Rehearsing The Best I Can

What’s zazen good for? Absolutely nothing! This “good for nothing” has got to sink into your flesh and bones until you’re truly practicing what’s good for nothing. Until then, your zazen is really good for nothing. — from To You by Sawaki Kodo Roshi

When my dogs are doing something I really don’t want them to do, my first priority is to remove them from the situation. For example, we go out on the front porch and they spot a neighborhood dog out for a walk. They start barking and their excitement level gets way over threshold. I don’t want them rehearsing that behavior (I got this phrase from Susan Garrett. I don’t know if she originated it).

I was thinking about rehearsing behaviors this morning in the context of Buddhist and Alexander Technique practices. Two things we’re doing in both cases:

1. not engaging in (inhibiting) behaviors that we view as negative in some way

2. practicing (rehearsing) behaviors we’d like to do more frequently

The Buddhist technical term for what I’m talking about is samskara. This is a really complicated term in Buddhism. One of the places it often comes up is as one of the five aggregates (form, sensations or feeling, perception or discrimination, conditioning factors (samskara), consciousness). The Buddha taught that we are nothing other than these five aggregates.

This means our habit patterns are one of only five things we’re made of. I want to pay close attention to them. I want to rehearse being a kind, satisfied, healthy, loving person. These basic practices (zazen, constructive rest) that I’m talking about give me the opportunity to grow in this way.

In the quote at the start of this article, Sawaki Kodo Roshi says that zazen practice is good for nothing. This is a contradiction that I’ve been negotiating with, wrestling, fighting, begging, ignoring and just about every other strategy I could come up with for about thirty years now.

One thing I’m almost sure of: none of us repeats any behavior that isn’t reinforced in some way. My dogs have become a clarifying lens for studying and understanding myself in this way. One complication in applying this thought to dog training is that sometimes the behavior itself is the reinforcement. This is why in the example I gave about them barking at a neighborhood dog, the first thing I want is to stop the actual activity. This behavior is self-reinforcing, they get something out of it inherently. The more they do it, the more they will do it.

No one, including Dogen Zenji and the Buddha and Sawaki Roshi, would keep practicing zazen if they weren’t getting reinforced for it somehow. So it actually is good for something. I’m not saying anything here that Sawaki Roshi didn’t know.

But if I practice zazen (or anything else) as the way I’m going to improve my life, I’m playing into the fundamental reason I feel dissatisfied to begin with. I’ve turned it into a tool that I can use to get something I want (maybe to be calmer and have more peace of mind). The unresolvable contradiction here is that the only way human beings will choose to do something like zazen is if they believe it might get them something they want, but if you do zazen to get what you want it fundamentally cannot get you that thing.

I think contradictions are good, or at least inevitable. The universe is not arranged to be neatly understood by humans. Zazen can be both a behavior I gain something from and good for nothing. It definitely is both of those things.

I want to improve, be happier, be kinder, be calmer, be more generous. I believe that my Buddhist practice and study, reinforced by my Alexander Technique and dog training practice and study (among other things) supports and nourishes my growth in those directions. At least for the moment I’m going to leave questions of what it’s all good for to the side and keep doing my best (with what I understand in the situations I’m in).

Spotlight On The Grit

This morning I took the dogs to one of our local dog parks. Both Nyx and Clio are reactive to other dogs when they’re on leash. They can be really loud and intimidating.

As we got out of the car I put them both on leashes. There was kind of a gauntlet situation happening. Not only was there someone coming out of the park gate with their dog, there was also someone else getting out of their car with a dog. My dogs were excited (agitated) about being at the park and I was feeling impatient.

I steered clear of the dog leaving the park but the other dog and owner were right behind us to enter. Nyx and Clio did their barking and lunging routine and the person with the other dog said something to me. I couldn’t hear it over the barking. “What?” He had to repeat it three increasingly loud times before I understood: “Are those dogs socialized?”

My hackles went right up. I was already anxious. I was stressed and self-conscious about how Nyx and Clio were behaving. I took this reasonable question as a criticism. I got angry and defensive and lashed out at the guy. We had a minor confrontation, then both went our separate ways into the park.

