A new meditation on love by JEANNE MALMGREN

FLORIDIAN
A new meditation on love
JEANNE MALMGREN
1014 words
13 February 2003
St. Petersburg Times
SOUTH PINELLAS
1D
English
Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times.

Zen and the Art of Falling in Love

By Brenda Shoshanna

Are you a "hungry ghost"? One of those poor souls who wanders from relationship to relationship, never quite getting your fill of love, always wondering what went wrong, starving for the very thing that's right in front of you, laid out on the banquet table of life?

What you need, Romance Junkie, is your own personal Zen master/shrink. Someone who will listen to your problems, then crack you over the head with a long stick. Or - here's the cheaper, less painful option - you could get a copy of Brenda Shoshanna's new book, Zen and the Art of Falling in Love (Simon & Schuster, $21, 224 pages).

Despite the silly title and the oh-so-subtle marketing ploy of releasing the book right before Valentine's Day, there's some good, solid advice here that just might help the lovelorn break some of their destructive patterns and connect the dots as to why true love is always passing them by.

Of course, relationship self-help guides are a dime a dozen, so the savvy author has to find a hook to make his or her book stand out from the crowd. Shoshanna's shtick is Zen, which she has practiced for 28 years. (She founded the Gateless Zendo in New York City and teaches meditation there on Monday nights.)

But hey, wait a minute. This seems like an oxymoron. What does Zen - austere, silent Zen, the practice of nonattachment - have to do with love, breathless, giddy love, the very definition of attachment?

Everything, says Shoshanna: "Zen and love are incredibly compatible. The wonderful, ancient practice of Zen is actually the practice of falling in love. When one focuses on and welcomes all that life brings, each day becomes a good day in which you are able to fall in love with all of life, to continually find wonder, kindness, friendship and playfulness."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That still doesn't explain why you haven't found your soul mate yet. And why so many losers keep auditioning for the part.

This is where Shoshanna slips on her psychotherapist hat. (She has been a psychologist for almost as long as she has studied Zen, and she's quite the Internet counselor, offering online couples' courses, live chats on iVillage.com and her own e-zine called "Touchstones to Love.")

The problem, she says, is that we're always looking for answers through love. Solutions to our problems. We search for the person who'll somehow magically fix it all, who will, to quote Tom Cruise, "complete" us.

And that, according to Shoshanna, is a major mistake.

In Zen, she points out, you're all alone on the cushion. You sit there, you keep your eyes on the floor, you follow the instructor's orders to count your breaths from one to 10. It's simple, and yet it's profoundly difficult to surrender, to sit still. If nothing else, you learn patience.

Using the most elementary of Zen lessons, Shoshanna draws parallels between what happens in the zendo and what happens in the jungle of romance. Or what should happen. "Take Off Your Shoes" means becoming available, giving oneself up to the process, paying attention to the tiniest details. "Doing Nothing" means releasing control, giving up the illusion that we can make a partner act how we'd like them to act. "Receiving the Stick" means absorbing blows, resisting the urge to run when a relationship hits a rough patch.

All of which might sound pretty negative to someone not familiar with Buddhism and its emphasis on selflessness, on the freedom to be gained by letting go. But hey, says Shoshanna, life - and, by extension, love - is often about not getting your way. Deal with it.

"In Zen practice, the sorrow, shocks and imbalances of life are not seen as an illness. They are not bad, things to be avoided, but rather are to be understood and welcomed as one would welcome a temporary guest. They are not dwelled upon or figured out. They are simply known to be the unavoidable fluctuations of life, like day and night, sun and clouds."

The last section of the book, "Advanced Training," is about how to stay in love once you've fallen. A relationship, according to Shoshanna, is like sesshin, the intensive weeklong retreat during which Zen students give up responsibilities of the outside world and devote themselves to meditation, hour after hour. Settling down on the cushion; settling down with one partner. Almost everybody finds this hard. We fidget, struggle with boredom, endure stiff knees, entertain fantasies of leaving. Some people actually do leave. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don't.

Shoshanna recounts an old Zen story of the student who went to visit a revered master, hoping for a great teaching, something that would deliver instant enlightenment. Instead, the master offered him some tea and put a kettle on the stove. It took awhile for the water to boil. Teacher and student watched the kettle. When the water was ready, the Zen master poured two cups of tea. They drank in silence.

Finally the student put down his cup. "Are you finished?" the master asked.

"Yes," said the student.

"Fine. Now wash your cup."

That kind of simplicity, that attention to detail, will sustain a relationship, Shoshanna assures us. But it has to come from you, not from that perfect partner who has arrived at last.

"The ability to love and to be present is entirely up to you. Whoever is seated beside you, or whoever appears on your path, is part of the amazing manifestation of life. Why can't we accept and revere it? Why can't we offer all a beautifully prepared cup of tea?"

Maybe we can, if we're ready to stop being hungry ghosts.

Jeanne Malmgren's first book, which she co-wrote with a Buddhist monk, will be published this fall by Wisdom Publications.