Step 11: Picking and Choosing

Let's see now ... do I choose a blue M&M or a red one?

We sat with Step 11 and Chao Chou this month.  "The Ultimate Path is without difficulty," he said, "Just avoid picking and choosing."

How can we not pick and choose?  We do this all day long.  We have to pick and choose.  Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day.  There is an apple pie and a pumpkin pie in the refrigerator right now.  What will my choice be?  Will I pick the pumpkin or choose the apple?  Or a smidge of apple and a large piece of pumpkin.  My will demands that I pick and choose daily.

 So I choose to set aside some time during the day for prayer and meditation.  The decision to practice communicating with my Higher Power every day seems like a good choice.  I know when I have  conscious contact, I can feel it in my heart;  but it takes practice to maintain contact.  My mind wanders.  I regain consciousness.  It goes away.  It returns.  I practice.

When I do follow [my perception of] God's will, I realize the choices have already been made for me.  It's not thinking of this choice or that choice, instead it's more about following what has been presented to me without any notion of a choice.  There is nothing to pick.

The Ultimate Path is when I do the next right thing.  The Ultimate Path is when I feel this in my heart.  The only way I can get this feeling, though, is by choosing to consciously practice prayer and meditation.

Bill K.

A Barfing Koan

Rarely does my stomach bother me, so I probably wasn't paying enough attention to the vague unease last Monday.  Just a tinge of upset, then it would pass, only to return an hour or so later.  "It's nothing," I thought.

Fast forward to 11:30 PM. I immediately gave full attention to my stomach this time, the rumbling inside and muscle contractions and quickly dashed to the bathroom.  Knowing full well what was about to come next, embracing the toilet, then BARF!

There was a fleeting memory of past such events of long ago only to FULLY engage in the next contraction.  And what I mean by fully engage is letting go, my body was in full command and knows exactly what to do next.  I simply went along for the bumpy ride.  There aren't other choices really -- I could have begun a woe-is-me dialog but didn't.  Uncomfortableness yes, but there was some sense of ease by not resisting or arguing with the universe about what was happening here.  Instead, I went right into it ...I was the barfing...the entire world was barfing.  My response to this koan was BARF.

This continued all night long at 1 1/2 hour intervals.  I became very good at being the barfing.

Steven Grant was teaching last Monday evening (remember, I was still feeling OK then).  Since I usually arrive early to help with the setup, we talk about stuff.  In part of our conversation he asked, "You know what I tell the person who has never sat with koans?  I say take the koan to your pain."

This is exactly what we do when working the Steps!  We bring the Steps to our pain;  we bring our pain to the Steps.  This is all the more reason I believe that koans help my Step work.

Have a fun Halloween,

Bill

Saint Francis Prayer-Koan

It always amazes me when things all come together.  In this particular case I didn’t realize what these “things” were or what was to come together; but they did so at our Sunday Moment of Silence Meeting where we meditate for a spell then talk about the Eleventh Step.

What stuck with me the most was when Sheila, the speaker, said, “We become the prayer.”

I had been taking two men through the Steps, both on Step 11, just two days prior to this meeting.  We read the St. Francis Prayer on page 99 of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:

Lord, make me a channel of they peace – that where there is hatred, I may bring love – that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness –that where there is discord, I may bring harmony – that where there is error, I may bring truth – that where there is doubt, I may bring faith – that where there is despair, I may bring hope – that where there are shadows, I may bring light – that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.  Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted – to understand, than to be understood – to love, than be loved.  For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.  It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.  It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life. Amen

In my 12 and 12 is a notation, a suggestion, in red pen.  I do not know where or from whom I heard this, but I’m glad I did.  Where it reads “I may bring harmony”, instead of saying “bring”, substitute the word “be”.  May I be harmony.  Instead of “I may bring hope” say “May I be hope”.  Make this change throughout the prayer.

May I be love

May I be the spirit of forgiveness

May I be harmony

May I be truth

May I be faith

May I be hope

May I be light

May I be joy

Remember the koan “Who is hearing?” 

Who is comforting?

Who is understanding?

Who is loving?

This is what Sheila meant when she said, “We become the prayer.”  Which also means, “We become the koan.”  The Saint Francis Prayer is both prayer and koan.

Bill K.

September We Experiment

We didn't meet last Friday evening.  PZi had a three-day event happening.  This gives me the opportunity to experiment.

Instead of first sitting with a Step and then the koan.  Here is a koan, Case 230 from Entangling Vines,  to sit with:

Guishan Lingyou picked up a grain of rice and said, "Millions upon millions of grains of rice issue from this single grain.  Where does this grain issue from?"

I invite you to sit with this koan for the remainder of the month to see what Step(s) come to mind.

Please tell me how this koan worked for you.  What Step(s) came to you?  How did the Step(s) relate to the koan?  Join me in this experiment, I'd like to hear from you.  I sent this same request out to local people who show up for 12 & Zen.

 Next month we will be sitting with Steps 9 and 10 together.

I have another project in the wings -- a 12 & Zen eBook.  By announcing this to you now will give me the inertia to complete the little book in the next few months.  The idea of being able to have 12 & Zen available on a Kindle or other e-Readers seems appealing to me, offering 12 & Zen at your fingertips...whenever you find yourself in need of a Step and koan to ease whatever is happening then.  So stay tuned...

