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. The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many and the one; thus there are birthand death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas.We have an open invitation to embrace it all, to swim in this world in all its particularvarieties and all its vast, embracing infinity.Each of our clients is unique and universal; everysession of sitting zazen is the same complete surprise; our lover s embrace is each time completelydifferent, and intimately familiar.Psychotherapeutic and Zen practice are about not getting caught in separateness or merging,about cooking our whole life when we chop this particular carrot.Psychotherapy and Zen help usfind the wisdom in what we thought was our foolishness and the foolishness in what we thoughtwas our wisdom.Psychotherapy and Zen are about letting ourselves die so that we can emergefrom our cocoons to live in some new, unanticipated but not wholly unfamiliar form.Practice is dancing, tracing out the steps that bridge delusion and realization, no delusion andno realization.Practice is the interplay of treating our client for a problem and appreciating ourclient for what she is.In the dance of practice we find our balance between seeing ourselves asseparate from our clients and seeing that we and our clients are one: we discover our individualselves through our common roots.Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.Sometimes when we are dancing we say to ourselves: This is great! I wish it could go onforever! Fearing the music will stop, we clutch at our partner and they tighten up; the movementof the flowing dance becomes a desperate attempt to force time to stand still.Instead of losingourselves in the rhythm, we lose the rhythm.Sometimes when we are dancing we decide we don t like our partner, or we don t likeourselves; we judge the music to be too slow or too fast, too sharp or too flat.Then the dancebecomes an ordeal, something we must either bear with, escape from, or destroy.As soon as we try to hold on tight and attach to ourselves the objects of our love or desire,they slip away from us; as soon as we try to avoid what we most fear, we shackle ourselves withthe ball and chain of aversion.Phobic clients are prisoners not to their fears, but to the avoidanceof their fears; depressed clients mourning a disappointment are prisoners not to their dashedhopes, but to their attachment to their forlorn yearning.As insomniacs we suffer not from sleepdeprivation but from our hope Morpheus will render us unconscious and help us avoid the terrorof being wakeful in the deep darkness of our night.I write this in the early hours of the morning, having woken up with areaction to some medication I took. I wanted to reject my agitation and go back to bed; I didn t want to havetachycardia and racing thoughts.I wanted to run after sleep and grasp thepeacefulness of slumber.Of course, the more I chased sleep and ran frominsomnia, the more I became tied up in knots.Finally I got up, sat down, and did zazen for an hour.The misery of agitationand the sad yearning for peace came together: sitting settled down in the midst ofboth.As a space cleared, agitation became energy; wakefulness becameopportunity; yearning for peace became calm acceptance of things being the wayIt is.Aitken Roshi expresses it: 126When wakeful at two in the morningI vow with all beingsto light incense and sit on my cushion --it s time that I really wake up.2To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion.That myriad thingscome forth and experience themselves is awakening.We want to wake up, but we re all full of ourselves.Psychotherapy runs the danger of havingus focus overmuch on carrying ourselves forward.When we re preoccupied with how I feel, withwhat I want, with what I hope for and fear, we restrict our field of vision.We do this notnecessarily in grand acts of selfishness, but by thoughtlessly sleepwalking through the details ofour lives
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