A Tribute to My Major Spiritual Teachers 

I began spiritual practice in my early thirties. I had just completed a long series of psychotherapeutic sessions to resolve childhood issues. The psychotherapist, thinking I could benefit from spiritual practice, suggested I read Suzuki Roshi’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. I learned how to do zazen from this book.

Suzuki Roshi’s was the first book that gave me invaluable inspiration and guidance as I began spiritual work. I have written an essay on Suzuki Roshi’s book, which is on this website as “A Tribute to Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind", so I will not comment further on Suzuki Roshi in the present essay.

The books of five other teachers were extremely valuable to me in my early years of practice. The teachers are these, in order of their demise:

• Ramana Maharshi, d. 1950 (The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi)
• Nisargadatta, d. 1981 (I Am That)
• Chogyam Trungpa, d. 1987 (Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism)
• Ajahn Chah, d. 1992 (Food for the Heart)
• Kosho Uchiyama, d. 1998 (Opening the Hand of Thought)

The personal notes I drew on for this essay are from the books in parenthesis after the above names. They are all readily available on the market, the first two in later editions than the one I cite in footnotes.  

I conceived this essay out of curiosity about what drew me so strongly in the teaching of these figures.

Ramana Maharshi taught in south India in an ashram that grew up around him at the base of a holy hill called “Arunachala.” As a beginning practitioner, what struck me so powerfully in his teaching was his simple statement, “There is no such thing as the ‘I’”.[1] Our true nature, he says, is the divine Self, which is “that where there is absolutely no ‘I’ thought.”[2] To remove from my consciousness “I,” ego, or the idea of a solid personal self became an early goal of mine. Eventually I saw that the removal of ego was an immensely complicated matter, resisting a direct approach, and that the best route to it, for myself, was the silent practice of zazen. There are discussions of the subject of ego-removal scattered throughout the essays on this website.  

Nisargadatta taught in his modest home in Mumbai, India. He spoke in very practical terms of how to set ego aside: “Whenever a thought or emotion or desire or fear comes to your mind, just turn away from it. I am not talking of suppression. Just refuse attention.” Refusing attention, “you are at once in your natural state.”[3] One’s natural state is as a pure witness. Continued as a practice, this refusal of attention eventually allows a person to see that “you are pure being – awareness – bliss.”[5] Nisargadatta calls witnessing an “immense ocean of pure awareness.”[6] Nisargadatta also stressed that you are not the doer of your life. He says, “Realize that no ideas are your own, they all come to you from outside.”[7] He adds, “All happens by itself”[8] and “In reality things are done to you, not by you.”[9]

I found very valuable Nisargadatta’s advice to refuse attention to meandering thought or feeling. I could refuse my attention in this way and experience great spaciousness and heightened perception, where colors were brighter and vistas full of beautiful detail. In addition, Nisargadatta’s stressing that we are not the doer of our lives, as I saw the truth of this over and over, provided me with objective insight into my behavior. Errors were softened, achievements not naively owned.  

Owing to a devoted editor, Chogyam Trungpa’s talks in both the United States and Europe have been published in very numerous books. The work in the above list is probably the best known.

Trungpa says quite plainly, “It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step outside of the bureaucracy of ego.”[10] He also says that attempting to eliminate ego “is merely another expression of ego.” Eventually “we begin to realize that there is a sane, awake quality within us.”[11] Putting it another way, Trungpa says, “. . .You only arrive at the other shore when you finally realize that there is no other shore.” “. . .We realize that we were there all along.”[12] Trungpa also says that an aspect of ego is “watching itself do everything.”[13] His term for this is “the watcher”[14], an unnecessary function.

As someone in the beginning stages of practice, I felt that I had many spiritual shortcomings. So it was illuminating to me to read Trungpa’s saying that we are all right as we are. We are already at the “other shore.” His mentioning “the watcher” was also very helpful to me. The “watcher” was easy for me to see as I walked within a social gathering or in a grocery store, wondering how I appeared to others; it was easy for me to spot the “watcher” and set it aside.

