MOZO (4): Doing Zazen
In his original instructions for sitting-zen (see link on right of this page), Master Dogen wrote NEN OKOREBA SUNAWACHI KAKUSEYO, “When an idea arises, just wake up.”
Just wake up. Just become conscious.
What this means in practice, I came to understand, was that when I noticed I was thinking something, I should just go back to adjusting my posture, holding the body straight and pulling the chin in slightly to make the neck bones straight vertically and thereby imparting a gentle stretch along the muscles of the back of the neck.
Doing Zazen like this, sitting immovably in the full lotus posture, like a Buddha-statue, with head shaved and body clad in the traditional robe, with incense burning at a traditionally arranged altar to Manjusri Bodhisattva, with offerings of flowers/leaves and water, in a spotlessly clean dojo: doing Zazen like this is, as I understand it, is the essence of Soto Zen.
This is how I was taught to practise sitting-zen, and this is how, at the deepest of levels, I still tend to practise -- as if playing statues, failing to get the point of Time’s Arrow.
A few teachers of the FM Alexander Technique have endeavored to demonstrate to me the existence of another way, a way of greater ease. To enter into it requires me as a first step to give up, or inhibit, the idea to which I habitually react by statuesque fixing. Sounds easy? Try it!
Just wake up. Just become conscious.
What this means in practice, I came to understand, was that when I noticed I was thinking something, I should just go back to adjusting my posture, holding the body straight and pulling the chin in slightly to make the neck bones straight vertically and thereby imparting a gentle stretch along the muscles of the back of the neck.
Doing Zazen like this, sitting immovably in the full lotus posture, like a Buddha-statue, with head shaved and body clad in the traditional robe, with incense burning at a traditionally arranged altar to Manjusri Bodhisattva, with offerings of flowers/leaves and water, in a spotlessly clean dojo: doing Zazen like this is, as I understand it, is the essence of Soto Zen.
This is how I was taught to practise sitting-zen, and this is how, at the deepest of levels, I still tend to practise -- as if playing statues, failing to get the point of Time’s Arrow.
A few teachers of the FM Alexander Technique have endeavored to demonstrate to me the existence of another way, a way of greater ease. To enter into it requires me as a first step to give up, or inhibit, the idea to which I habitually react by statuesque fixing. Sounds easy? Try it!
posted by Mike Cross at 10:23 AM
14 Comments:
rather than inhibit why not simply fail to pour your energy into an incipient thought? Inhibition takes energy in my experience.
Hi Chris,
How many times in my life have I, when faced with an open goal, failed to put the ball in the back of the net? How many times, with the try line beckoning and the final pass on its way to me, have I, at the vital moment, taken my eyes off the ball?
Your question is very welcome. Since starting this blog, mindful of my oneness with the rest of the target audience of Fukan-zazengi, I have found that every single question and comment teaches me something. Every comment or question gives me a clue about what I might be like -- pimp, prostitute, wanker, warrior, fundamentalist, anarchist, amateur psychologist, non-practising-Jew, “Alexander teacher,” ordinary bloke, and, above all, expert on how to practise sitting-zen -- congenital brainbox who can clearly understand the original writings of Zen Master Dogen, right off the page. When I can truly accept myself as all of the above, maybe that is the moment a beggar breaks his begging bowl. A beggar breaking his begging bowl might mean, in other words, joining hands and bowing as none of the above. And performing an action as none of the above might be the condition of, not a fake elephant, but a target that is hit. So thank you for your question.
Master Dogen wrote: EKO HENSHO NO TAIHO O GAKU SUBESHI, “We should learn the backward step of turning light around.”
He is describing a learning process that requires a lot of effort over a long period of time; it requires persistent direction of one’s energy in a particular direction.
Soto Zen practice -- sitting there like a statue trying to hold myself straight vertically -- is not the whole story. Neither is mindfulness meditation -- sitting there watching thoughts come and go. Master Dogen’s instruction when a thought comes up is not simply to fail to energize the thought. Master Dogen’s instruction is to wake up.
My understanding of what it means to wake up, as a general rule, always misses the target.
I am rarely short of views, opinions, bright ideas about what it means to wake up. But the backward step of turning light around might involve giving up all these views, opinions, bright ideas. The backward step of turning light around might involve veering in the direction of the state of grace that existed before I had any idea about anything.
You see, Chris, I pontificate as if I know a thing or two about Zen. But what do I truly know? I know that I went wrong.
When I was young I was very precocious at reading. At the age of 5 or 6 I was ahead of anybody in my own year and ahead of anybody in the year above me. The idea formed in my mind that I could easily understand any truth that was written down, just by reading it, provided that the person who wrote it was able to express himself or herself clearly. That idea has given me strong motivation to study Master Dogen’s words in the original, and it motivates me to write what I am writing now. Who knows? Some good may come of it. But the idea itself, the idea that the Buddha’s truth can be picked right up off the page, is false; it is not the truth; the idea is only my naive idea which, in my stubbornness and blindness, I find it very difficult to give up.
You see, Chris, I find it difficult to give up my expectation that you and others might be able to understand exactly what I am writing to you now. And yet I should know better by now. I should know from experience that there is no substitute for one-to-one work, and no substitute for me swimming alone as one tiny minnow in a boundless ocean.
When I began regular daily practice of sitting-zen, I totally failed to understand Master Dogen’s words. Not only did I react wrongly to unreliable translations of Master Dogen’s words: even when I became able to read those words in their original form I still reacted badly to them. The wrongness was not in Master Dogen’s words but in my wrong reaction to them. And that wrong reaction was rooted in a pre-existing idea about who I am.
Seeing this point probably more clearly than I will ever see it, Marjory Barlow asked me: “I am nobody. Who are you?”
