“Hand Sculpture” photo by Tambako the Jaguar, of a sculpture in Vaduz, Liechtenstein
The summer issue of Midwest Zen was published this month, and it includes a short essay that I shared about my own practice (“A flawed approach“). For most of this year, I have been focused mainly on my own practice and supporting meditation and mindfulness in my local community. And, this effort has come at the expense of my writing, but it is important to me to continue to share reflections on Zen practice, and I was grateful for this opportunity!
In this piece I wanted to share some challenges that I had encountered, times when practice felt difficult or unpleasant, and I really did not understand where these feelings were coming from. Over time, as I continued to sit with these moments, I began to see the ways in which my approach to practice was flawed. Underneath my efforts, just outside of my awareness, a subtle striving (that I should be getting “somewhere” in practice, or that I should feel some particular way) was at the root of my struggles. And seeing that more clearly has helped me to drop some of that striving (or at least to be more aware of it!).
I don’t know if these experiences will resonate with you, but I do hope that someone might find this piece helpful for their own practice.
Tonight, the drawing for the Mega Millions lottery in the United States will have an obscene prize, $396 million USD. At a price of $2 per ticket, I have a hard time truly grasping the number of people that have participated to generate this jackpot. And, if you are one of them, maybe you are looking for lottery tips on how to maximize your chances of winning tonight’s jackpot.
Well, I can’t really help you there, but I would say: don’t buy a ticket at all, if you have any hope of winning. That hope, of winning this lottery, is something that can distort your life, and not for the better. But, if you can afford a ticket, and can buy one cleanly, without any hope or expectation of winning? Then, go right ahead.
But, why should our attitude matter when we play the lottery? And after all, isn’t that why people play lotteries and games of chance in the first place – because they have some hope of winning?
I would argue that our attitude does matter, especially because the odds of winning are so low. To buy a ticket with the hope of winning is to grasp at some unattainable thing. It is like reaching up for the full moon in the sky with the hope of clutching it in your hand.
Tonight, someone may win the jackpot, but you, as one specific person, do not have a (useful) chance of winning. You may very well be aware that the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot is about 1 in 302 million.
Three hundred million of anything is hard for our minds to grasp. To put it into perspective, you have a (much, much) better chance of being killed by a bee, hornet or wasp sting. Or, of going to the emergency room for a pogo-stick injury.
Or, compare the Mega Millions drawing to flipping a coin. If you were to flip a fair coin once, your chance of getting heads is 1 in 2 (half the time, the coin will come up heads, half tails). If you flip that coin 3 times, your chance of getting heads all three times is 1 in 8. Not bad, really – you would have a better than 10% chance of succeeding.
But, your chance of winning the Mega Millions lottery is about the same as flipping a fair coin 28 times and getting heads every, single, time (1 in 268 million).
So, to buy a ticket for tonight’s lottery with any hope, any expectation, of winning is not rational, in any sense. In practical terms, your chance of winning is basically the same whether you buy a ticket or not.
This is an argument I have made a number of times in my life, to discourage people from playing the lottery. I recall a time several years ago, that I had a student who was excited about the Powerball lottery (1 in 292 million chance of winning). That young man maintained that if he kept playing, every week, he was sure to win someday.
I argued with him, gently but persistently, going around and around again. I worked hard to get him to admit that no one, none of us, has a good chance of winning the Powerball. I made spreadsheets, showing the cumulative odds of winning, if we played every drawing for 50 years of our life. (Spoiler alert: the odds are still pretty terrible.) I wanted to be sure that he understood that it was a waste of money, there was no way he would ever win.
And, to be fair, I guess it is not literally impossible that he could win. Some people have won, that is true. But, out of the hundreds and hundreds of millions (billions?) of lottery tickets sold, there have been 223 jackpot winners in Mega Millions, and about the same number have ever won the Powerball jackpot.
Through all of our arguments, I remember clearly how he would listen to me carefully. Nod his head a bit, with a laugh and a bright, mischievous grin.
And, he would say something like, “No, it definitely is a sure thing.”
Looking back, I can see that I argued with him because I felt an obligation to speak up when I saw someone promoting a wrong view. But, I did start to look more closely at my own motivation. After our first conversations, I found that it was not skillful for me to continue to push the issue. I found that I needed him to admit that he was wrong.
