Jan Sendzimir JDPSN: Facing the Ghosts that We Create
DHARMA TALK INTRODUCTION PALMA DE MALLORCA, SPAIN
23 NOVEMBER 2023
Facing the Ghosts that We Create
by Jan Sendzimir JDPSN
Many of us feel quite threatened by large events that loom over us. Will AI take away my job? Will the heat or the wildfires of Climate Change chase me underground? Will war spread over the world and chase me from my land? Such threats and all the possible consequences (migration, economy, politics) can keep us running in a stampede.
Our Zen practice is to face this moment, but how can we do so when such threats, and all their potential, pull us out of this moment into the future or drive us into the past, into a swirl of fear and emotions? Sometimes it seems that we are reacting not to this moment but to our reactions. We react in all the ways that we run away from the moment in fear or anger or resentment. It is as if we no longer are in the land of the living but have moved into hell chased by ghosts of the living.
How do ghosts arise? I heard stories of how native peoples, the Apaches of Texas, used to create ghosts to defend themselves. The Apaches were fierce warriors and great horsemen. They could strike so quickly from the hills above that just to see them looking down on you was terrifying. They used this terror to create ghosts to confuse their enemies. They would line up along the top of a hill with their horses and stare silently down, and that was enough that every time one passed that hill one would see them, a line of ghosts staring down at you. Soon one began to see these ghosts on every hill, around every tree. All your energy and good sense was lost in constant dread.
The threats of climate or war are real. The challenge is how to face what is real amid the ghosts that we create. This is especially hard when there are people who make a living out of creating ghosts, swaying us with emotions so that we make even more ghosts that haunt us. How can our practice help us here? Our practice of “Don’t Know” means that time, space, concepts, ideas, ghosts and all our desires about them…. appear exactly as they are: empty, without substance. The key to practice is to hold on without expectation long enough to allow their true nature to express itself. Their “emptiness” becomes clear as they appear, disappear, and reappear. This is what makes sustained, patient practice so important. We must befriend these ghosts in order to set them free.
If there is nothing to achieve, nothing to do, nothing to hold, then how do we “hold this Don’t Know”? With the kindness of a loving grandmother. A dear friend used to assist a Zen Master, an old woman from Europe, as she ran retreats in the USA. He would guide people to the interviews, which were informal, so he often was there. The Zen Master would not say anything, simply looking at each visitor, and soon the visitor might begin to cry, saying later, “I never met anyone before who looked on me with absolutely no judgement.” No words. No magic. No technique. Simply the total, open acceptance without judgement. In that open atmosphere, all ghosts can freely return back where they came, and we can see the real person underneath.
