This is Getting Old Read Free

the Zen center, and she had to be helped into her priest’s robes. But once she wasinside the
zendo
(meditation hall), the forms of her thirty-five years of practice were held in her body. I was moved to see how, during service, she was right on track, manifesting dignity and devotion. She recited the Heart Sutra from memory along with everyone else, she bowed when it was time to bow, and she exited the zendo when her turn came, greeting the abbot with a
gassho
on her way out. Outside the zendo she was lost again.
    It’s disturbing. Sometimes, driving along one of my familiar routes, I suddenly can’t remember where I’m going. Then I’m in a dark place, even in broad daylight. I keep driving, slowly, hoping I’ll remember where I’m going before I get there. So far I always have.
    Zen Master Dogen, my favorite Zen master, wrote, “To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.” What does he mean by forgetting the self? Could forgetting my social security number or where I parked my car be steps in the right direction?
    Once, twenty years ago, before I was “old,” I had a strange experience. I woke in the middle of the night and I couldn’t remember where I was. That wasn’t the strange experience—it happens to most of us from time to time when we are traveling, as I was. But on this occasion, I couldn’t remember who I was, either. The loud crack that had awakened me still rang in my ears; it might have been a door slamming in the wind, or a bowl breaking in my dream, but whatever it was, I fell through that crack into a dark space of not-knowing. I asked myself, “Where am I?” and then, shocked, “Who am I?” I lay in bed, waiting. For a frightening split second, I didn’t know anything about who I was. I couldn’t even have told you my name. Then my eyes grew used to the dark and I made out the window curtains. Ah! I recognized the room, in a family house by the sea, and everything, my whole impermanent life, fell into place. I wonder if that moment before the remembering is what it’s like to have severe dementia. Or is this what Dogen was talking about?
    If I lose my memory, will I stop being me, or is there a me beneath the memory? Is there a look in my eye that will stay no matter what I forget? The thing is, I don’t have dementia now, so worrying about it is a distraction from being present in my life, taking good care of myself, and focusing my attention on what’s important.
    I believe that Dogen is talking about forgetting self-concern, and as I grow older, I notice what an excellent time it is to practice this kind of forgetting. It’s all about letting go. I can forget about accomplishing all my ambitions—it’s too late for that. I can forget about “making something of myself,” a telling expression. Sometimes, for a moment, I taste the relief of letting this self fold gently into the next self, moment by moment, like eggs into batter.
    It’s time to forget some things and remember others. As a matter of fact, the planet needs all of us human beings to remember our history, and to remember our own accountability in it. History is a process that we keep on making out of the stories we tell each other about the past.
    Before written language, or before most people had access to written language, people had only their own brains in which to store their knowledge, and so they were much more dependent on their memories than we are today and they gave their memories more exercise. Buddha’s disciple Ananda, for example, had a particularly prodigious memory and recalled every single thing he heard Buddha say. He passed the teachings on after Buddha’s death, and for centuries, the monks and nuns of the sangha recited the sutras to each other until they were finally written down.
    The printing