It took me just a couple minutes to understand what had happened. I felt embarrassed by my behavior, and frustrated about the opportunities I’d missed (I did get the chance to apologize to the guy, thankfully).

One of my central preoccupations is training myself to increase the odds of making choices guided by my vows. In this case, I didn’t notice that I made choices. Consider these two vows I (and pretty much all Buddhists) have taken:

• Embracing beneficial actions

• Not being angry

I struggle with what looks to me like a wide gap between my impression of these on reading them (they’re great, they point in the right direction, they’re pretty clear, etc.) and in action in my life (I don’t understand them, I can’t imagine how to live with them).

The crux is that those precepts are written in a way that is really abstracted from daily life. The words beneficial and angry are conceptual. They’re really big and too far away to work with (at least for me). My interaction with that guy at the dog park was zoomed in. It was super gritty. There were hormones and chemicals pumping, dogs baring their teeth and barking and straining at their leashes. Voices and heart rates were raised. How do I even get near beneficial actions or not being angry in the middle of that?

This is why I’m focusing on things like the collar grab game, and inhibiting habitual behaviors in environments without many stimuli. I want to improve my skills, to train my body and mind to recognize choices I’m making. I’m in training like Rocky running through the streets of Philadelphia and working the speed bag at the gym. Susan Garrett often says that our dogs are doing the best they can, with the education we’ve given them, in the environment we’ve put them in. I did the best I could with my education in that environment. An environment drenched in powerful stimuli like that is more than I can handle reliably, but it’s not hopeless. I’m in training.

In Genjokoan, Dogen Zenji wrote, “To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.”

There are an infinity of approaches to studying the self. I suspect we’re always doing it in whatever way we’re ready for (doing the best we can with our training right where we are). This simple training I’m doing with myself and my dogs is definitely one. So is writing this stuff down to give my observations a temporary shape as I move around in time and space.

First, Knock It Off

A first principle in Alexander Technique is inhibition. When I first started taking AT lessons that word did not feel comfortable to me. It seemed negative, and I associated it with a lack of freedom and self-expression.

Anytime there’s a change to make (and there always is), the first step is inhibition. In the case of a habit like sitting with the pelvis rocked forward (true confession of a slow AT student), my instinct is to figure out how I’d rather my pelvis be and put it there. The philosophical stance underpinning inhibition is that you don’t need to do that. Or actually, you need to not do that. Actively putting my pelvis in a different posture through effort is inevitably going to lead to the same kind of tensions. Instead, inhibit the habit of rocking the pelvis forward. Sit down and choose not to do it. Then naturally the pelvis will be in a neutral position.

Maybe.

In order to really discuss this I guess I need to open another can of Alexander’s worms - habitual behaviors like that feel correct. I never noticed that I rocked my pelvis forward until it was pointed out. That allowed me to develop some awareness around it. At first, my pelvis in a neutral position felt like it was leaning back because of what Alexander called faulty sensory appreciation (I just learned that he also called it Debauched Kinaesthesia, which is a 1st class turn of phrase). Anyway, because of the habit of distorting my body in this way, it began to feel like the correct way to hold myself, and a more natural way of sitting felt distorted. Changing deeply ingrained habit (and karmic) patterns can be a long and challenging process.

I’m writing about inhibition because, contrary to my first instincts, inhibition is the key to freedom. Without inhibiting, we live entirely propelled by our accumulated karma.

Stopping and inhibiting gives us the chance to make different decisions. Being able to make choices is actual freedom.

Inhibition is on super clear display when I’m working with my dogs. A first principle dog game that’s about inhibition (and choices) is ItsYerChoice, from Susan Garrett (of course). This game teaches a dog that by inhibiting and making a conscious choice they can get what they want. A simple version of the game goes like this: I hold some treats in my hand and put my open hand near my dog. If she moves to try to take them I close my hand. If she starts sniffing and licking and nosing at my hand that’s fine. That’s her choice. I leave my hand closed and the treats inaccessible. If she backs up from my hand, I open it again. Now she can decide if she wants to try to take them from me again - if she does, my hand closes and we repeat. If she waits patiently for a moment, I praise her and give her one of the treats. Repeat.

