Love and Zazen (Heart-opening)

In discussing love and zazen, I’ll start with some lines from a poem by Rumi. Rumi is the 13^th-century Turkish poet who was the head of the Sufi order commonly referred to as the “whirling dervishes.”  

From Rumi’s poem:

Listen to the story told by the reed,

Of being separated.

Since I was cut from the reedbed,

I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart from someone he loves

Understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from a source

Longs to go back.

Longing for the divine source of life is the characteristic state of mind of a Sufi dervish, maintained in prayer and in the Sufi ceremony of zikrullah.  Zen is an emotionally reticent spiritual school and does not, in my experience, speak of love as a motive for zazen. In one of my earlier essays, “Zazen and Enlightenment,” I suggested that zazen practitioners, as they meditate, have “a non-articulated sense of connection with things, a comfortable sense of unity.” To long for this unity, which is, I think, common among zazen practitioners, is certainly love.

Following Dogen, to realize non-separateness is enlightenment. In Sufism, there is a stage beyond enlightenment, which is the opening of the heart. Heart-opening is a pronounced physical experience, which may take months or years, in which one’s chest flushes with love and in which one acquires the ability to project this love to another heart.  

Again in my experience, this phenomenon of heart-opening is not spoken of in Zen. Nevertheless, zazen will take you there eventually. During a retreat some years ago, I had the privilege of being the personal assistant for the coordinating Zen teacher. Unmistakably this teacher’s heart was open, and he could project loving heart energy to me. My hope is that by and by zazen will open my own heart.