A Temporary Affair by David Radin

Author:David Radin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
Published: 2022-05-24T18:02:42+00:00

16

The Mistaken Seat of Consciousness

Zen practice can seem to have a stark, cold feel to it. The chanting is not exactly operatic, and the sitting is without television. Even though it has a bare quality, that is only on the outside. In the real practice the body is cool and the heart is warm—this is the feeling of the practice.

So chanting can feel very dull, and if you try to produce a warmth out of it, you can’t do it—it just becomes tight. Real chanting comes from being relaxed, and if you are sitting there relaxed, you are going to produce a warm sound from a warm heart. How do you produce a warm heart when you are chanting? The warmth of your heart appears as the intimacy of the consciousness and the vocal cords. The intimacy of it—so that when you are chanting, the fullness of being contacts the vocal cords. That intimacy is the warmth of your heart. The consciousness inside is always warm. The vocal cords are flesh and blood—the vocal cords have no self. If you examine your vocal cords, you cannot find anybody there. You cannot say, “I am chanting,” because chanting is the activity of the vocal cords. The contact of the consciousness with the vocal cords allows you to experience this intimacy. In the intimacy of the consciousness with the vocal cords, a great miracle happens. The miracle is that the mind becomes aware that the consciousness exists as the witness.

Becoming aware of your deeper existence through this intimate contact with the physical body is basically what mindfulness practice is. When you are walking, it is not just an exercise of walking, you are actually experiencing your feet and your body. You cannot produce intimacy—it is a preexisting condition. When you experience breathing, what exactly do you have to do to have that experience? To experience birds singing, to experience vocal cords talking, to see snowflakes or trees? What activity do you perform to do that? There is no need to do anything. But you need to let go of the self that resides in thinking.

If you are thinking, you will not be able to hear a bird. It may take two to three days of sitting in a retreat before you can hear a bird sing and become one with the bird. Human beings do not realize that we are in an inaccurate and fallen state. Fallen does not mean good or bad, it just means confused. The consciousness is obscured by the thinking activity. It does not realize that it has descended into the thinking activity. As individuals, we say this is what we are; we do not realize that it is the mental conversation, not a true self, that is creating our life. We do not realize that the thinking activity is an impermanent activity. You will not be able to think forever, thank God. Dying is a problem only for the misconceived self. My teacher used to say he enjoyed performing funerals but did not enjoy performing weddings.

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