Nothing is Special

My Test

A few years ago, when I formally made a commitment to keeping the Buddhist precepts, the Master at my local Zen temple bestowed on me a "Buddhist dharma name". Everyone taking precepts that year got a dharma name that started with the letter K. Mine was Kuwon Shil Seng, which you can see written in Sino-Korean here (my wife got me a carved "chop" seal as a souvenir on her recent trip through China):

The Master told me it means "complete attainment since long ago" (which I am told is a pretty okay translation), and then he asked me: "What do you think of that?" Well, I've read enough Zen books to recognize an obvious trap when I see one. But I could only muster the weak response of "there is nothing to be attained".

For a while I wondered why I got such a name. A name like that is quite a burden of expectations -  so you'll think you're hot stuff or something. Very seductive to the ego of someone walking the path and trying to "get somewhere" with it. But I could sense that it would be a big mistake to think that way - that this was some kind of approval or certification. At the end of the day, I don't really give a shit what anyone else thinks of my practice. I only want to know the truth, first-hand and directly experienced. If that does or does not align with someone else's view doesn't really matter.

So I think that kind Master was only giving me a burden that he thought I could handle - to not make it into something Special. And I'm very grateful for the trust behind that challenge.

That lesson has generalized across lots of aspects of life. Have you noticed that any time we make something Special it always seems to create problems later? It doesn't matter if the something is an achievement or recognition, or a conceptualization or perception of the world, a self-image or story we tell ourselves (whether good or bad). Making into something Special, in the face of the inescapable reality of impermanence, will lead to suffering in some form or other. And by "making Special" I mean: putting it up on a pedestal to be admired, making into a myth to be retold to oneself frequently, telling the story to other people, creating a self-image as someone who always/never does X, or has Y happen to them, etc.

Your Test?

So that's the lesson for all of us - to be careful to not attach to the things that happen, to not make them into Special, to not shine and polish them and then put them on a nice display:

• Great Thing I Once Did
• Time I Fucked Up Majorly
• Great Injustice That Was Done to Me
• My Lousy Zazen Posture and Inability to Sit for Long Periods
• A Rare Quality that Makes Me Different From Other People
• Special Knowledge or Belief That I Have
• The Correct Political Opinion That I Should Share with Others
• Extra Special Buddha Statue I Have on My Altar
• Nice Possessions I Can Flash Around Town
• Time When I Was "Cool" and Admired

But how to not make Special? After all, these things do happen in most lives. And at the time they are pretty nice/crappy. Sit more zazen! In meditation we learn to see how this polishing up of Special creates suffering (sometime blatant, sometime subtle). We also learn to see the subtle mechanisms by which we inadvertently slip into Special-making (it's a slippery slope of very small individual steps). We also learn to see the tiny gaps in the chain of Special-making, to discover how to not take the next step down the slope. And we therefore learn to be prudent about the first steps, knowing how they can lead to Special and to suffering. Hey, ask me sometime about Great Awakening Experience that I once had on a 10-day silent retreat, when a single raindrop fell from the window sill. I'll be very reluctant to talk about it, because I can see the trap of creating a self-image of "that guy". Wow, so Special. An experience worth reliving over and over. And telling everyone about so they'll think I'm great. And getting frustrated over when I cannot replicate it on-demand when sitting zazen at home. And being disappointed over when it doesn't happen on my next meditation retreat.

What a complete waste of time and effort!

Future Topic?

The title of this post is very suggestive or provocative to me. Maybe one future post will take a different slant on the topic. After all, there is a huge difference between realizing that "nothing is Special" and that "Nothing is special". And I love that both are true at the same time