We would all have been served better if I had focused on having a conversation, rather than treating this as another lesson from class. I learned something from these arguments, and I am grateful to that student, for holding his ground.
Today, I don’t worry, in general, about whether people play the lottery or not. While the chances of winning are very low (zero, for all practical purposes), is there any real harm to spending $2 USD on a lottery ticket? If you have $2 to spend, and you enjoy daydreaming a bit – or feeling that you are part of the experience – then why not?
And, at this point I do feel that I owe you a confession. For all my protests, I have played both the Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries. Not very often, and usually at points when the jackpots had grown to $200 million or so. And, I did enjoy the feeling of being part of these jackpots, being a part of the event.
And, it was diverting, to be honest, to imagine what I could do with the winnings. We have people in our family who are struggling in various ways, and could use help. We can see the real, pressing needs in our local community, and in the world. It is tempting to think about how we could make a real impact if we were to win.
But, as I’ve seen several large jackpots emerge over the past year, I have also had some concerns about how I was affected by the lottery. As I looked at myself, I found that some part of me did believe that I could win, hoped for it, even to just a small degree. I found myself drawn into daydreaming about what I could do with the jackpot. Fantasies about how much a prize like that could help the people in my life.
And, after two tickets won the last Powerball jackpot, I did notice that I felt let down. Not in a major way, but I was disappointed that it was over. In that moment, I felt (realized?) that I had been wasting my time and energy. For all of my well-intentioned daydreams, what real impact was there for my family? For my community?
So, I do not see anything wrong in general with buying a lottery ticket (if you can afford it). But, for me personally, I don’t think that I should participate. Because, when I look very closely at myself, my actual experience and behavior, I can see that buying a ticket affected me in a negative way.
Reflecting on my experience with the lottery, I was reminded me a short passage that I had read years ago, about the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, after he had moved to San Francisco. This was early in his work, teaching Zen in America, as he was working to establish his own habits in a new country:
… he was careful not to get involved in the sort of socializing he had done in his last years in Japan, when it had become a diversion from his unsatisfying temple responsibilities. He wouldn’t play go anymore. He walked over to the Go Club on the other side of the building one day, reached for the doorknob, paused, then had backed away and gone home.
David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber
In the whole biography of Suzuki, this was a small point. But, it was one that stuck with me. Perhaps because I have also found myself drawn into comfortable habits by my own diversions. And, I worried that the lottery could become something similar for me – a way to avoid contact with the reality of my life.
I’ve written before about the importance of looking carefully at our motivation to practice, and being aware of how our goals can distort our efforts. In my own Zen practice, I have also been grateful for times, such as with the lottery, where I have been mindful of how my daydreams have widened – solidified – the gap between my self and reality. I appreciate how Steve Hagan captured this gap, in his book, Buddhism Plain and Simple:
Our life is like a wheel out of kilter. It’s not satisfying. ‘There’s something out there I’ve got to get. And there’s something else out there I’ve got to keep away from me.’ This is bondage–this wanting, leaning, craving for something outside ourselves.
Steve Hagan, Buddhism Plain and Simple
In this quote, Steve Hagan is making a general point about human life, about the roots of our dissatisfaction.
In the case of the lottery, I found that I had become preoccupied, in a small, subtle way. And, in a way that had some negative effects on my life. In noticing this point, I found that for me, the lottery is not innocent fun. For me, I have found that I cannot play the lottery cleanly – without falling a bit out of kilter.
And, this may not be true of you. If you can buy a ticket to the lottery, and then continue on in your life without any impact, that is wonderful. But even so, keep an eye out for other places in your life where you might be caught. My advice to you is to always be attentive to how our life is affected by our actions.
And, I personally work to take Hagan’s advice to heart:
Attend to immediate experience. Cultivate your mind in meditation. Become familiar with the workings and leanings of your own mind. You’ll be spared a great deal of misery, and ultimately you’ll know True Freedom.
Steve Hagan, Buddhism Plain and Simple
Someone will eventually win this lottery prize, and I hope that they will be grateful for their fortune. It would be wonderful if they would use some of their prize to make a difference in the world. For me, I’ll be doing the same, in whatever way I can.
After a run recently, we came across a small toad along our path. This little one seemed to have perfected just sitting: relaxed, unperturbed, but ready to act in a moment. I wish that I could say that I’ve mastered sitting in the same way!
