Back in the early 1990’s I was attending a zen retreat at Dharma Zen Center in Los Angeles. Zen Master Seung Sahn was there at the time. Although he wasn’t leading the retreat, he agreed to give an encouragement talk to the participants on the last day at the conclusion. His talks were always great, punctuated by humor and insights that tore through the veil of constructs we create through our attachments, nonstop thinking, and various life experiences. That particular day during his talk he uttered the phrase, “No meaning is great meaning.” At the time I found this contrary to my firmly entrenched idea of living a life according to a self designed concept of moral and ethical imperatives.What could he possibly mean? I found this a bit perplexing. Human beings, whether conscious of it or not, are always attempting to create a tapestry of ideas and beliefs that they consider important and relative to their life.
Without meaning how do we differentiate preferences? Without meaning we fear that our lives will spiral into depression. We recoil from an existential suggestion that implies “no meaning,” and we spend a lifetime resisting, suppressing, and denying such a view.
Just like the universe itself, the fundamental truth of our existence is that everything is impermanent. Change is occurring moment by moment. This includes our bodies which in reality are simply a temporary manifestation of the four elements.
Before you decide to leave this week’s reading, sigh deeply, and proceed to make yourself a double martini, please consider the following:
Life long efforts to bring meaning and assertion into what cannot possibly be hammered into place suggests that perhaps you are looking in the wrong place for the wrong thing. The human mind has a difficult time dealing with it’s conscious effort to find meaning.
Actually, when we give up this “dog chasing it’s tail” concept of some permanent intellectual truth we find that a great weight has been lifted. We are no longer tethered by our conceptual knowledge, the attempt to create a tapestry of our life with each piece designed and inserted in some pre-ordained fashion. True freedom lies in being completely present to each moment as it unfolds in our life with no clinging to any type of attachment whether spiritual or material. Once we start adding ideas, judgments, and opinions to anything we encounter, we are already imprisoned. When we actively nurture the ability to stay focused on each moment, true wisdom appears. This is why meditation is important. Great love, great compassion, great Bodhisattva way is then not reduced to a mere platitude or intellectual philosophy, but becomes an active, living, breathing part of our existence.
Ji Haeng Zen Master – The Desert Dragon