Dear Friends ~ Lots of spiritual terminology can be defined in a different way to how it is normally used. Sharing with you part of the chapter ~ TURNING POINT ~ taken from my book called Everyday Zen.
Let's consider the idea of 'renunciation.'
We often feel that for our life to have a new start, the old one must be renounced. What might we consider renouncing? We might renounce the material world, as we conceive it; or we might renounce our mental and emotional world. Many traditions do encourage giving up all material possessions. Monks traditionally have kept just a small box containing a few necessities. Is that renunciation? I'd say no; though, it's useful practice. It is as if we have felt that our evening meal was not complete without dessert; so we go without dessert for a time as a means of learning about ourselves; and that is good practice.
Then we may feel that whatever is going on in our thoughts and emotions is not OK: 'I should be able to renounce all that; I should be able to get rid of it. I'm bad for thinking or feeling this. ' But that's not renunciation either; it's playing with notions of good or bad.
Some of us make one final effort. Because we are confused and discouraged about our daily lives, we finally decide, 'I have to go for Realization - I must live a completely spiritual life and renounce everything else.' And that's great if we understand what it means. But of all the misinterpretations of renunciation, the most insidious come in this realm of so-called spiritual practice in which we have notions such as 'I should be pure, holy, different from others...... perhaps live in a remote, quiet environment.' And that has nothing to do with renunciation, either.
So what is renunciation? Is there such a thing? Perhaps we can best clarify it by considering another word
'nonattachment.' We often think that if we fiddle with the surface events of our lives, trying to alter them, worrying about them or ourselves, we are dealing with the matter of 'renunciation' - whereas in fact we do not need to 'renounce' anything, we need only to realize that true renunciation is equivalent to nonattachment.
The process of practice is to see through, not to eliminate, anything to which we are attached. We could have great financial wealth and be unattached to it, or we might have nothing and be very attached to having nothing. Usually, if we have seen through the nature of attachment, we will tend to have fewer possessions, but not necessarily. Most practice gets caught in this area of fiddling with our environment or our minds. 'My mind should be quiet.'
Our mind doesn't matter; what matters is non-attachment to the activities of the mind. And our emotions are harmless unless they dominate us (that is, if we are attached to them) - then they create disharmony for everyone. The first problem in practice is to see that we are attached. As we do consistent, patient zazen we begin to know that we are nothing but attachments: they rule our lives.
But we never lose an attachment by saying it has to go. Only as we gain awareness of its true nature does it quietly and imperceptibly wither away; like a sandcastle with waves rolling over, it just smoothes out and finally - where is it? What was it?
The question is not how to get rid of our attachments or to renounce them; it's the intelligence of seeing their
true nature, impermanent and passing, empty. We don't have to get rid of anything. The most difficult, the most insidious, are the attachments to what we think are 'spiritual' truths. Attachment to what we call 'spiritual' is the very activity that hampers a spiritual life. If we are attached to anything we cannot be free or truly loving.
So long as we have any picture of how we're supposed to be or how other people are supposed to be, we are attached; and a truly spiritual life is simply the absence of that. 'To study the self is to forget the self.' in the words of Dogen Zenji.
As we continue our zazen today let us be aware of the central issue: the practice of nonattachemnt. Let us
diligently continue, knowing it can be difficult and knowing that difficulty is not the point. Each of us has a choice. What will it be? A life of freedom and compassion - or what......?
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Everyday Zen is written by Charlotte Joko Beck who is a Zen teacher at the Zen Center of San Diego.
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