Maslow seems to bring another perspective on the link into bringing our zazen practice to life 24/7. We have been discussing “effortlessness” on the Soto Zen Buddhism website.
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Would also like to add the question of Maslow’s concept of “plateau experience”, as it is talking about the ongoing experience as opposed to something that is “attained” as a “peak experience”…… like kensho??
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Ongoing peeling process…..
Effortlessness seems to be a great reminder word…… and been playing with “weightlessness”…. but perhaps that carries it a bit too far?
So, in working/not working with effortlessness, this persons “to date” experiencing is that there can be no carrying of attitudes or issues while in effortless mode. It is just a “squeaky clean mode”….. In other words, in the “dropping” which happens in staying with “zero mode” in “Here’ing” and “Now’ing” (in effortless maintaining) , this dropping off is a dropping of all attitudes and issues. (Jundo Cohen once said “we should be “resetting to the human factory default settings” constantly. ….my paraphrase 🙂 ) and to me it seems to mean, moving with no resistance or inertia…..
So, when an attitude becomes apparent, it shows up as something which is “not willing to be dropped” (like a hard lump in the porridge 🙂 ) …… and if i am being attentive (which seems to be the natural outcome of this effortless maintaining) it will be like a wrench being thrown into the works… (- side note – a knot or kink appears in my body somewhere which seems to be associated with the issue)….. in a sense, the appearing of this attitude/issue is a show stopper….. the sense of effortlessness is interrupted, or comes to a halt…..
what this does though, is to give me a perfect opportunity to “inquire” into what the nature of that “wrench” is. (If one does not clear it up, it seems more attitudes will follow, which can then gang up and completely block the sense of effortlessness….)
BTW It DOES seem to be possible to “stand back and inquire” after an issue, while maintaining effortlessness, as it is not dealt with as a “struggle”…. it seems that any form of struggling with anything is anti-effortlessness.
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While walking the road….. a “road map” seems essential to me…. can we see “The Heart Sutra” and “Affirming Faith in Mind” and “The Oxherding Pictures” and the like, as being like road maps? The game of “pin the tail on the donkey” comes to mind….. when the blindfolded person is hunting for the donkey to pin the tail on, the bystanders say “getting warmer” “getting cooler”….. so….. with effortlessness as the GPS….. homing in…… ??
Reality is Dharma 