In sum, my answer to your question is this:
At the root of the wrong reaction from which we are liable to suffer, there may be a pre-existing idea. To inhibit this wrong reaction may require us to uproot the idea (whose existence, incidentally, we may not be aware of). This process of inhibition has inherent in it a certain direction, the learning of which may require considerable effort over, say, 25 years or 70 years, or maybe even more.
Even after 25 years of daily effort to sit effortlessly in the full lotus posture, it seems to me, there is every likelihood that, just at that vital moment when an open goal is beckoning, some deep-rooted endgaining idea will cause me to miss the target. The evidence of my real life continues to corroborate that suspicion.
I've been reading your writings for months and months, if not years at this point.
I dont know you at all, but it strikes me that your writing is becoming more and more "alive", more unique, and more interesting.
So despite your harsh criticisms of yourself sometimes, it would seem maybe "something" is happening.
Vulnerability, honesty, softness, alertness, steadiness, creativity, these are the qualities that seem to indicate to me that someone has done some kind of spiritual work.
If these qualities and attributes grow somehow, i think you're going in the right direction.
Whereas, like you've said, a tendency towards fixity, stubborness, anger, and phoniness seems to indicate things possibly heading off track.
I say all of this not from a position of authority but just observations because i am looking around and considering these things.
Aaron
Thank you, Aaron, my non-practising-Jew alter ego!
The qualities you mention, I do not know what they are.
But fixity, stubbornness, anger, phoniness: they are all my best friends.
Incidentally, does it mention somewhere in the old testament about not worshipping the graven image? Or is it that, as non-practising-Jews, you, I, Albert Einstein and Bob Dylan have shaken off all that old stuff?
Something has lifted maybe, Mike.
If that is so, I am most happy for you.
Even if things lift and open for even a moment, it is a wonderful gift.
This morning i felt so angry and annoyed about nothing in particular and I wrote a harsh, critical blog post (that i promptly retracted).
I decided to do some breathing instead, and before long, something lifted...that is a gift.
I feel lately when i read your words that things have lifted perhaps a bit for you as well.
May it continue.
As for "shaking off the old stuff" i dont know if we ever do, as it is a part of us, hard wired into us.
Our monkey ancestry tells me that i am not far removed from being merely a tiger's afternoon snack.
So what else is wrapped up in the recesses of my DNA--maybe my tendency to be a neurotic, brainy, non-practicing Jew...
But if I breathe, and pay attention, I somehow exist in the midst of it all, without being only those things.
Easy on the breathing, Aaron. Sometimes when I would get into doing a bit of breathing on Marjory’s teaching table, she would pat me as if patting a nervous horse, as if to say “Whoaaa there boy!” Mindfulness of breathing might be like a beggar’s begging bowl. It might be that only when the beggar’s begging bowl breaks is the beggar truly free to breathe. In other words, if you’ve got some view on how to breathe or how not to breathe, the Buddha’s ultimate teaching, as I understand it, is always to drop off that view.
Mike, well--thats a bit like me telling you, "HEy there, Mike, easy on the zazen every day."
Perhaps we would be right to say it--i dont know. i DO know that i spend plenty of time each day NOT breathing and relaxing...and you know, thats fine too.
Well, it sounds as though the inhibition is working for you, I'll retract my comment.
I hope you become free from worry about making these goals you are kicking balls towards. Even when I was six I did not enjoy sports very much.
Cheers,
--Chris
Thank you, Aaron, for being a true mirror -- you have a view on breathing, and so do I.
In his mature version of Fukan-zazengi, Master Dogen’s instruction is, before swaying left and right, to breathe out once -- KANKI ISSOKU.
That is not my idea. That is the rule. And in my first sitting of the morning, I invariably wear a 7-striped or 9-striped kasaya and soberly obey the rule.
In other sittings during the day, sometimes I wear a 5-striped kasaya and obey the rule, sometimes I don’t wear a 5-striped kasaya but obey the rule, sometimes I wear a 5-striped kasaya but neglect the rule, and sometimes, for example having drunk cider, I just sit in the full lotus posture, neglecting everything.
Hi Chris,
In my experience competitive sports like rugby can be a good training ground for sitting-zen practice. For one thing, sports can provide opportunities for a person to learn to be a good loser -- that is, to lose without losing one’s integrity. Me, my wife, and our two sons all subscribe to the philosophy of Bill Shankly who said “Football is not a matter of life and death.... It is more important than that.” I recommend you to play sport with your kids -- and don't worry about not being any good; that's not the point.
Mike, you said: "In his mature version of Fukan-zazengi, Master Dogen’s instruction is, before swaying left and right, to breathe out once -- KANKI ISSOKU.
That is not my idea. That is the rule."
That's your rule for your particular practice. I dont have any problem reconciling the idea that your method differs from mine, and that yours may be equally effective for you.
I trust my living teacher, and my own experience. I trust my teacher to the extent that i heartily attempt the methods he has prescribed, and i trust myself to figure out the way those methods work for me.
I am sure that other methods and other teachers work. So i dont tell you how to breathe during zazen and you dont tell me how to breathe during my meditation.
Sort of like how a left handed knucke ball pitcher probably doesnt try to make a right handed fastball pitcher use his throwing motion...know what i mean?
My intention in maintaining this blog is to clarify Master Dogen's rules, dropping off my own viewpoint.
> dropping off my own viewpoint.
That might be the saddest thing I've read on a Buddhist blog.
My daughter doesn't seem to be a big fan of team sports, although she's a great hiking and camping companion. My son is just 3, so it's a bit early to say yet. I stopped forcing my daughter to play football when I realized I was trying to get her to stick with something I loathed myself when I was in her position.
Thanks,
--Chris
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