If you are by nature reflective, you may have asked yourself from time to time, “What have I accomplished?” Your notions of accomplishment might include professional, reputational, or financial attainments, or such personal accomplishments as weight loss or the completion of a home-improvement project. But from the vantage point of Zen teachings, there is another, equally important question to consider, periodically if not on a daily basis: “What have I relinquished?”
The word relinquish has fallen out of fashion. However sonorous, this Latinate verb is seldom seen in print or heard in informal conversation. Its more popular, Anglo-Saxon synonyms—leave, quit, give up, let go of—retain its core meaning but lack its weight and connotative resonance. To relinquish something, such as smoking, alcohol, or an inappropriate relationship, almost always requires a conscious decision and an act of will. And to carry out that decision requires uncompromising discipline. More often than not, the contexts in which the issue of relinquishment arises are moral, psychological, or spiritual, and in some instances they are matters of life and death. Paradoxically, the end result of relinquishment is usually some benefit to ourselves and those around us. By giving something up, we gain something of equal or greater value.
Monastic Zen exacts multiple relinquishments from its ordained disciples. Among the most prominent are the forgoing of unlimited private time, the setting aside of individual preferences in favor of communal ritual, and strict abstention from meat, intoxicants, and idle talk. Less severely but in the same spirit, contemporary Western Zen enjoins its lay-ordained practitioners to abjure the rampant materialism, the hyper-accelerated pace, and the egocentric outlook of contemporary consumer culture. Beyond these specific renunciations, the Zen tradition also encourages three general forms of relinquishment, which are to be practiced moment by moment and day by day.
First among them is the relinquishment of attachment to the past. “Do not pursue the past,” the Bhaddekaratta Sutra advises. This directive does not preclude reflection on personal experience, nor does it devalue the work of historians, archivists, and documentarians. Rather, it calls upon us to relinquish our habitual and sometimes unhealthy attachments to the past, whether the object of memory be a hurtful personal remark, the “good old days,” or an early-childhood trauma. Rather than dwell on painful incidents that no longer exist, Zen teachings invite us to look deeply into the present moment, which contains the past, and to transform remembered pain, anger, and fear with the energy of contemplative awareness.
The second relinquishment, also derived from the Bhaddekaratta Sutra, is equally challenging: “Do not lose yourself in the future.” This exhortation, however sweeping, is not meant to discourage intelligent foresight, careful planning, or visionary thinking. Rather, it encourages us to remain fully aware of where we are and what we’re doing as we imagine the future, lest we lose ourselves in daydreams and fruitless speculation. By returning, time and again, to awareness of our posture, breathing, and states of mind, we curtail the habit of living in some imagined future, where the grass is greener, and our present tribulations have disappeared. At the same time, we constrain the habit of imagining dire scenarios. “I think the sun spot on my arm,” writes the poet Linda Pastan in “The Cossacks,” “is melanoma.” Maintaining full awareness of the present moment can obviate such fears, even as it prompts us to appreciate our present lives.
Third and perhaps the most demanding, Zen practice calls upon us to relinquish “views.” Grounded in the teachings of the third-century philosopher Nargajuna, this practice trains us to release our attachments to our dualistic, rigidly held opinions, while also cultivating a capacity for clear seeing. Relinquishing attachment to views does not mean that we must never read another op-ed column or express a strong opinion. Rather, the practice counters the all-too-common tendency to cherish our opinions as though our identity and indeed our very existence depended upon our continuing to embrace them.
To expect the holders of strong opinions, ourselves included, to freely release them may be rather like ordering an untrained terrier to drop his favorite ball. He will only grip it more tightly. But to form an opinion is one thing, and to know that we are doing so is quite another. In the latter case, we remain cognizant that what we’re grasping with such tenacity is only an opinion, a thing of air and sound that we are at liberty to release, like a helium balloon, should conditions change. Like the relinquishment of fixations on the past or reflexive speculations about the future, the relinquishment of views returns us to the immediacy of the present moment, whose texture and character may be utterly at odds with our fixed ideas. Integrated with other forms of meditative practice, this enabling discipline offers a welcome release from the confines of calcified opinion. Over time, it can also open a path toward spiritual liberation.
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