#10 There is no roadmap

# 10  There is no roadmap. There is no system – only the trackless love of the universe. Burn your rule book. Beyond form and emptiness, beyond koan practice, beyond Zen. The point of our practice is not Zen – it is aliveness.*

It is easy when hearing about or even studying Zen, to imagine that you are being presented with a clear path (Zen practice) toward a clear goal (enlightenment). From this perspective, we listen to Dharma talks and read books to try to understand the Way so we can dutifully follow the path and then someday arrive at the destination. This is a misguided understanding of Zen that, rather than liberate us, simply holds us in a new kind of bondage.

There is no roadmap.

The true teaching of the Zen way is that the world is not an object that can be considered and mapped out. Life is not a ‘thing’ that can be comprehended by the pre-frontal cortex. Our human minds of reason are a wonderful resource in certain situations, but they are quite limited when we begin to turn to the essential nature of life itself.

The words and images that arise in the mind, including the words and images that arise when we talk about Buddhism and Zen and enlightenment are all delusions. They may be temporarily useful, but they are not the thing itself. There is no way to capture the Dharma or God or reality in any descriptions we use.

While the guidance of a teacher and a tradition can be a wonderful and perhaps even necessary part of an authentic spiritual journey, there is no road-map. There is no set of practices or procedures that will get us from here to there.

In Zen we sometimes say ‘Practice teaches us how to practice.’ By ‘practice’ we mean this intentional turning toward life itself. In our tradition, this practice is centered around our devotion to sitting upright and still as a way of expressing our willingness to allow the world and ourselves to be just as we are. Seated meditation is a way to relax our ancient habit of trying to control and to cultivate a basic friendliness toward whatever arises.

It is impossible to ‘know’ what we are doing. We can never measure our progress in any meaningful way. We can find ease and clarity, but if we try to put it into words or to ‘know’ it in the traditional sense, we have moved one step away the very thing we are after. Our path, our practice itself then becomes simply another idol to worship and we are lost once again. This is what the great Chinese teacher Linji meant when he said ‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.’

Anything you can concretize, imagine and hold onto is not what you are after. ‘There is no system – only the trackless love of the universe. Burn your rule book.’ The path of Zen is not an intricate and subtle wisdom system that, if you learn it, will save you. We are all perpetual wanderers in ‘the trackless love of the universe.’

The mind is certain of its position. The mind/self says: ‘I am in here and the rest of the world is out there.’ ‘There are certain things and qualities of being that I don’t have, that if I did have, my life would be better.’ While we might appreciate these internal perspectives as signs of realism and good mental health, they are, at the same time, limited and even false perspectives.

We abide and are held in a vast mystery that is both totally incomprehensible and intimately available. When we ask the question ‘Where is the Dharma?’ or ‘Where is God?’ or ‘Where is this trackless love you speak of?’—the answer is always: ‘Right here.’ There is nothing but this one moment that fills the entire universe. There is no path to what you long for, because what you long for is already here. You have never, from the very beginning, been separated from this.

As we practice (and I do believe practice is required), we are not progressing along some path. We are not accumulating tokens and advancing toward some destination. We are wandering in the boundless and incomprehensible fields of aliveness. No measurement is possible or necessary.

Settle in and appreciate your life.

* from the unpublished and apocryphal text 31 Fundemantal Teachings of Zen