Leaving the Zoo

Searching for "it"

For normal social media-raised humans Zen is quite a boring hobby. You sit, you stare and you shut up! Zen also doesn’t have fancy temples like other religious communities, they are mostly simple and tasteless like dry bread.

This boring tasteless practice is also quite exhausting. In retreats, you sit and stare at a wall for many hours. Then you eat healthy stuff, not much sugar, not much alcohol, and definitely not binge-watching Netflix. And if you ask a teacher what is the goal of the practice he or she will answer with things like:

“No matter how many years you sit doing zazen, you will never become anything special.“ - Kodo Sawaki

or

“Zen is the Biggest Lie of All Times!“ - Kodo Sawaki

Naturally, many people started it, hoping it would be wellness or nice relaxing or even transforming or enlightening, and gave it up upon realizing that their ego didn’t get any fancier.

My Zen teacher commented that those people who stay in the conceptual controlled ego frame will stop practicing after 5 years. Because they try to gain within their ego. They try to become better in their old ego games. Staying in their old roles, staying in their old filters and reaction patterns. They definitely don’t want to leave their subconscious security nets.

People that stop practicing Zen, want controlled improvements within their old games. They fear anarchy, they fear radical surprises, and they fear ecstasy. They fear the exit of their comfort zone.

Zen is beyond scripture, Zen is beyond recipes. Yet people practice it again with thoughts and recipes. They ask “How do I sit right?“ or “What should I do with my mind during Zen meditation?“ Like a good student asking the teacher what homework to do next. Not being able to play in the dirt with the rowdies in the schoolyard. Not being able to let yourself “fall in love with life”. Because falling is not on their horizon because falling means letting go of grasping on your conceptual cliff.

You can only fall in love with life if you let go of your conceptual cliff!

The same pattern I realized in improv. Improv!! The one discipline that has improvisation in its name! People come to classes and ask “What should I say?“ or “Is it ok if I stay silent?“. Those people are good students. They learn the “Yes, and“ they learn the “Show, don’t tell“. They learn “Listening“ and all other “rules for improvisation”. They are well-behaved and they stay so.

These people make some progress first. They even learn to improvise ok stories. They even learn to be reliably sweet in their scenes. They find their recipes to structure their story. They learn new patterns and add them to their behavioral library.

….aaaand after 5 years, they stop. because it becomes boring. They experience nothing new for their ego. They learned good scenes, they had some small sweet laughs, and they were sometimes witty and always decent. But they got stuck in their control Zoo. All animals were kept in cages. Control!!! They never left their garden of sanity. And that is why it became boring.

How can you surprise yourself, if you control everything?! How can you experience ecstasy and transcendental joy if you stay a well-behaved citizen? Real Improv, real Zen is not a Zoo, but a Jurrasic Park where T-Rex and Velociraptors are hidden in the dark forests. Hungry, dangerous and out of control!

Those people will keep searching for “it“. Those are people who are switching hobbies like condoms. After 2-5 years they search for new ones. They collect hobbies like a wild bear collects scars. Searching, searching and never finding “it”. Because they are searching for a “it“. Some mental recipe, symbol or conceptual truth that will give them peace and security. A “it“ that they also can preach then to their friends.

But nothing can be “it” because “it” is in the best case a mere name, a mere crystalization of the moment. The ego cannot be fed with things. The ego needs to be blasted off, it needs to be shattered and learned that sanity is a dirty lie that we tell ourselves! But there is no Santa Claus that has a list.

For becoming whole, we need to leave the safe harbor. Leave the controlled Navy and join the pirates. We need to learn that it is not about our ego, not about ourselves. If we play a song on the piano, give your personal responsibility away. Let the song possess you, if you write a poem, let the poem take over the control, if you sit in meditation sacrifice your mind and body to the dead buddha on the street.

Only if we let the world flow through us, only if we open those gates to the T-Rex, not knowing if the T-Rex will eat us or let us ride on his back. Only then, we stop stopping, and go fucking deep into the world of wonders.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”

- Hunter S. Thompson