Anything worth doing over years has a stretch in the middle where nothing appears to be happening, and the mind starts asking whether it is working. Suzuki answers that question with weather.
“After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little. It is not like going out in a shower in which you know when you get wet. In a fog, you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. If your mind has ideas of progress, you may say, ‘Oh, this pace is terrible!’ But actually it is not. When you get wet in a fog it is very difficult to dry yourself. So there is no need to worry about progress.”
Part One: Right Practice, “Bowing”
The argument is about which kind of wet you are looking for. A shower announces itself. You know the moment it starts, you know when you are soaked, and if nothing is running down your neck you can be confident nothing is happening.
Wanting the shower has a cost. You go looking for the moment things change, and when it does not arrive you conclude the thing is not working, and you stop — usually just before the only kind of change that was ever on offer.
Walking in fog costs the evidence. There is no moment, no before and after, nothing you could point at to show someone. Some days it will feel like standing still, and you cannot check.
Now the line that is easy to skip past, because the consoling one sits right next to it. Fog-wet is very difficult to dry off. That is not reassurance, it is the structure — the reason this pace is acceptable is that what soaks in slowly does not evaporate. Shower-wet dries in twenty minutes. A change you could point to is usually a change you can lose.
So what are we aiming at. We want to keep walking without checking the coat. Not patience exactly — patience still has one eye on arrival. Just walking, in weather that does not report on itself.
Let us see where this shows up in an ordinary day. Three places.
- The moment you catch yourself asking whether any of this is working.
- Comparing where you are now with where you were a year ago.
- Wanting to tell someone about a change you have noticed in yourself.
In all three the thing to watch is the same — the measuring. Not whether the answer is good. Whether you are standing still checking your coat.
You are not deciding anything, and you do not have to stop wondering. Notice when the measuring starts, and leave it as it is.