If you want, ponder how inhibiting your habitual reactions and giving yourself even a microsecond to make a choice might change how you do things. If you’re ready to see the matrix, choose to do it a few times today.

Games You Can Win

Being calm is the biggest asset on the road to gaining some awareness of our opportunities to make choices. I like the word agitation for the state of body and mind we usually find ourselves in. It brings to mind the agitator in a washing machine that keeps things tumbling around, in motion, and mixed up. This isn’t a bad bit of imagery for the physical and mental state in which we are often stuck (and emotional. Is emotional separate from those two?). We agitate ourselves by worrying about the future, replaying the past, consuming food or media … it’s a long list. Here’s what I think is our biggest stumbling block though - we avoid being still.

The central practice in the Zen tradition I come from is called zazen. I linked to a short video of my teacher talking about his understanding of it. The quickest summation I can give: sit still and comfortably upright, breathe naturally, allow thoughts to arise and disappear without engaging or holding on to them. There are many facets to this radically simple act, and many ways to understand it. It is an act of allowing yourself to become calm. No matter how agitated your body and mind are when you begin, the act of sitting still and choosing not to identify with your thinking naturally leads to some settling down (Often. Not always. If you don’t have this experience it’s not because you’re doing it wrong or because there is something wrong with you. Trust me, please. I’ll write about this at some length in the future).

The central practice of Alexander Technique doesn’t really have one name that everyone uses. I’m going to call it active rest for now. My simplest description: lie on the floor on your back with your head supported comfortably by a few paperback books, rest your hands on your abdomen and point your knees at the sky with your feet flat on the floor. Breathe naturally. Allow your body to release unnecessary tension. Accept (but don’t try for!)freedom in your neck, length in your spine, width in your back.

In the venn diagram of zazen and active rest there’s a pretty decent area of overlap. For what I’m trying to teach myself, they’re pretty good equivalents of the Collar Grab Game. As long as I do them, I can’t really fail at either one, I get a very nice reward, and they are about as fundamental as activity gets. Crucially, I’m still and distractions are minimized. This offers the opportunity to engage with choices we usually fly right past in our daily lives. For example:

• breathing

• thinking (it feels insane to simplify this to one item on a list but I’m going to for now)

• tension in the neck

• shortening or lengthening of my spine

• squeezing or widening of my back

Take a few minutes and try one or both of these practices. Don’t try to do them well or correctly. See if you can set aside any expectations you have about what they’ll be like. You’re just playing the Collar Grab Game with yourself. Sit or lie down quietly, you get a treat. The end.

Foundations

One of the main things we’re dealing with in Buddhist practice is behavior. One of my teacher‘s favorite formulas goes something like, “Ordinary beings live by their karma, bodhisattvas live by their vows.” This directly addresses the behavior we engage in (Do I do things informed by my karma or my vows?). I almost wrote ’choose to engage in’, but actually the fact that we’re rarely making choices about our activity is the point I want to get at today.

It’s also the point of that aphorism about karma and vows. I’d like to be more like a bodhisattva, so I just need to do things that line up with my vows and not the normal human crap I do. The thing is, for me this is basically impossible without some serious examination of what that means and how to do it! Karma propels us through the world empowered by all the behaviors and choices we’ve rehearsed over and over. We blast right past the points where we could choose something different without even noticing them. How do we begin to notice the inflection points in our lives where we could make a decision based on vow rather than karma?

In addition to Buddhism, I’m going to write a lot about two other topics that I’ve spent time studying and practicing. These are the two most powerful lenses I know of for this examination: Alexander Technique and dog training.

The dog trainer I admire most and have spent the most time learning from is named Susan Garrett. Her training technique is based on a series of games that scaffold from very simple behaviors. The first game is called the Collar Grab Game. In it, you take your dog’s collar then give them a reinforcement (probably a food treat of some kind). The end. This is an incredibly simple game, and it has a lot of really important characteristics. One of them is this: the dog cannot fail at this game. All your dog needs to do to win is to be a dog.

I’m going to end today by posing a question I think about a lot. What is the equivalent of the Collar Grab Game in my life? In other words, what minute change(s) in behavior can I ask from myself that is so easy I absolutely can’t fail? These are the pieces that can form the foundation of a healthy and free life.