Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life
Read Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life Online
Authors: Ezra Bayda
“Bayda writes with exceptional clarity and simplicity about the awakened life. He has a gift for describing ‘ordinary mind,’ or the customary thoughts, feelings, and experiences of everyday life. His style is as plainspoken as Pema Chödrön’s. He deserves membership in the ranks of respected meditation teacher-authors.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“With clarity and compassion, Bayda applies Zen Buddhist principles to everyday life. He explains how all experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant, help us to discover our ‘path’ to wisdom and an open heart. Presented here are realistic suggestions to help us survive the journey.”
—
Library Journal
“Ezra Bayda wisely translates the Eastern spiritual belief into an extremely useful handbook for practice.
Being Zen
is humble and direct, which reminds me most of Shunryu Suzuki’s
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
It is what its title states—not an explanation of Buddhism or Zen, but an essential guide to its daily practice. Bayda’s is a gentle, sharing voice that evenly embraces humor and sincerity, bringing reason and heart-sense to our most irrational behaviors.”
—
Parabola
“A skillful wedding of mindfulness and Zen—straightforward, simple, and wise.”
—Jack Kornfield, author of
A Path with Heart
and
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
ABOUT THE BOOK
We can use whatever life presents, Ezra Bayda teaches, to strengthen our spiritual practice—including the turmoil of daily life. What we need is the willingness to just be with our experiences—whether they are painful or pleasing—opening ourselves to the reality of our lives without trying to fix or change anything. But doing this requires that we confront our most deeply rooted fears and assumptions in order to gradually become free of the constrictions and suffering they create. Then we can awaken to the loving-kindness that is at the heart of our being.
While many books aspire to bring meditation into everyday experience,
Being Zen
gives us practical ways to actually do it, introducing techniques that enable the reader to foster qualities essential to continued spiritual awakening. Topics include how to cultivate:
- Perseverance
: staying with anger, fear, and other distressing emotions.- Stillness
: abiding with chaotic experiences without becoming overwhelmed.- Clarity
: seeing through the conditioned beliefs and fears that “run” us.- Direct experience
: encountering the physical reality of the present moment—even when that moment is exactly where we don’t want to be.
Like Pema Chödrön, the best-selling author of
When Things Fall Apart,
Ezra Bayda writes with clear, heartfelt simplicity, using his own life stories to illustrate the teachings in an immediate and accessible way that will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers.
EZRA BAYDA teaches at Zen Center San Diego. He is also the author of
Being Zen, At Home in the Muddy Water, Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts),
and
Zen Heart
. For more information, visit www.zencentersandiego.org.
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being zen
Bringing Meditation to Life
Ezra Bayda
SHAMBHALA
B
OSTON
& L
ONDON
2012
S
HAMBHALA
P
UBLICATIONS
, I
NC
.
Horticultural Hall
300 Massachusetts Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
© 2002 by Ezra Bayda
Cover art and design: Jonathan Sainsbury
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUES THE HARDCOVER EDITION OF THIS BOOK AS FOLLOWS:
Bayda, Ezra.
Being zen: bringing meditation to life/Ezra Bayda.
p. cm.
eISBN 978-0-8348-2340-2
ISBN 978-1-57062-856-6
ISBN 978-1-59030-013-8 (paperback)
1. Zen meditations. I. Title.
BQ9289.5.B39 2002
294.3′927—dc21 2001044166
To the memory of Susan Loda, who lived the practice life
with courage, kindness, and grace
Contents
Foreword
by Charlotte Joko Beck
Part I: The Basics of Practice
Part II: Practicing with Emotional Distress
Part III: Awakening the Heart of Compassion
Epilogue:
What Is Our Life About?
L
IVING IN OUR
“
ADVANCED
” culture, its increasing unease becomes obvious: the faster we race toward our many goals, the less we know of serenity and satisfaction. Life, for most of us, remains a wearying puzzle. Although we may try to be indifferent to our predicament, this evasion is again unsatisfactory.
Until we realize that we are truly nothing but life itself, we will keep trying to change and manipulate life in hopes of solving the terrifying puzzle it presents. We may even stumble toward the real teachings that exist in the great religions and also outside of them. But it is difficult to understand them as more than concepts (which may assist us to a degree but falls short of the mature, integrated understanding we long for). So what do we do?
A big, big question! Many excellent books describe very well the human predicament, its elements and structure. Very few of them are helpful in making clear what is involved in developing a genuinely useful practice. To say “Just let it go” is like telling an exhausted drowning person to “Just swim to shore.”
If you want to wake up, not just talk about it, this book will give you practical guidance—the kind of guidance that you need. Not simplistic, formulaic “Just do it this way” guidance, but words that give you practical help, combined with encouragement—even inspiration—for your efforts. And even though all reading is preliminary, it is often a crucial first step. Both for beginning students and for longtime practitioners, this book will clarify the muddy waters.
And Ezra, the guide? Although I have known him for years as a student, a friend, and now a fellow teacher, I hesitate to string a lot of nice adjectives with his name—these are never the exact truth of a person. But I do live with Ezra’s kindness, his steadiness and keen perceptiveness—and most of all, his unceasing practice. And I am confident in recommending his book to you. Enjoy it and benefit.
—Charlotte Joko Beck
I
WISH TO EXPRESS MY DEEP GRATITUDE
to Charlotte Joko Beck, my teacher and friend. Much of what I have learned, and much of what appears in this book, comes directly from my work with her. I’d also like to thank Stephen Levine and Pema Chödrön, both of whom have strongly influenced my path, especially helping to temper the precision and discipline of my Zen training with the more heartfelt quality of loving-kindness.
Many thanks to Carolyn Miller, who voluntarily typed the entire text without complaint, making many valuable suggestions along the way. I’m also grateful to my daughter, Jenessa, for her thorough and merciless editing. Just knowing I would be subject to her scrutiny inspired me to be clearer.
When I submitted my manuscript to the publisher, I thought it was complete and ready to go. Little did I know! It was my good fortune to work with Emily Hilburn Sell, who shaped and edited my words, cutting out the deadwood while skillfully highlighting the unifying themes. I am indebted to her for bringing this book into its present form. In the process we became good friends.
I would also like to thank Elizabeth Hamilton, my wife, friend, and teacher—but not just for her invaluable suggestions on the text. I consider her unwavering support, as well as the strength of her own practice, to be instrumental in helping me to learn what I have learned these last years—the learning out of which this book developed.
T
HE READER WILL NOTICE
that throughout this book I rarely use Zen or Buddhist terminology, such as
emptiness
or
nonduality
. In language and in content, I have tried to avoid the esoteric and philosophical. This aversion to the philosophical has been a consistent theme in my life; in fact, I left graduate school in philosophy because it was too philosophical!