Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Stress, jobs, traffic — for local Zen followers, it’s mind over things that don’t matter

Zen master Seung Sahn

With palms in a prayer-like pose, shoeless students bowed in salutation. Some wore shaved heads and gray robes. Others, ponytails and sweat pants.

Tim Colohan faced the 25 Las Vegans and Southern Californians gathered at a recent Mojave Desert Zen Center retreat. In measured words and placid voice, he recalled a scene remote from the composure of the day:

Harry's Bar and American Grill, more than 10 years ago. Food falling off plates. Mixed-up orders. Burgers burned black. Falling souffles.

He was a painter by day and a waiter by night at the famous restaurant in Century City, Calif., downstairs from the Shubert Theatre.

"We would get the evening theater dinner crowd all at once. Inside 20 minutes, seven waiters were serving 230 dinners. It was a madhouse of activity.

"Curtain call upstairs was at 8. I created imaginary scenarios that the souffles wouldn't be ready on time. I held onto thinking about all the things that could go wrong and that had gone wrong. There was a great deal of stress and anxiety."

That was before he began learning the way of Zen.

When walking, sitting, lying down, speaking, being silent, moving -- at all times, in all places, without interruption, there is always one thing that remains clear.

"I took the idea of the 'don't-know mind,'" Colohan said. "It was like a diamond sword that cut through my thoughts as they appeared."

"It was such a relief in that particular job to only focus on what I was doing -- to control what I could control and to allow what I couldn't control. All the rest went out the window."

Today, Colohan is a film industry set director and production designer. He recently returned from a Korean retreat where he spent 90 days absorbed in monk-like conduct.

"I had hoped my practice would mature so I would have the confidence to begin to teach," he said.

During his talk, he imparted a newfound, yet tempered confidence.

His attentive listeners sat Buddha-like in perfect rows at a house in Summerlin where the retreat was held.

They spent a day journeying into this don't-know mind Colohan had discovered during the frantic nights at the bar and grill -- a state that eludes definition.

"It is not dependent on understanding or not understanding. It is like space, clear and void," Colohan told them.

From 9 a.m. until noon, the group sat on black cushions or low pine benches cross-legged in meditation.

To ease discomfort from sitting too long, at 25-minute intervals they slowly, silently walked for five minutes, circling the bright, spacious room.

Empty your mind of distractions. Free yourself from attachments.

Step, step, step. Moment by moment. Eyes and heads fell downward to avoid looking out windows or into others' faces or at the play of shadows on blank walls.

Lunchtime was replenishment -- basmati rice laced with ginger and cumin, lentil stew and herbal teas. Low voices and jasmine incense drifted outdoors.

Be mindful of the food, of tasting it, chewing it, swallowing it.

"Zen is a training process available to everyone," said Bob Moore, the master dharma teacher who led the retreat. "Dharma" refers to teaching Zen tradition.

The process -- the attempt at staying in the moment -- is more important than the result, he said.

"Some people think it means zoning out. Or they think it must mean becoming a monk or a teacher. That's all nonsense.

"Zen people are musicians, professors, accountants, students.

"It's not dependent on your ego, on your talent, on your IQ, or whether you are beautiful or ugly or verbal or nonverbal or clever or slow."

Nor is it dependent upon any theological system, he said.

"It is only limited by power and wisdom."

In addition to his Zen teachings, Moore is the chair of the graduate music department at University of Southern California. He applied the Zen mind to his interest in music.

"You may prefer bluegrass over Led Zeppelin. But if you attend a Led Zeppelin concert, you have the choice to make misery from it or make the most of it."

The Zen mind is also used to create breathtaking music, he said. The point for artists is not to lose it -- even when the concert is over.

Thom Pastor, who serves as secretary-treasurer of the Musicians Union of Las Vegas and who is the abbot and dharma teacher for the local Zen center, explained.

"Gifted players go into this very concentrated, focused area. Some people born with perfect pitch on stage do well. But when they walk off stage, that whole demeanor leaves.

"The idea of Zen practice is to go back to that mind, which is in all of us."

Meditation is moving away from your "opposites-thinking mind," he said.

"If you want to understand the truth, you must let go of your likes and dislikes, your reactions to situations, conditions, people and events."

As says the Nike slogan, "Just do it." If you keep zero mind ... the whole universe can fit into it.

"It is like peeling away onion skin to get to the core of our being," Pastor said.

There's no definitive formula to find that core. But meditative practice, sitting with a straight back, letting go of attachments through exhalations helps peel away those thin layers.

"It becomes easier when you are sitting on cushions with no distractions and only focusing on your in and out breath," Pastor said.

"Positive thinking, self-help books, audiotapes? No thank you. We continually exhaust ourselves seeking this I, my, me, only to meet with disappointment.

"But as our Zen practice deepens, we begin to see an opening for liberation."

While cutting off linear, logical, discursive thinking, Pastor believes true Zen is a return to perception.

"Thinking is normal, but always come back."

Whack.

Zen masters have traditionally used a stick -- sometimes gnarled wood, maybe a bamboo twig -- to startle students into that current state of perception.

"In the early Chinese teachings, it was a device used to give students a light slap," Moore said. Today it's used to tap the ground symbolically.

With his own elegantly twisted stick close by, Moore gave the dharma talk -- answering students' questions with some of the teachings as handed down from disciples of Buddha.

"What about Zen in relation to intellectual pursuits?" one student asked.

"Intellectual and scientific thinking is human. ... Any activity is OK, but always come back to a quiet mind," Moore answered.

"An airplane flies, but it must come back and refuel."

Another questioner: "How do you plan and, at the same time, be 100 percent in the moment?"

Moore: "It is important for you as a professional to plan. It is important for parents to plan for their children. When you are planning, do that with 100 percent attention."

After lunch, after Colohan's recollections and after Moore's talk, retreat attendees began "sitting Zen" once more, concentrating on that don't-know mind, that zero mind, for the remainder of the afternoon.

From nothingness comes something.

Historically, Zen retreats are a specified time to sit and walk in silence, bow, pose questions to a Zen master and chant sutras, which are written recollections of words uttered by Buddha.

For Colohan, that was the way during his Korean retreat.

For 90 days, he and 16 others meditated in 30-minute intervals for 11 hours a day, interrupted only by silent monk-like meals.

For 90 days, lights were out by 9:20 p.m. and the wake-up bell rang at 3:20 a.m.

For 90 days, students were discouraged from reading and keeping journals and had no communication with family or friends.

"When you are sitting meditation that much, life becomes very, very simple," he said.

"The only obligation is to make an effort to empty your mind of thinking."

He brought the experience back with him to Hollywood.

"(The retreat) helped me cultivate the use of my mind in everyday life, whatever my everyday is.

"My mind is the same at the retreat as it is in my work as it is when I'm speaking."

We want to make it complicated, but it's so simple.

John Saccoman, a business law teacher at the Community College of Southern Nevada, has also changed the way he perceives his environment.

"To me, the most stressful thing is trying to drive in Las Vegas," he said after the local retreat.

"I may be stuck in traffic. It may be hot, and I turn off the air conditioner so as not to overheat my car. And I'm late."

His five-year practice of Zen has enabled him to face the gridlock.

"The whole point is just to be there at the intersection of Charleston and Valley View, even if I need to be at Charleston and Decatur.

"You take a deep breath and say, 'Here I am.' That's it.

"As soon as you do that, you are awake. Then everything just disappears."

When the light is red, stop. When the light is green, go. When it's yellow, do whatever you want. Just do it.

Zen is not special, Saccoman said.

"It is your everyday mind. It is the most common thing. It is like water -- not like 7-up or champagne."

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