My friend Steph asked me for some Zen tips today. I made a snarky comment on Twitter in her general direction about being more Zen. I do that; make snarky comments. It’s a defense mechanism. Most of the time it’s a throw away line. It makes me feel better. Sometimes it even makes other people feel better, but it’s usually even odds that I’m offending someone.

I’ve been a lazy Zen practitioner for years. Sometimes I meditate. Sometimes I try to meditate. I’ve never been particularly serious about my practice. I tell myself that that’s okay, it’s the trying that is important. That’s true, and when I am more centered I forgive myself for not living up to my own expectations. A lot of the time though I just breeze past my own self anger and go on with life. I don’t know that I’d call that Zen. Maybe it’s denial.

When I discovered Buddhism I felt an affinity for it. I never went much deeper than the Four Noble Truths, which boil down to two truths. Attachment, to people, to ideas, to ideals, is what causes stress (Buddha called it suffering) in our lives. If we give up that attachment, live life accepting that everything we hold dear can be ripped away from us at any time, then we’ll know more peace. It’s true. It just not always satisfying.

Our culture values attachment. We’re supposed to love deeply and hold firmly to our values and ideals. We’re supposed to miss those who are gone from our lives. If we have trouble remembering our grandmother’s voice or face, there’s something wrong with us. If we don’t wallow in nostalgia we must have a disorder. If we don’t expect anything from our loved ones, do we even love them?

Buddha left his family. He left his wife and children and wandered the world to come to his truths. He gave up being a prince to find a philosophy that could lead to more peace in the world. Buddha lead a life of an ascetic and later gave it up. He realized that too much of anything was an attachment in a way. He looked for a middle way to be. He looked to not over indulge, nor under indulge. I’ve come to think that maybe Buddha was right about finding a middle way, but that he was wrong about non-attachment as the path to the end of suffering.

Don’t get me wrong. You can find deep peace and happiness by focusing on the present, by reducing your attachments. I even believe that you can find a degree of love without attachment. I’m just not so sure you can find a western idea of love without attachment. How much can you love someone if you’re okay with them being gone tomorrow? Buddha could be nice to others, he could even have a clerical love for others, but could he know love that causes deep suffering when what you love was taken from you?

I like the idea of a middle way. You could even say that I’m attached to it. Even in attachment there must be a middle way. To remove all attachment is to remove what makes us human. That fits with the mythology of Buddha as well. When he did remove all attachment he escaped the cycle of rebirth and entered Nirvana. By escaping the cycle of rebirth Buddha became inhuman.

I’m angry with Buddha. I shouldn’t be, but I am. I’m much more drawn to the Dalai Lama. There is a lot wrapped up in the Dalai Lama, a lot of history and politics, but I like the core idea of him. The dream of the Dalai Lama is that he is a Bodhisattva, an enlightened being who has chosen to be reborn as a human to help others. A Bodhisattva is an enlightened being who has chosen to suffer so that they can help others. The Dalai Lama choses to be reborn so that he can continue to help humanity reach peace.

When presented with the idea of someone who lets go of all attachment, and someone who chooses to form attachments to help others; I’ll choose to emulate the altruistic. I wonder if the historic Buddha wasn’t more of a Bodhisattva and only through religious perturbation of the truth did he become a being devoid of attachment. Christ was stripped of his wife and children by the Church that wanted to see him as pure. I wonder if the Buddhists have elevated Buddha above the human in order to appeal to the religious gene that exists in most people.

That’s a long lead up to Zen. What attracts me about Zen, is that it is less focused on the religion of Buddhism, and more focused on using the tools of Buddhism to help you find peace. As I’ve said, I am an lazy Buddhist, and get much of what I’ve learned wrong.

Zen is a way of looking at the world that brings your focus to the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. The central tenant of Zen is sitting quietly, meditating, with a focus on breathing and removing distraction so that you can begin to see how you think. By meditating you begin to perceive how thoughts and feelings arise in your mind, and it is easier to detach these thoughts and feelings from your self and examine how they come to be, how they impact other thoughts and feelings.

How do you ‘be more Zen’ though? Here’s a secret. It helps if you’re white, male, wealthy, and living in a sparsely populated area. Maybe that’s crass. Being at the top of the food chain means you don’t have to worry so much about threats to your safety, your livelihood, or people preying on you.

It’s a lot easier to maintain inner peace when there isn’t a constant threat of being laid off or attacked walking home from a night on the town. It’s easier to find time to be alone with your breath and the cosmos when you don’t have kids running around the house screaming. It’s easy for those of us who don’t have a lot to worry about to tell others to not worry.

In the western world Zen is a privilege. The people who don’t have all that much to worry about find inconsequential things to worry about and then experience the enlightenment of letting go of those inconsequential worries. They turn their experience of letting go of inconsequential worries into a seminar and get other privileged people to pay money to listen to them talk about how to let go of what isn’t important, what never was important. It’s easy to not worry about money when you don’t have to worry about money. It’s easy to let go and trust that things will work out when you are part of the privileged class that things work out for.

I’m sorry Steph. I was being my typical snarky self and spoke without thinking. Then I thought. That’s how we get to be more Zen. We think, and see where thoughts come from. We try to understand how these thoughts come from ourselves and reflect on improving who we are. We look at ourselves, see faults that we would like to change, and try to do that. We forgive ourselves for being attached. We are, after all, only human.