I think this has to do with the question of 'effort' and 'effortlessness'.
From "The Silent Question: Meditating in the Stillness of Not-Knowing" by Toni Packer:
3.
Effortlessness
"Unless effortlessness prevails, you cannot help making an effort!"
Participant 1: Earlier in the meeting [Participant 2] brought up the question of effort - the difficulty of sitting with pain and discomfort and the sense that this takes a lot of effort. [Participant 2], you felt that in agreeing with that, Toni had contradicted what she usually says - that this work is without effort. We didn't have a chance to go into that at that time.
Participant 2: Yeah. I remember.
Participant 1: But it brought the question up for me again. When I think of "no effort," I think of awareness, simply being here, the listening, sounds, breathing, just... the silence of it all. But... [long pause]... the other thing I realized in looking at it -- and I'm really being honest here -- is that I didn't come to that silence without a lot of effort.
Toni Packer: To be sure.
Participant 1: I mean, back at a Zen center, the first sesshin I went to, maybe thirty years ago -- and I don't mind sharing this, it's no big deal really -- well, at first I didn't even go to dokusan. And then finally it was coming near the end of the first day and I hadn't gone yet. So the teacher's assistants actually got me into the dokusan room, and the first thing the teacher asked was, "Why haven't you come here before now? Don't you want enlightenment?" And I remember thinking, "Well, what's wrong with where I'm at?" You know? [laughs] But it was part of the teacher's job to light that fire, to light the whole sesshin on fire, and so I got into it. Got so much into that by the last night -- sitting there with a friend, and the whole competitive thing going on of course -- I stayed up the entire night and didn't even go to the morning meal. I'd been to a lot of dokusans by then, done a lot of so-called demonstrations [of Zen understanding], including knocking the teacher over -- everything I'd probably read about what you do when you come before your teacher. But that next morning... I can still remember it, though it's thirty years ago. Completely consumed with this question [who am I?]... I was walking, not sitting but walking in the meditation line, and everything went black. This brain... all I can say is, this brain had completely shut down. Then there was a birdsong.. and.. it was like an explosion... and the tears and... just... being here. Tremendous effort and energy had gone in this bodymind [laughs] -- but now I still think of hearing the birdsong and in that all the effort had been consumed, and then there was just the relief. Which is probably why there was crying, because of the relief of being here.
Toni: Being here without effort!
Participant 1: Yes. Uh... so, after all this talking [laughs]...
Toni: Remember my saying, "Unless effortlessness prevails, you cannot help making an effort!"
Participant 1: Uh-huh.
Toni: It's the way our constitution and conditioning work. So when people speak about effortlessness, either it's a concept or they are truly in that state of no effort. Just openness without "me."
I should not speak against making an effort because I, too, made a prodigious effort during Zen training. And yet I cannot say that because I made that effort in the past I am where I am today! There are many unfathomable things going on: working strenuously toward a goal and suddenly realizing that we are completely here -- have been here all the time!
Participant 1: We can't say it's impossible without effort.
Toni: No! The example yesterday of a marine who was making no effort "To get enlightened" -- he hadn't ever heard about that kind of thing! He told me that it took all the strength he could muster to climb up the stairs into the helicopter that would take him on a mission he thought was certain death. It was the effort of having to fight the powerful urge for self-preservation -- fighting the paralyzing fear of death.
Total presence is entirely different - it is without fight or resistance, without fear, without the "me." Is it the result of a cause?
The way you describe the efforts of your first sesshin sounds like an overwhelming drive against resistance resulting in an explosion -- nothing left to beat against.
Participant 1: Yes.
Toni: Often people in sesshin feels if they are hitting hard against an immovable wall, but oneself is that wall, you know, and when that has crumbled, there's nothing left bu openness.
But -- it doesn't necessarily have to be that kind of a path.
Participant : No, no. Making that kind of effort may not be relevant to where one is at. That's what I see or hear sometimes from people... it's the wanting to do something that doesn't really resonate well with where one is at. One is pretty much here already! [laughs] I mean, I was gone; I remember being so completely shut down before that happened. So... at least that's the way I see it. It just seems that if somebody isnÂ’t in such a shut-down place, then...
Toni: Does that raise the question again, for disciple as well as teacher: "Do we need to follow a path because it has worked for others before?"
[Toni turns to another participant.] Like the traditional practices you talked about earlier. Aren't they also predicated on totally exhausting the mind?
Participant 3: Yeah. I remember something like you described when, after a teaching, there was a lama just sitting for several minutes. It seemed as though the sky opened. There was no effort there. [laughs]
Toni: Yes, the teaching had been going on, and then there was just sitting completely still...
Participant 3: Yeah.
Toni:... and so was your mind. [chuckles] Quieted down, wasn't it?
Participant 3: Yes.
Toni: Yes, I understand that.
Participant 3: You don't know what caused it.
Toni: Because this is always here! The Buddhists call it our True mind. How can it have a cause, a past, a future? It's always here, beyond all time.
Participant 1: All that being said, if somebody said they wanted to make an effort, it's unlikely I would tell them not to explore that. That's one of the things about being here at Springwater retreat -- the possibility to try things out and, in the process, to find out for oneself.
Toni: Yes, yes. Likewise, a lot of people come here who have spent a lot of time with exhaustive "efforting" and now appreciate simply being here quietly, watching the ways of exertion or no exertion without "knowing." Just beholding it all -- seeing through it all!
The rest is silence.
