From Drama to No Drama

August 9, 2022

In Zen practice we move from a life of drama - a kind of soap opera - to a life of no drama. Despite what we may say, we all like our personal dramas very much. The reason? No matter what our particular drama is, we are always at the center of it - which is where we want to be. And through practice, we gradually shift away from that self-preoccupation. Thus, to move from a life of drama to a life of no drama, though it sounds extremely dull, is what Zen practice is about.

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When we begin sitting, it's good to be begin with several big breaths, filling up the abdominal area, the middle chest, and the upper chest until we're full of air, and then just letting it out and holding the exhalation for a moment. Do this three or four times. In a sense, it's artificial, but it helps to create a certain balance and forms a good basis for sitting. Once we've done this, the next step is to forget it: forget controlling our breath. We won't entirely forget, of course, but it's useless to control the breath. Instead, just experience it, which is very different.

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As long as we have hope, our mind is trying to figure out how to fulfill those wonderful things that we want to happen to us, or trying to protect ourselves from all the terrible things that shouldn't happen. And so the mind is anything but quiet. Now instead of forcing the mind to become quiet, what can we do? We can be conscious of what it's doing. That's what labeling our thoughts is about.

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It's useful to go about this process with an attitude of an investigation. Instead of viewing our sitting as good or bad, something that should steadily improve, we should simply investigate, watch what we're really doing. There is no good or bad sitting; there is only awareness or unawareness of what is going on in our life. And when we maintain more awareness, the questions we have about life are seen in a new light. We're left not with another viewpoint, but with a different way of seeing things. As this process develops over time, very slowly the mind quiets - not completely, and what quiets is not the thoughts. What quiets is our attachment to our thoughts. We see them more and more as just a show, like watching children at play. It's our attachment to the thoughts that blocks samadhi. We can have lots of thoughts, yet to be in deep samadhi, so long as we're not attaching to them and are just experiencing.

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As we said, from time to time we gain different insights about our lives. Insights themselves are neither good nor bad, and from the point of Zen practice, they're not even particularly important. Though they may have some usefulness, zazen is not about gaining insights.

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When this quality of watching, observing, and experience our lives get stronger, reality (which is just awareness) and counters unreality, our little drama of thoughts. And when we see more clearly what is real and what is unreal, a s light illumines the darkness. But when we bring more reality (awareness) into our lives, what had been dark and troublesome seems to change. When we bring more awareness into our lives, we begin to eliminate our personal dramas. And we don't really want to do this. We like our personal dramas, and we like to maintain them.

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At some point, we begin to see that what happens in our life is not the issue; there will always be something happening. What happens will always be a mix of what we like and what we don't like. There's no time when that ceases. As we become more of a scientist, however, we are less caught up in what's happening and more able to simply observe what's happening. The ability and willingness to do this kind of observing increases over years of practice. At first it may be minimal. Our job is to increase this willingness and ability.

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Turning our lives of drama to lives of no drama means turning a life where we're constantly seeking, analyzing, hoping, and dreaming into one of just experiencing life as it appears, right now. The key factor is awareness, just experiencing the pain as it is. Paradoxically, this is joy. There is no other joy on this earth except this. 

This kind of practice has a deadly effect: it will take away our drama It doesn't take away our personality. We're all different, and we will remain different. But the drama is not real. It is the blockage to a functioning, caring life.

From Drama to No Drama page 249 - 254 Nothing Special by Charlotte Joko Beck

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A form of Christian spiritual discipline is the practice of the presence of God. As Christians, we are looking for that radiance in all things that mystics call the face of God. That radiance is not hidden in some far-off place, but is here and now, right under our noses. Likewise, Dorothy realized that what she had been seeking all her life was simply her life itself: the people, the house, the rooms. All were the face of God. 

But we don't see that. If we really sought, we wouldn't torture ourselves in each other as we do. We're unkind; we're manipulative; we're dishonest. If we saw that this very life we lead is the face of God itself, we would not be able to behave in such ways - not because of any commandment or prohibition, but just because we see what life is.

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It's of no use to look back and say, "I should have been different." At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we're able to see. For that reason, guilt is always inappropriate.

From Dorothy and the Locked Door page 262-3 Nothing Special by Charlotte Joko Beck