While their posture is very different from that of sitting meditation, I do feel that toads are a wonderful model for the attitude we cultivate in our sitting meditation practice. At least outwardly, a toad appears to be still, but relaxed. But, they are perfectly attentive to everything around them, from the insects that will be their next meal to animals that will try to eat them.
And, of course, the annoying hiker who stops to try to take a photo.
While there are many approaches to meditation, those that I prefer remind me of the attitude of a toad: relaxed, still, but entirely alert. In a lot of ways, this attitude is similar to how I have approached my own practice, which has been most strongly shaped by shikantaza (just sitting) meditation in the Soto Zen tradition.
The Zen teacher Shohaku Okumura describes shikantaza in Mind and Zazen:
This is a really simple practice; we do nothing but sit in the zazen posture breathing easily, keeping the eyes open, staying awake, and letting go. That’s all we do in zazen; we do nothing else. Yet even if you try to sit just five minutes in this way you will find it really difficult.
This practice is very simple but simple does not necessarily mean easy. So whenever we become aware that we have deviated from that point of upright posture, deep breathing, keeping the eyes open without focusing, and letting go of whatever comes up, we try to return to that point. In whatever condition we find ourselves in, we just return to posture, breathing, waking up, and letting go. That is what we do in meditation.
The Zen teacher Dainin Katagiri gave similar advice:
When you are sitting in zazen, don’t think. Don’t use your frontal lobe. Your frontal lobe is sitting with you already, so don’t use it to think. This doesn’t mean to destroy thinking or to keep away from thinking. Just rest; don’t meddle with thinking.
Dainin Katagiri, “Returning to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life“
What is the point of a practice like this? That is a complicated question (and teachers such as Dainin Katagiri have said that meditation is useless). But for me, I think that meditation is a key part of how I have tried to put my own life under a microscope, and to look carefully at everything we take for granted. This can help us loosen the grip of a strong emotion, it can help soften the boundaries that seem so rigid between ourselves and others. It can open up more space in our lives.
And, while I do believe the transformative potential of a mediation practice, if I am perfectly honest, I have often struggled with meditation! For much of my adult life, I have felt that I should meditate for a significant amount of time every day, but I have rarely achieved that for more than a few weeks at a time. It has frustrated me, because I do believe that meditation is an important part of my life, to turn my attention back on to itself, as much as I can.
When I saw that toad on the trail, it would be fair to say I envied that little one, to be able to sit so easily!
But truthfully, while I used to feel bad about how difficult it was for me to maintain a regular practice, more recently I have felt that meditation is (for me) similar to exercise (which I also have a conflicted relationship with). I don’t enjoy exercise (usually) in the moment, but I keep at it, because I feel that it is a critical part of my life.
Changing my attitude has been helpful, as I’ve been able to step back from being concerned that I am a fraud (someone who espouses an interest in meditation practice, but who doesn’t genuinely live it). And, I feel that my practice is richer today, for that.
This type of practice has long appealed to me, as it feels built on a premise that it is valuable to turn our attention to our experience, to the totality of life, as much as we can outside of our thinking about the world.
If you have any interest in exploring this style of Zen meditation, I would very much recommend reading as much as you can find. There are many wonderful books out there, and I have especially found it useful to explore collections of talks by Zen teachers. I would recommend Katagiri’s book, “Returning to Silence,” and another collection of his talks, “You Have to Say Something.” I have also found Charlotte Joko Beck to be very influential in my own practice, and would highly recommend her book “Everyday Zen.” And, I am also quite fond of Steve Hagen’s “Buddhism Plain and Simple.”
I think that these readings are a good place to start (but, I would also encourage you to reach out to a community of practitioners as well!). I personally have felt that it has been most beneficial to be part of a community (and have valued times when I lived near a Zen center).
But, I’ve also spent much of my life in locations where going to a center was not feasible. There are many excellent resources today, such as this post, How to do Zazen for the basics of sitting meditation and good visuals. I personally cannot sit in the full lotus position (and usually sit in something close to a quarter lotus pose =) )
Whether in books or through a community of practitioners, I think that you will be able to find many others who have used the opportunity of practice to look carefully at their own life. And, I hope that you too will take some time to just sit.