Bill K.

There's no perfect way ...

There's no perfect way to meditate -- there's no wrong way to meditate.

Meditation, whether it's noticing the breath or sitting with a koan, is like shoveling sand.  No matter how hard we try, sand will spill off the shovel.  Maybe only a few grains fall.  Another time it's half the load lost. 

The important point is we keep on shoveling no matter how much sand we spill.  It's only spilled  sand.  And besides, shoveling itself is meditation, koan practice is shoveling sand, simply pay attention...and allow the spilling to begin!

I plan to make an amends to one of the people who attended 12 & Zen last Friday.  We were sitting with a koan and Step Eight.  During the discussion time this one man remarked how the koan brought up experiences around Step Nine.

I probably was a little hasty when I mentioned that "...for tonight's discussion we were placing our focus on Step Eight."

Poor choice on my part.  Unfortunately I didn't think of this at the time.  The evening went well, most everyone joined in and seemed to enjoy the evening.



On the way home I realized that I was trying to control the topic instead of allowing the koan to lead our way.  I wasn't listening to my own words.  Of course this koan applies to Step Nine, and to
everything else in life. 

I was trying not to spill any sand; but I did anyway.  Next month I'll be doing more shoveling.

Bill K.

Ready and willing

Here is a different translation of the Gateless Gate case #10, a Chinese version -- and comments by my friend, D.T..  He has practiced in the koan tradition for a long time.  At a retreat and in conversation with the teacher he relates how Steps 6 and 7 became entangled with this koan.

Qinshui, Solitary and Destitute

A monk said to Qinshui, "I am solitary and destitute. Please give me alms."
Caoshan said, "Venerable Shui!"
Qinshui said, "Yes, sir!"
Caoshan said, "You have already drank three cups of the finest wine in the land, and still you say you have not moistened your lips."



Step # 6:

We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

We cannot give away what is not ours.  The only way to loosen and maybe get rid of our habitual patterns of behaviour is through a recognition of these,  a deep knowing of them that only comes through seeing them over and over again with a certain openness of attention and a realization of having arrived to the bottom of our situation and having no room to run away any more. A surrendering.




Our problem is often that we feel guilty, and shameful and we naturally want to run away from this so we make promises, pray to a Santa Claus god to give us what we want, which I see is the running away, once we sometimes obtain some relief from our shame and guilt we are back again to our deep habitual patterns of behaviour and we start the whole process again. And so on the familiar process continues....

It is unsaid in the koan above of what happened to this monk but it is assumed that he had a certain opening that allowed him to see something very deep and elemental about his living, his life, right there at that moment!  He saw deeply and acknowledge his condition, he owned it. Quinshi's words became the catalyst for this to happen.  We have to own our habitual patterns and see them clearly, free of wishful thinking and just as they are and then maybe we can begin to be free from them.

This monk has arrived at that place that many of us know, the bottom of our conditioning and the suffering it brings, there is no place to go –the Dark Night of the Soul as John of the Cross calls it– but the breaking open in this experience is exactly what the Universe provides when we get there, it is always there, it has always been there.    We find ourselves entirely ready....

Step #7:

Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

So our practice with these steps continues, our practice with this life of ours continues, we attend to it wholeheartedly, mindfully."

D.T.

- - -

After hearing D.T.'s experience with these two Steps AND a koan, it provided a spark, an incentive for me to delve deeper into Step/Koan relationships.  I had a Step/Koan relationship.  Now I was convinced that it can happen to others.

And so, 12 & Zen became a reality;  we began this PZi small groups project.







Bill K.

Steps 6 and 7: The Whole Doughnut Hole

“If I keep on turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me ?  I’ll look like the hole in the doughnut” (P. 36 in the Twelve and Twelve).

I think I understand what the authors were saying here. By pondering this passage over time, a deeper revelation has come to me, giving the hole in the doughnut a more significant role than the original message may have conveyed.

The doughnut and the hole of the doughnut depend upon each other in order to remain complete –for without a hole, by definition, it would no longer be a doughnut. The hole is what makes a doughnut a doughnut!  The hole makes it whole.

We all can relate to the feelings we had when we first came to A.A., with an aching hole inside us that we couldn’t fill.  I know I didn't feel whole.  I tried booze but that didn’t work.


By working the Steps, the aching hole was eventually replaced.  No, I stand corrected… God’s love or one’s True Nature (What do you call it?) has always been there deep inside, but when drinking I was incapable of noticing, since all Icould think about was myself.

Our “doughnut hole” is our spirit.  Our practice is to notice it, bringing it to the forefront of our lives.  It’s that place before any thoughts appear, for that's how we live life to the fullest by embracing every moment.

In Step 6 we prepare ourselves and in Step 7 we humbly  ask God to remove our shortcomings. The act of turning things over and letting things go are pretty much integral to all of the Steps.  In my prior post I highlighted koan as spirit.  In this case it’s called doughnut hole spirit. In letting go we are tapping into our true self – who we really are -- our Universal Spirit.

Bill K.

Bill K