Discussing Zen Buddhism, it is easy to take a reductionist stance: “Zen is all about this”, “that is not at all Zen”. These mental postures do have their place, but as with all Buddhist teachings, they are provisional.
Provisionally speaking, Zen practice is all about pace.
When we think about pace we are usually really thinking about ‘rate’. At this pace how far can we go in 1 minute, 5 minutes, an hour? Is our pace too fast or too slow? Are we keeping pace? In Zen pace is not about quantity and time. It is not miles per hour, or heartbeats per minute. Nor is it how much is accomplished in one period of zazen, one half-day sit, one weeklong retreat. The pace of Zen is not externally imposed nor internally generated.
Pace is a “Dharma-gate”. An entrance (or as Zentatsu Baker Roshi has said, an ‘en-trance’) into the world as it is. Or at least as close as to possible to as it is. As Zen is the Buddhist school named after meditation, its principal en-trance is meditation, zazen. But there are other Dharma-gates. Practices like bowing, chanting, walking meditation, offering incense, even eating. And Zen does not eschew the careful investigation of scripture, the words of Ancestors past and present. The entrance of all these gates requires a certain pace. A pace that cannot be forced, cannot be acquired. It cannot be prescribed; it cannot be determined before it is. The pace of Zen practice fits the appearance-disappearance of everchanging causes and conditions. Like a box fits the lid, no adjustment needed.
Or is it continuous adjustment?
What is the pace of the in-breath, the out-breath, together rising and falling. The pace of a thought: appearing, developing, disintegrating, gone. Does the pace of a thought have such weight that attention has to be carried along with it? Can attention be carried along without thought? Can the pace of the thought be weightless, without gravity, no hold on attention? Can Zen’s pace be noticing completely and fully noticing but adding nothing. Noticing without thinking about what is noticed. This pace of not adding what is extra, provisionally speaking, is the pace of Zen.
Finding this pace is like adding the right amount of salt to a soup. Don’t add enough, the soup is incomplete. Add too much and the soup is ruined, a different kind of incomplete. Adding too little or too much are both a pace that is out of step with the soup. Making soup one makes mistakes (miss-takes?) before finding the pace of salt which is just right. In our Zen practice there are miss-takes finding the pace of noticing, the pace of practice. We may even find that mistakes are our pace. Our ancestral teacher in Japan, Dogen Zenji, said, “life is one big mistake”. If this is the case, how can even a mistake be out of pace?
How to be in pace when out of pace? That is the real pace. One of our Zen practices is finding this pace-less pace, with each other and the world.