selfishness

By extension, it occurred to me this morning that to the extent anyone might hope to make progress in spiritual endeavor, to that extent precisely it would be necessary to get it straight: Spiritual life is based

on selfishness.

"Selflessness" may be the hymn, but selfishness is the fact ... the texts, the temples, the sages, the nostrums, the conundrums, the vast efforts ... the sooner anyone acknowledges and digests the selfishness, the more likely the progress. Disapproving glances, however gift-wrapped they may be, are not enough.

Lads and lassies with swift and inventive minds may nod in counter-intuitive agreement as if somehow they could elude the lash of selfishness, but it's a self-serving bit of buck and shuffle.

Lads and lassies of deep devotion and honed discipline may dissent in slithering and dulcet tones ... and who knows, maybe they're right. But I doubt it.

Lads and lassies with well-watered bookshelves may pull down one sage or another as a means of supporting their subtle and grasping 'understandings' ... as for example, the Zen teacher Dogen:

To study Buddhism is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be enlightened by all beings....

And lads and lassies wedded to the vast corporate structures of spiritual life may come up with yet another reason why "taking the suckers for all they're worth" is actually a noble and holy and profound pursuit: Since there is no self, my selfishness is just a function of the Great Dharma ... and other similar, if well-dressed, Ayn Rand drivel.

Anyone can exercise some variety of excuse or evasive maneuver ... I know I have in the past and may yet again ... but for those seeking some bit of actual-factual peace, some progress in spiritual practice, my money is on selfishness -- the gentle, if sometimes saddening, recognition that selfishness is the alpha and omega of spiritual endeavor and there cannot be progress without acknowledging this with the same ease anyone might acknowledge that they had blue eyes or brown. It is not something to acknowledge as a smugly sneaky way of avoiding or eluding or killing off the fact. Transcendence is for the bright and bustling lads and lassies.

The selfishness of Jesus.
The selfishness of the Buddha.
The selfishness of Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mother Teresa.

The selfishness ... that looks back from the bathroom mirror.

Looks back with blue eyes or brown.

Plain as salt.

In order to make progress, in order to find a bit of peace, it's not enough to observe lazily "oh well, people are people." There is some effort required and for my money, acknowledging the selfishness of spires and holy men, texts and temples, spiritual disciplines and other deluded pastimes is central to that effort and its concomitant progress. Bit by bit, an easy acknowledgment.

Just because Dogen said so and just because Dogen was a heavy-hitter in Zen Buddhism and just because what he said may be true is no fucking excuse. Selfishness is here and now, not then and there. First the acknowledgment with unflinching courage ... then the continued acknowledgment with unflinching patience ... easy as pie and more cutting than a wood rasp: Selfishness... without it, all spiritual life would fall flat on its face ... devolve into some tentacled corporation like the Vatican... and leave the honest aspirant gasping for air.

I feel lucky to have come into contact with Zen Buddhism, not so much because it suited my needs, though that's true as well, but because as a discipline and effort, it offers some opportunity for honest progress. What others do with that opportunity is their business. But for me, the opportunity was to get things a little clearer about the selfishness without which spiritual endeavor would drop dead ... which is, when you get down to it, what it's supposed to do.

Once when I was chatting with my Zen teacher, I asked him about dualism. No, he said, Zen is not dualistic. Is it monistic, I asked? No, he said, it's not monistic either. What was it then, I asked. He screwed up his face as if the words he spoke were distasteful when compared with the fact: "Well, maybe it's like a pointless point."

Selfishness. Get used to it. There is no self but self. What if there were a war and nobody came? What if there were a self and nobody came? Self is circumstances and sometimes they can be pretty selfish indeed. Coming and going, lively as a jumping bean. Relax -- it's the only way anyone could progress.

Blue eyes and brown -- who in their right mind would try to 'transcend' that?

Plain as salt selfishness ... think it over.