EIGHT STEPS TO FREEDOM FOLLOWING THE BUDDHA EIGHT FOLD PATH IN MODERN LIFE
By Stephen Echard-Musgrave Roshi
It is not possible to write anything concerning spiritual practice that is meaningful unless that which is written comes from one's own experience. Over the last twenty years I have been involved in trying to find a Buddhist practice that adequately relates to living in modern society. A practice which would be in Dogen Zenji's words, an "authentic" practice. There is a temptation to either modernize Buddhist practice to the point it no longer contains adequate discipline, or else accept it, "swallowed whole", complete with all the cultural forms from the past.
In this instant society where we are constantly looking for the latest invention to make life easier, traditional spiritual practice with its rigorous demands seems too old fashioned to be viable. In the new age journals there are ads for "brain wave enhancers that will do for you in twenty minutes what it takes a Zen monk twenty years to attain." I suppose what is attained is the jaded attitude toward spiritual practice which often appears in some Zen monks after twenty years of sectarian rigidity.
Obviously there are many people who believe enlightenment is biomechanical and therefore open to a mechanistic approach. Zen or other Buddhist traditions are just another entree on the buffet table to be sampled. Every person who has ever read a book by Alan Watts is ready to write their own on the Zen of Water Polo, Basket Weaving, or whatever. After all isn't Zen just doing meditation and being one in the moment?
It would be wonderful to say that all western practitioners of Zen and other Buddhist traditions did not share this simple world view, but unfortunately it can be found to one extent or another in many western Buddhists. These are people who are sincere for the most part, but do not have a strong background in Buddhist philosophy, and are more often attracted to the tradition because of an emotional feeling they have for it. Some of these people will be fortunate enough to connect with a strong teacher and sangha that will lead them out of this primitive stage into serious respect and understanding for practice. Other students will give up on Buddhism and return to their western religious roots, convinced that Buddhism failed them. Still, a small number of others will end up in mental hospitals because they lacked the necessary emotional maturity or intellectual understanding to sustain psychic stability through the rigors of meditation.
It is a reality of life that serious spiritual practice has serious ramifications on the psyche of those undergoing it. If this were not the case then there would be no point in doing it. Those of us whose spiritual vocation is involved with the training of others in these practices have to be aware of the reality behind our students enthusiasm. If that enthusiasm is based upon anything other than a realistic understanding of the nature of our discipline then our student is heading for trouble. There is no way for us to lead them out of this trouble unless we have a total commitment to Buddhist life, in the form of our journey on the EIGHT FOLD path. This book, then, is not only a guide to spiritual practice based on Buddhist philosophy, but in a sense a personal memoir of my own spiritual journey.
I had been practicing Zen for about ten years when I decided to help form a Zen Center under the direction of the famous Korean Zen Master, Seung Sahn Sa Nim. At this time in my life I would spend a great deal of time in zazen while I was living by myself. Living with other people wt this center became extremely difficult for me. I found my practice disintegrating and my actions inappropriate to right action and compulsive. I seemed to judge everything, hating Korean style and idealizing Japanese tradition. I could not get into Koan practice, at all, as it seemed utterly vapid; a mere game. Never the less, I stayed in the Center until my actions became so poor that Seung Sahn Sa Nim had to eject me from the Temple.
The entire episode was out of character for myself and for others who knew me as a good obedient Zen student. I knew this series of events and my mental state were both an indication of a breakdown in my practice and an opportunity for self examination. I was determined to understand and rectify the problem. From my training in philosophy, I had learned that one should always examine the beginnings of an activity; return to fundamentals and start from there.
At first fundamentals seemed to me to entail doing more zazen since that is the heart and soul of Zen practice. It was not long before it became clear to me that this approach was not working, since I had been sitting for long stretches just prior to going through the crisis at Tahl Mah Sah Zen Center. Also, at that time I had a close personal friendship with a person who was also Buddhist and practiced vigorously but, never the less, was in a perpetual state of self inflicted misery. Since it is always easier to recognize shortcomings in another person, I began to ponder the effectiveness of vigorous meditation in Buddhism as a means of self transformation, particularly as opposed to the path's of Faith, Tantra, and scholarship practiced by other Buddhist traditions.
One day, while looking through my bookshelf, I happened to chance upon an old copy of the Buddhist Bible, a collection of Buddhist texts compiled in the 1930's. It opened with a description of the Noble Four Fold Truths and the EIGHT FOLD Path, the fundamentals of Buddhism. Immediately I was struck by the significance of what was right in front of me: the basic fundamentals of Buddhism, as handed down from its founder, and more personally the answer to the missing parts of my practice, the reason for my inability to integrate meditation with my life.
I began to analyze why it was that I operated with two apparently contradictory world views. It became apparent that while I accepted consciously the doctrine of karma and the interrelationship of karma to spiritual growth, I never the less was still operating in daily life with an unconscious mechanistic view of the universe; a view that saw meditation as a tool to be used to get enlightenment. It was about this time that I was also involved in studying the Avatamsaka Sutra which is the philosophical foundation of Zen and teaches that all things in the universe share an essential unity of being as process and in effect actually interpenetrate each others existence.
Even as slow as I am in grasping spiritual truth, it became apparent to me that here was the solution to my dilemma. My practice failed because it was not authentic. It was not authentic because it was not a whole practice, which must have a totality of effort and view that is consistent with itself. All the parts of practice which make up the whole were laid out before me in the EIGHT FOLD path. Before my crisis, my western trained mind-set believed that the eight paths were causally related, and since I could not readily discern the connection between them, I assumed that they had a hierarchical relationship, with meditation at the apex capable of correcting any shortcoming in one of the other paths.
I could not see the fundamental interdependence which makes up the unity of practice. From my studies of the Avatamsaka Sutra, I began to connect the underlying wholeness of the path and began to see how each path contained the seeds of all the other paths; each growing together to create a perfect unity. The EIGHT FOLD path becoming a kind of spiritual organism. My commitment to the discipline of this interconnecting spiritual path followed as a natural consequence of my understanding. Faith in this incomparable gift from the Buddha follows naturally the understanding of its perfect unity and drives our practice. It is the unique quality of Buddhist faith that it flows from logic and understanding as the grounds for practice, rather than the opposite which is the case in monotheistic traditions.
Years passed and I practiced sitting with various masters keeping my own Soto style while learning from Rinzai, Tibetan and Chinese teachers. I forgot about attaining enlightenment and was caught up in the practice of the EIGHT FOLD path. Enlightenment came without me looking for it. I began to understand my karma and gave up ten years of celibacy. Almost as soon as I understood my nature, I met my wonderful wife, Rhonda, and we were married. Even though I was a bachelor for over forty years, this transformation was natural. Now we have a beautiful son, Shea, born 8, 8, 1988 at 8:08 am, who is a true being of light. Being a father is natural, too. The beauty of the practice of the eight fold path is that it presents a view and way of being in the world that is dynamic and frees us from fossilization of the ego. Even life long habits and mind-sets dissolve into a new openness and freedom of expression.
Also during this time, my long time friend and teacher Soyu Matsuoka Roshi bestowed upon me the title Roshi or Zen Master. All these things come as they do without special effort. The eight fold path leads us directly to that which is our own karma, waiting to be ripened in the sun of our practice. I am convinced that if any serious student of Buddhism consciously applies themselves to the following of this path, adhering to the meditation and practice of their chosen tradition, they will attain a life and practice which is authentic. This authenticity is nothing less than the life and way of the Buddhas and Patriarchs manifested in the present. There is nothing more that I can wish for anyone than that they experience this authentic way of life for themselves.
