You Can Get It if You Really Want
Last night there was a hullabaloo coming from somewhere near my house. When I stepped outside to try to tell where it was coming from, Jimmy Cliff’s “You Can Get It if You Really Want” was blaring away.
That made some thoughts about zazen come to mind. The aim of zazen is easy to describe. It is to drop the idea of yourself from your mind, not only during zazen, but more or less all the time.
How do you do that? Nisargadatta, the great spiritual teacher from the Hindu tradition, was asked during one of his talks, “How is the person removed?” He responded, “By determination. Understand that it must go and wish it to go – it shall go if you are earnest about it.”[1]
Nisargadatta’s response may be a real eye-opener for many. Far from being a rare mystical experience, dropping the self can be worked at in a quite practical way. Just as during zazen, a practitioner puts aside thinking to return to breathing, so can the same be done in daily life when one notices an awareness of himself in his mind. Just put it aside, do whatever you are doing without it being in the road, and there you are. Just as Nisargadatta and Jimmy Cliff say, “You can do it if you really want.”
Footnotes
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, The Acorn Press, Durham, 1973, p. 441.