c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Les Kaye is abbot of the Kannon-do Zen Center in Mountain View, Calif.)

(RNS)-A student once asked Zen master Shunryu Suzuki,”What is Nirvana?”He replied,”Seeing one thing through to the end.” Suzuki-roshi, as he was known, (roshi means teacher) came to this country from Japan in the mid-1950s and established Zen Buddhist practice in the San Francisco Bay area. His 1970 book,”Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”(Weatherhill) is a classic that explains Buddhist principles in terms Westerners can understand. Decades after his death, it still sells 30,000 copies a year.

When I first heard the story explaining the Buddhist concept of Nirvana, or enlightenment, I thought to myself,”Bingo!”Suzuki’s creative response hit the bullseye, going directly to the heart of spiritual practice.

His meaning: Spirituality is not of another world; heaven is not a separate place to be arrived at later. Through his reply, Suzuki-roshi instructed his student that spiritual fulfillment can only be found in daily activity.

Does his response have a familiar ring? It sounds to me very much like the emphasis the Protestant work ethic places on finding morality and salvation in hard work. But that is not why Suzuki-roshi said what he said. Because he was a genius in recognizing how we mortals get caught up in the desires of our egos, I suspect he noticed how we are constantly on the hunt for an exciting emotional payoff.

Think about it. How many ways are there for an activity to seem juicy and electrifying at the start? Just the very idea of a project can be inspiring and thrilling when we first conceive it. And when we tell others of our brainstorm, they may say,”Wow, what a great idea!”There we have immediate emotional payoff. And we haven’t done anything yet.

Or maybe we volunteer to do something that needs to be done. We raise our hand and proclaim,”I’ll do it, I’ll take responsibility.”Others greet our offer enthusiastically:”Oh, thank you so much!”And so we have an emotional fix.

Maybe we think or hear about a worthwhile and exciting activity and visualize becoming involved, being right in the thick of it. Imagine learning a new profession, losing weight, developing pecs in a physical fitness program, practicing martial arts or yoga, or developing an artistic skill. Just the fantasy brings emotional payoff.

Then comes tomorrow, then comes getting into it, then comes the danger of tapering off, then comes quitting. Why? Because of the reality of hard work now staring us in the face. We start to figure out that the future payoff isn’t worth it, that we already got all we are going to get. So where is the motivation?

Our modern, sophisticated society demands motivation and is always looking for a payoff. We can be moved to work pretty hard if we can reasonably expect a raise or a promotion down the road. The allure of more power and status drives us to complete great ventures.

Did you catch the recent television screening of”The Ten Commandments”? Pharoah essentially says,”OK, Moses, OK Ramses, whichever of you builds my new city will get to be Pharoah and will also get this girl.”Managers are paid to provide incentives.

The same is true in the non-professional world. Leaders have to keep volunteers happy by instilling the vision and constantly providing encouragement. Do kids always do chores willingly? Do we sometimes have to give them an extra something? Without the possibility of a payoff, the work might not get done.

But Suzuki-roshi was not concerned about material and emotional success. He was concerned about expressing the spiritual nature, freeing it from the prison walls of desire. He tells us that to be free, we have to take care of our activities, whatever they may be, without getting caught up in ideas of personal gain.

The freedom of Nirvana is here in what you are doing right now, he says, if you will do it without looking for a payoff. Otherwise, you will suffer, always concerned about the reward, not about the work itself.

The spiritual practice Suzuki-roshi brought to America rests on the understanding that we express who we are and feel our spirituality day by day, moment by moment.

Life becomes confining and meaningless when we live not by who are are but by how many payoffs we strive to collect.

MJP END KAYE