Being Stuck

 

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on a particularly difficult koan in my Zen practice.  In the Zen tradition, I meditate on parables or statements to try to reach an intuitive understanding of them, rather than simply an intellectual understanding.  I present my understanding to my teacher to see if I’ve penetrated the koan.  Although the reasons for practicing with koans are complex, I can tell you without question that they have deepened my practice and my life.  It’s particularly frustrating to be stuck on a koan, because all of my issues about how smart I am, how quickly I should be able to do things, how accomplished I am, how capable I am, come up.  When I’m lucky and temporarily find my way out of being stuck, I can just as quickly shift into becoming annoyed and frustrated, feel compassion for my teacher who must watch me wrestle with this koan, and dig deeper into my own wisdom to understand the koan’s meaning.

 

            We all have moments when we get stuck:  some of our stuckness involves big questions like who am I, what should I be doing with my life, when will I have the courage to make a difficult decision, why am I so fearful?  Sometimes we get stuck over smaller questions like, should I get the red one or the blue one, shall I start taking walks every day, shall I call my mother?  Regardless of whether we’re stuck over big things or little things, stuck is stuck!

 

            So how can you recognize when you’re stuck, and how can you work with it in a helpful way?  One place I’m stuck right now is about whether to send an email to a person I might want to work with regarding an area of study I’m pursuing.  I’ve contacted this person a few times, and he’s shown interest in my working with him, but at this point (for a number of reasons), I’ve decided it’s important for him to contact me.  Although he indicated he would be contacting me about three weeks ago, I haven’t heard from him.  So the question is, should I contact him or not?

 

            The first thing that’s helpful to do is to recognize I’m stuck—contact him or don’t contact him?  Even though I can give all kinds of strategic reasons for not contacting him, those are just excuses.  So the next step I can take is to ask myself what the real reasons are for my not contacting him.  My meditation practice can help me penetrate my excuses and discern what’s really going on.  Beneath my excuses are my not wanting to seem too eager, wondering if he really thinks I can be helpful to his project, and loads of other excuses; the fact is, I have no way of knowing what might be going on.  I have no idea whether he might be extremely busy, he might be waiting to have more information before he contacts me—the possibilities are endless—and might not have anything to do with me.  So I have three choices:  I can allow myself to get tangled in my wondering; I can let it all go, over and over again.  Or I can simply email him.

 

            Spiritual practice is the same way, even with koan practice.  As I work on a difficult koan that is challenging to break through, I can get stuck in all my worries about how I look, or grumble about all the other times I’ve gotten stuck, or I can let all of it go and just sit into the koan.  And I may go from one state of mind to another, at any given moment:  frustration, hopelessness, focus, clarity and frustration all over again.  The key with practice is to notice how the mind works, practice with letting go of my stuckness, and then simply do what’s calling to be done.  That’s practice.  And that’s life, too.
 

            Meanwhile, I think I’ll send that email….