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There's Nothing Wrong With You - an interview with Cheri Huber by Connie Hill

Connie Hill: How did you get started with Zen?

Cheri Huber: In Buddhism one comes to a path of awakening in two ways: intelligence, like thinking "there's more to this than meets the eye" or by having suffered enough. I was definitely in the second category! My question was "is there more to this than meets the eye?" but was motivated by desperation. The world was not anything I felt I could participate in any longer. There had to be another choice. First, I began with western philosophy. It was interesting, but they were asking questions like me. I thought, "Well, maybe religion." I started off with western religions and moved east. Zen was the last thing I came to. I read something by B. T. Suzuki and the bells started ringing. I remember shaking with excitement as I read. I didn't know what he was talking about, but it felt like he knew what he was talking about and therefore, it was available to me. " So, I went after Zen.

Connie: What was the difference that you found in Zen?

Cheri: I have a great deal of difficulty believing. In fact I have no respect at all for believing and I never have. Believing is just scarifying to me because of the way people just make things up that seem logical or believable to them and they believe it and feel secure because they believe this stuff they have made up! So it really appealed to me that Zen not only didn't ask me to believe anything, but actively discouraged believing anything. The basis of it is first let go of everything and then see where you are. That was extremely attractive. It's intelligent.

Connie: One of the things about Zen that is wonderful and hard for me is it's simplicity. I think, "It's got to be harder than this."

Cheri: If it's this simple then what do I do with myself? I'm used to struggling, anxting and efforting. If it's that simple what's going to happen to my identity. This is the whole point of Zen. The ultimate question for Zen is "Who am I?" I like to phrase it "What is this "I" who is in this relationship to life, being the subject in life and making life the object.

Connie: We have it all backwards?

Cheri: We have it all backwards! The thing that is frustrating or compelling depending on your mood is that we can know that and the knowledge doesn't release us from the trap. In certain parts of the world the way monkeys are trapped is to build a box that has an opening just large enough for the monkey to get it's hand through the hole. A banana is put in the box and when the monkey reaches in and grabs the banana it's hand won't come back through the hole and the monkey is trapped. The monkey doesn't realize that letting go of the banana will allow him or her to escape. That is the human condition!

Connie: Do you find that you have full days that you are actually able to "let go" like this? (laughter.)

Cheri: (Laughter.) Yes. After 30 years if I didn't have days where I can do this then I've needed to get another job a long time ago! (laughter) It is a practice, like golf. In golf it's just you. Golf is a damnably impossible thing to do. And if you practice it long enough you do get better at it. We just have to step up there and do it over and over and over. The first thing we have to get is that golf is impossible. Then we can let go of some of the struggles: "This is so hard. I can't get it . I don't understand." Right, that's a given.

Connie: I don't golf, but I do the same thing with walking. "It's too cold. I'm tired Todays not good...."

Cheri: These are all the standard excuses we can apply to anything, and we fall for them! If we get out there we think "What was all the struggle about?" So that's another part of the practice of Zen that I like so much. It encourages us to look in places we don't ordinarily look. There is the reality we are in when we think we are a separate self surviving life. Then there is the reality where we realize "This is life and I am a part of it." In the first, we suffer and life is miserable. In the second, we're home and everything is fine. Is there anything different? No. In the more expansive reality "I'm home and this is where I belong and there are still days where I get up and don't want to walk." It's just that my relationship to it is so different.

Connie: I see lots of people struggling with wanting to be right and then when they're right feeling rotten.

Cheri: You can even be rotten because you want to be right! When we are growing up being right was being good and being good got you loved. This is huge. It is so hard to believe that other people are coming from a completely different reality than we are coming from. The very concept invalidates us. One of us is right and the other has to be wrong. Then everybody gets to feel bad. This is another example of the first reality where we suffer.

Connie: Many of your first books were hand printed. Why did you change to typesetting?

Cheri: Changing to typesetting was a big mistake! We are not going to do it again. The reason we started doing it in the beginning was economics. In 1983 typesetting was the way books were done and it was too expensive. So I asked June, at the Zen Center to hand letter it and she said no at first. But I prevailed - "You will or I'll nag you to death!" She learned to do that printing and started practicing the little drawings and she found that she loved doing it. With The Key, people said, "This won't work." That book has a life of it's own all over the world. Sara Jenkins, author of Suffering is Optional recently said to me "Why are you worrying? You have broken every rule in publishing and are successful. Why are you worrying now?" So I'm not going to think about that any more.

Connie: Your books have a gentleness to them or a "personalness."

Cheri: It communicates what you said in the beginning "this is simple." Children can understand these books quite readily. They come from the heart not the head. I feel that way about them, too.

Connie: It's like these books are being "channeled" through you.

Cheri: And I'm lucky enough to be able to hear it first!

Connie: Can you tell me what the difference between compassionate awareness and acceptance is. I know you're working on a book about awareness. What is the difference or maybe there isn't any difference?

Cheri: Well, I suspect there isn't. I would say presence, clarity, peace, expansiveness, awareness, kindness, generosity and a whole bunch more are all the same experience. These words describe the subtle differences in how we describe being here in the other reality we spoke about earlier, not in the contracted, something's wrong world of egocentric conditioning. Wholehearted acceptance can only happen in a state of compassionate conscious awareness. Only compassionate conscious awareness accepts completely. In fact, we could say compassionate conscious awareness IS acceptance. It's not that it does acceptance, it IS acceptance. Because it is non-separate reality.

Connie: What can people expect from your workshop?

Cheri: I hope people will experience acceptance for themselves. It can be direct or acceptance of someone else in their lives, a difficult situation, a decision they need to make, something they feel bad about. That's what we are going to go for: closing in on an experience. Realizing there is nothing wrong. Every moment of life is an opportunity to let go of what we have been doing to keep us separate from life. To allow our awareness to expand and to have an experience of being held in that compassionate acceptance that is life.

Connie: Thanks, Cheri.

Connie Hill works at New Renaissance Bookshop and is a local astrologer. She can be reached at 503-542-4330 ext. 1287 or gmnite@yahoo.com.