The path of Zen practice is sometimes referred to as a long iron road, and I expected him to say something like "You must strengthen your resolve and persevere," or "Develop your self discipline to get past resistance, or get past the part of yourself that is sabotaging your practice." I had heard him say things like this before but instead he said, "There is no part of you that doesn’t want to practice." This response stopped me because it had never occurred to me before that there was no part of me that didn’t want to practice–I thought that, in order to practice, I had to struggle with the weaker parts and the parts that resisted practice and overcome them. When I heard his answer, I felt overjoyed because he was my teacher and I believed him. I didn’t understand it, but I believed that somehow it must be true. After that when I felt like I wanted to sleep in during morning zazen, I reminded myself that, "There is no part of myself that doesn’t want to practice." and it became a kind of koan–a way of examining "What is practice?" If there is no part of myself that doesn’t want to practice, and I’m feeling this way, then what is practice, anyway?

To practice fully, we need to integrate all the parts of ourselves, integrate the driven, achievement-oriented part, the irritable part that gets angry or constantly judges with the part that is more open and accepting. Integration comes about first by becoming conscious of, bringing awareness to, these different aspects of who we are, and getting to know all these parts really well. It may not be easy to get a feeling for how to practice with the angry part or the rebellious part that wants to escape or that’s resisting practice. I’ve noticed that some people who have developed a regular zazen practice seem quite steady and disciplined. But sometimes self discipline can be overdeveloped and it can slip into a way of controlling experience. People like this may feel like they need to step away from practice and do something like drink a beer in order to relax or enjoy themselves. If you find this happening, you might examine, "Can practice be fun?" "How do you bring fun to practice?" or "How do you practice when you are having fun?" Is it possible?

Practice isn’t the same thing as being serious. When I began practicing, the zendo often had a pretty intense feeling. Intensity is important, but I added on to it a kind of rigid, militaristic strictness. Some of us may need to widen or soften our idea of practice. The more we get to know and accept all the different aspects of ourselves, the bully and the part that is bullied, the fun-loving parts, the angry or competitive parts, the threatened and defensive parts, and so on, the more we can practice with whatever we are feeling as just another state of mind. I have found working with self acceptance has been one of the most important aspects in learning to sit still or sit without moving, both physically and emotionally in zazen.

In Buddhist cosmology there are six realms of existence. These realms are taught both as realms beings are born or reborn into as well as states of mind which we enter and leave throughout the day. Beings in hell realms are characterized by pain and anguish; the realm of hungry ghosts is inhabited by those who are dissatisfied, who are never satisfied with what they have, or with who they are; beings in the animal realm are characterized by fear; the jealous gods are fiercely competitive; and the heavenly realm of gods and goddesses is occupied by beings who have everything they want, all the time–all their desires are immediately satisfied. The human realm is placed between the animal realm and the realm of jealous gods or asuras. It is considered quite rare and quite fortunate to be born as a human being because the human realm is considered the realm in which the Dharma can be heard and practiced.

If Buddhist practice is for human beings, if Buddhism is a human endeavor, then we have to be able to practice with all aspects of being human– not just our positive or uplifting qualities. We have to be able to practice with everything that makes up human character and experience. Wherever we are, whatever we are doing–that is what we have to practice with. It doesn’t work to try to purify yourself or perfect yourself, to overcome your anger or desire, or whatever, so that then you will be able to practice. Whatever we feel as a human being is completely acceptable for practice. However, this does not mean that because whatever we feel is acceptable, that it is OK to express our feelings or to act on them. The activity of being aware of our feelings and accepting them is quite different from the activity of acting on our feelings.

The Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Trungpa Rimpoche, taught that the way to work with negative emotions is not to repress them and not to express them. For a long time I wondered what he meant by this. If we do not repress our emotions and if we do not express them, what are we left with; what other choice is there? When we don’t repress or express our emotional states, we have the opportunity to just be present with them, facing them fully and directly. It may sound strange at first, but acting on our emotions is a way of distracting ourselves from experiencing them fully. And if we are not willing to experience them, we will not get to know them for what they really are. Trungpa said, if we follow our emotions and escape them by acting on them, that is not experiencing them properly. He said that the other way we try to escape from our emotions is by repressing them because we cannot bear to be in such a state. Trungpa talked about Milarepa, an important early Tibetan Buddhist teacher and yogi. Milarepa did a lot of solitary meditation in caves, and at one point in his training whenever he tried to meditate, he was confronted by a gang of demons, who interrupted his practice or who he felt interrupted his practice. He tried everything he could think of to get rid of them. He threatened them, he scolded them, he even tried preaching the dharma to them. But they would not leave until he finally stopped regarding them as "bad" and just saw them for what they were, just another thing to practice with.

Once someone who had been sitting zazen for about twenty-five years and who has a strong temper told me that he had never been angry in zazen; while I, on the other hand, have experienced pretty strong states of anger while just sitting, minding my own business. When I have experienced anger in zazen, often I find it sneaks up on me, or comes out of nowhere, without warning so that I am suddenly seized with anger. I think if you sit zazen long enough, sooner or later, you will experience in zazen just about every state of mind you have experienced anywhere else. One of the ways that zazen is misused is to block out feelings and emotions. I think it is easy to confuse letting go of thoughts with freezing or repressing our emotions in zazen. The experience of suddenly being enmeshed in anger comes from ignoring the physical and psychological processes leading up to full-blown anger. Mindfulness is the antidote to being taken by surprise by our emotions.

In the Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle says, "When you deny emotional pain, everything you do or think as well as your relationships becomes contaminated with it." "...don’t turn away from pain. Face it. Feel it–don’t think about it. Give all your attention to the feeling, not the person, event or situation that seems to have caused it....stay present...[using] every cell of your body." He said, "Full attention is full acceptance."

I remember Thich Nhat Hanh once said that anger is a part of ourselves and if we fight our own anger, we are fighting ourselves–going to battle with ourselves. I would encourage you to find whatever way you can to welcome and cultivate the attitude of embracing the parts of yourself that aren’t so uplifting, the parts that you are ashamed of or disgusted with or that may be a kind of taboo. So, for example, when I feel myself becoming jealous or judging, I try to welcome it with the attitude, "Oh, here’s my old friend jealousy or judgment or anger." I try to open myself to that unpleasant, negative state with a friendly attitude. I try to feel what it is, what it feels like throughout my body and mind. To do this, we need to be willing or actually devoted to not moving away from what is difficult. It reminds me of being with my extended family when I was a child and we all got together at Thanksgiving. I really loved being with some of my cousins, but two of the older ones used to bully us and would twist my arm behind my back. I had a wonderful aunt, and there was an uncle who was sort of annoying, but they were all part of the family.

Similarly, all of our mental and emotional states are part of ourselves and are something to practice with. We may not enjoy all states of mind, but, nevertheless, we can practice with them. I have found that when I treat the parts of myself that I don’t like with friendliness and acceptance, they become less painful and much less powerful–they lose their strength to push me around. Having the ability to work with emotional states in zazen makes it easier to work with emotions in daily life. Through awareness and acceptance of whatever states arise, when we no longer try to avoid or ignore what we consider unpleasant, we can practice with all the parts of ourselves. And when all these parts are joining and supporting our practice, it becomes a much fuller practice, allowing us to just sit, without moving, no matter who shows up on our cushion.