Of all these teachers, Ajahn Chah spoke most clearly to me about the workings of my own nature. There is an essay about Ajahn Chah already on this website entitled “Living with Original Mind.” Ajahn Chah was Jack Kornfield’s teacher in Thailand and is associated with the “Thai Forest Tradition.”

Ajahn Chah says that we have no control over the thoughts, moods, sense impressions, emotions, and so on that enter our minds. He likens the activity within our minds to someone’s climbing “up the mango tree and . . . shaking the branches to make the mangoes fall down to us.”[15] This erratic activity, he says, cannot constitute who we are. Who are is calmness and peace. He says that to be “serene and peaceful” is “the true epitome of human achievement.”[16]

For Ajahn Chah, a person becomes serene and peaceful by examining his or her mind. Commonly a person identifies with the contents of his mind, thinking “I am angry,” “I am sad,” and so on. This identification is a huge mistake. A person can discover his mistake by watching, either within or outside of meditation, his mental contents as they flash in and out of his mind. It is important for him to observe that he has no control over the thoughts, moods,, desires, likes or dislikes, and so on that enter his mind. Observing such things in his mind, he can ask, “Did I ask for that to be there?” Invariably he must answer, “No.” Observing this often enough, usually over long practice, he sees that there is no “I” in control of himself, and he drops his belief in “I.” At this point he discovers the serene and peaceful life that is his birthright.

The above is not a complete account of what Ajahn Chah says a person should observe about his mind. However, it is enough to allow me to say that the exercise of observing that I have no control over what enters my mind has been of great benefit to me. The ability to see that my mental contents are inconsequential has allowed me to live with a spacious and clear mind much of the time.  

Another insight I acquired from Ajahn Chah is that even though my belief in a controlling “I” may disappear, the ego does not disappear. Nevertheless, knowing that I have no control over egoic responses, I do not have to take them seriously. I can regard them as I would “a child who likes to play and frolic.”[17]

Kosho Uchiyama taught at a small Zen Center near Kyoto, Japan. The center is variously spelled as Antai-ji and Antaiiji. Uchiyama held sesshins there that were especially long and rigorous.

Uchiyama’s core teaching is non-separateness, and on a very large scale. He says, “We live simultaneously as a personal self, an individual taken up with everyday affairs, and as a universal self that is inclusive of the entire universe.”[18] He says that “the reality of life,” which is “fundamentally connected to everything in the universe,” cannot “be grasped or understood through reason or intellect.”[19] We are “living out universal self” as we let go of thinking during zazen.[20] Uchiyama also says that each of us lives in his own world: “I bring my own world into existence, live it out, and take it with me when I die.”[21]

Uchiyama’s idea that each of us lives in his own world allowed me to realize to some degree his vast conception of universal self. I saw that it was true that as I lived my life, I was simply moving around in my own head. For months, now and then, I would go for walks and try to see that everything I perceived was in my own mind. That included trees, pavements, vistas, people. I could come to feel that everything was inside me and that I was not separate from anything I saw or experienced. I also felt sometimes that there was a universal force that operated through me and determined my existence. I believe that I benefitted greatly from this period of time.  

I don’t read books like this now. Doing zazen twice a day seems sufficient for me. I feel that the sense of not being separate from anything does grow in me. To quote Uchiyama again, “May . . . the actualization of our universal self be all our life work.”[22]  

Footnotes

1.The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi, Boston and London, 1958, p. 38.

2. Ibid., p. 8.

3. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, Durham, 1973, p. 349.

4. Ibid, p. 316.  5. Ibid., p. 303.  6. Ibid, p. 205.  7. Ibid., p. 412.  8. Ibid, p. 451.

9.  Ibid., p. 481.

10. Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Boston and London, 2002, 

    p. 15. 

11.  Ibid, p. 153.  12.  Ibid., p. 184.  13.  Ibid., p. 178.  14.  Ibid., p, 73.

15.  Ajahn Chah, Food for the Heart, Boston, 2002, p. 195. 

16.  Ibid., p. 64.  17.  Ibid., p. 157. 

18.  Kosho Uchiyama, Opening the Hand of Thought, Boston, 2004, p. xxxi.

19  Ibid., p. 12.  20. Ibid., p. xxxiii. 21. Ibid., p. 15. 22. Ibid., p. xxxvi.