without moving.
In the midst of ultimate peace and absence of desire, when external phenomena arrive, the mind responds, but is not attached to its function.
The essence of mind does not move. What moves and responds is the function of mind. The essence is at peace and contains the myriad principles and the clarity of spiritual strength. Function follows the laws of the universe and responds to innumerable situations.
You may find Cutting up an Ox, one of the poems in Thomas Merton’s The Way of Chuang Tzu, helpful in understanding the way mastery develops and how it functions. Each of Chekawa’s four instructions on mastery focus finds an echo in this poem.
First, “All instructions have one aim”, namely, the taming of a sense of self. There is much misunderstanding on what “taming the sense of self” means, and it may be helpful to clarify a few points.
A self isn’t an entity. It is a reactive pattern that presents experience as a world out there and a self in here. As a reactive pattern, it comes and goes. All of us have had moments when we are completely engaged in life. Any sense of a separate self disappears and life is, for a short time, magical and intensely meaningful. On the other hand, we also know how threat, neediness, or shame trigger a strong sense of self, as do many other factors. As I explained in Wake Up to Your Life, Chapters 5 and 6, when triggered, sense-of-self reactive patterns give rise to reaction chains associated with the five elements. Those reaction chains in turn coalesce into the reactive patterns of the six reactive emotions, giving rise to the experience of the six realms, i.e., samsara. Thus, as my teacher always said, if you cut the reactive pattern of the sense of self, you cut the root of samsara.
Classical presentations of Buddhism are often understood to mean that the aim of practice is to eliminate any sense of self. Good luck! This pattern is biologically, genetically, emotionally, psychologically, culturally, and even spiritually conditioned. It is basic to our functioning in our lives.
The point in Buddhist practice is to come to know experientially that a self is not an entity, that a sense of self is a reactive pattern. When you train deeply in attention and insight, you first see that there is no self as such. There is nothing there, that is, there is no thing that you can point to and say, “This is what I am.”
When the mind moves, you usually fall into confusion and the world of experience splits in two, self and other. In the experience of a world out there and self in here, you take both the self and the world to be real—I am here and there is a world out there.
Here is where the instruction “experience what arises as like a dream” comes into play. When you can stay in the knowing that all experience, the experience of the world out there, the experience of the self in here, is groundless, you cut the sense-of-self pattern. You experience it all as movement of mind, as if you were dreaming, and that changes how you function.
The cook in Cutting up the Ox puts it this way:
But now I see nothing
With the eye. My whole being
Apprehends.
My senses are idle. The spirit
Free to work without plan
Follows its own instinct…,
It is, however, important to note that the spirit can follow its own instinct only because the cook has trained in cutting up oxen for years. The how of cutting up an ox is deeply instilled in mind and body. If there is no training in the functioning of mind and body, there is no technique to blend with the essence of mind, and this is a mistake that many people make. A master therapist is unlikely to be a good surgeon. A master horseman is unlikely to make a good lawyer.
There is another wrinkle in here that is often overlooked. Later, the cook says:
True, there are sometimes
Tough joints. I feel them coming,
I slow down, I watch closely,
Hold back, barely move the blade,
And whump! the part falls away...
When we encounter difficult situations, we may then move into the world of I and other, but we do so in a different way. We listen, we feel, and we do with full attention.What we are experiencing tells us how to move and respond. In doing so, we are not confused by the “I” here and the world there. Instead, we make use of them, to listen, to feel (these are other ways of knowing) what to do. When the difficulty passes, so does any sense of I and other as separate.
If you are of the view that no sense of “I” should ever arise, I suggest you read The Mysterious Technique of the Cat in The Demon’s Sermon on Martial Arts.
The second of Chekawa’s instructions is about the two witnesses to what you do, other people and your own awareness, or, to put it another way, the external reference of social norms and the internal reference of awareness itself. When you are no longer deluded by a sense of self, you have nothing to defend. Awareness operates freely. Imbalance in what you are doing is sensed as soon as it arises. A master musician knows when a note isn’t quite right even if no one in the audience picks it up.
Thus, in Cutting up the Ox:
Method? said the cook
Laying aside his cleaver,
“What I follow is Tao (the way)
Beyond all methods!”
Needless to say, this instruction is susceptible to corruption, and the history of Buddhism is littered with the (figuratively speaking) corpses of those who were deluded about their own understanding, who thought they were following the Tao, but were really being led by the mechanisms of their own reactive patterns.
The third instruction is about a joyous state of mind. On this point, the cook says:
“Then I withdraw the blade,
I stand still
And let the joy of the work
Sink in.
I clean the blade
And put it away.”
Whenever the sense of self subsides and you act, a deep and quiet joy pervades your being. But action in harmony with the world, clean, and appropriate, does not elevate you above others. You do what needs to be done—no more, and no less. Then, whatever the task, cleaning up afterwards is part of it, and you do so with the same sense of joy.
The last of Chekawa’s instructions on mastery is that your practice is set in motion whenever the situation warrants it. The habits of practice are so deeply instilled in you that your body, or other parts of you, may know before anything has registered consciously that a certain word, a certain gesture, a certain action is called for, and it happens. Again, you see this principal operating in every discipline, from soccer to sculpture, from medicine to metal-working. As I write in The Magic of Vajrayana, “You do not even think about how to apply it to your life, for the moment such a thought arises, you have already separated from your life and from clear empty knowing.”
From all of this, you see that mastery does not come from deciding to be a master. It comes from long and deep practice. It comes from continuous refinement of technique and continuous resting in mind nature. This holds for everyone, even for those who have great natural talents. And this is the point of this fifth point.
Forget about achieving anything and forget about becoming a master or anyone special. Work at practice to develop skills and build capacity.
In the beginning, most people need to learn how to practice from someone who has solid practice experience. As you learn and become more skilled, you may reach a point where you are able to take feedback from your own practice experience. The critical factor is not how much practice you do, but how much you learn and assimilate in the course of practice. The primary skill to develop is, without relying on the conceptual mind to recognize imbalance and move in the direction of balance.
To build capacity, on the other hand, does take time and repetition. It takes time for capacity to build in the body, in the emotional mind, and in awareness. Capacity is almost always built through repetition. Care needs to be taken not to practice in such a way that you generate imbalances. In spiritual practice, the critical capacity to build is attention, the ability to stand in your experience of reactive patterns and be neither taken over by them or suppress them.
Devote yourself to practice, develop skills and build capacity, and let the results mature in their own way, in their own time.
Sources:
The Demon’s Sermon on Martial Arts, by Issai Chozanshi, trans. William Scott Wilson
Losing Ourselves by Jay Garfield.
The Way of Chuang Tzu, by Thomas Merton
Note:
Taking a leaf from Jay Garfield’s book, I applied Merton’s Cutting up an Ox to the mastery section of Mind Training in Seven Points.
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