When I am worried by Zochi

I have a tendency to worry about things – sometimes trivial and sometimes important (or at least I like to believe they’re important).  I think I’m working on it but my wife might tell me otherwise.  How about you and worry?

In his book, The Dragon Never Sleeps, Roshi Robert Aitkin  offers us some ways to face the challenge of being worried. And I might point out that he also faced worries – or why would he write “When I’m Worried”?  I guess none of us are immune to worry.

Here is the first gatha - "When I'm worried about my attachments I vow with all beings to remember interdependence: if I weren't attached, I'd be dead."

This concept of interdependence is of course a fundamental principle of our practice.  And Roshi is right – even as I might think of myself as an independent individual, I am totally dependent on everything just to be alive.  This interdependence is a natural part of life.  Literally our connections to others and the world around us are essential to our survival.  I think that rather than viewing attachments as purely negative, we should embrace them with gratitude as part of our human experience.

The second gatha - "When I'm worried about my condition, I vow with all beings to rest in my human condition: breathing in, breathing out, heartbeat."

Here Roshi comments on facing this human experience (the positive, the negative, and the neither) and offers a simple methodology for acceptance and grounding ourselves in the present moment – a methodology which we frequently comment on as basic to our own meditation practice – breathing in, breathing out, heartbeat.  This simple focus can help give us some sense of peace and stability amid our worries and anxieties.  This simple practice in a way can help to guide us on the path of mindfulness.

Finally, the third gatha - "When I'm worried about my condition, I vow with all beings to recall good and bad are conditions that pollute our pure mountain stream.”

For me dualistic thinking, categorizing my experiences as good or bad, has always been a personal challenge.  It probably is for everyone in the world.  The funny thing is (and extremely difficult to discern) how this dualistic thinking can cloud my perception of reality.  But breathing in and breathing out, we begin to recognize that positive and negative conditions are temporary and can inhibit our own inner peace.  Breathing in and breathing out, we can begin to learn the letting go of those attachments, to developing a clear and balanced mind, like that pure mountain stream.

So, these verses collectively encourage mindfulness, acceptance, and a deeper understanding of our interconnectedness with all of creation. They offer a path to inner peace, embracing the present moment, and letting go of rigid judgments.  Seems like a tall order – but as Winston Churchill said under different circumstances, “Never give up, never, never, never give up.”

I want to digress a little bit since the last couple of weeks have been cataract surgery weeks for a couple of us.  These three gathas to me are also about the magic Zen word awakening – and I kind of got a little hint of what that could be from my experience of cataract surgery.  My procedure was 15 minutes and improvement was almost immediate.  But what struck me the most was that everything was much clearer and colors were bright and different – my perception had changed.  Yet, the reality was that everything was the same, nothing had changed except for my perception.  There were two thoughts that came to me – first, awakening is simply a shift in one’s perception of reality and secondly, it might be almost instantaneous or it might be a longer, slower process.  Yet, it all starts with breath in, breath out, heartbeat.