SHOSHIN-TANZA: Not Self-Manipulation

The first two characters, SHO-SHIN, mean to right the body, to make the body more right, more true, more straight, more upright. The third and fourth characters, TAN-ZA, mean upright sitting.

SHOSHIN-TANZA means upright sitting which causes or allows the body to change for the better, to become more balanced, more true, more upright.

People today -- not only readers of this blog who don't practice sitting-zen but also leaders of Zen groups who devote their lives to seated meditation -- think that SHOSHIN-TANZA describes postural self-adjustment.

People assume that SHOSHIN means making the body right, or holding the body straight, by direct means i.e. by end-gaining.

Hence, in their translation of Fukan-zazengi in To Meet the Real Dragon, published in 1984, Gudo Nishijima and Jeff Bailey translated SHOSHIN-TANZA as "sit upright holding your body straight." For the translation of Fukan-zazengi in Shobogenzo Book One, published in 1994, trying to keep the translation as literal as possible, Gudo Nishijima and I went with "make the body right and sit up straight." The SZTP translation which heads the Google list of Fukan-zazengi translations and also, to its credit, tries to be a literal translation, has "straighten your body and sit upright."

It may be that all these translations are based on a wrong assumption.

People who have assumed that SHOSHIN means making the body right, or holding the body straight, by the direct means of postural self-adjustment, may turn out to have been well and truly wrong in their assumption. They may all turn out to have been well and truly wrong in their view, just as I was well and truly wrong in my view when I spent 13 years in Japan trying to make myself right by pulling in my chin -- just as I am well and truly wrong in any unquestioned view that, unbeknowns to myself, I am holding right now.

What causes an individual human person, for example me, Mike Cross, to grow in the right direction is not postural self-adjustment that stems from my idea of making myself right. On the absolute contrary, what helps me to grow up is upright sitting as the inhibition of the idea of making myself right.

What I mean here by "inhibition" is nothing too subtle. There is no need for experts on Freudian or Jungian psychology, or on mechanics and physics, to quibble about the nuances of the term. What I mean by inhibition is the eradication, the total repression, the utter annihilation, the complete abandonment, of my illusory idea of me being right.

Inhibition like this -- if it is true, and not inhibition in name only -- goes to the very source of wrong reaction and eradicates the root of wrong reaction. True inhibition, in other words, is the dropping off of all views, the dropping off of all end-gaining ideas. True inhibition removes the barriers from, and allows for, spontaneous upflow of energy and natural growth of true consciousness.

Japanese champions of sexual and postural self-manipulation -- I am thinking about the king of masturbation and his bastard son -- have advocated spine straightening and chin pulling because of not being sufficiently clear in regard to what true inhibition is.

To get the point of Fukan-zazengi is just to understand the true meaning of inhibition. The vital art of sitting-zen is nothing other than the practice of true inhibition. I endeavor to practice it -- I endeavor to sit upright as the total abandonment of the idea of making my body right -- not because I am a selfless, totally altruistic, ego-transcending saint. I endeavor to practice it because I want to be a target that is hit, because I want to get the ineffable.

Because of wanting to get the ineffable, I have investigated Fukan-zazengi as deeply as possible -- even though that meant remaining for 13 years in a country densely populated by chauvinistic and stupid men. Because of wanting to get the ineffable, I used to get on my motorbike and ride down to Hampstead for lessons with Marjory Barlow. Because of wanting to get the ineffable, six years ago I bought a bit of land by the forest in France where I could selfishly indulge myself in sitting-zen, being ignored by birds, grass snakes, and red squirrels. I am, by common consent among my family members, a selfish bastard. In no way am I a bloody saint. But it may turn out, history may judge, that what I am saying now about the fundamental rule of sitting-zen, nobody has said for 750 years. That I am able to say it like this is mainly due to the input of two women -- Nelly Ben-Or and Marjory Barow.

So I recommend everybody who wants to read about what true inhibition is, what the vital art of sitting-zen is, to follow the link to Marjory Barlow's lecture on the teaching of FM Alexander.

What Marjory endeavored to teach me in her teaching room was just true inhibition. But the place of inhibition is always deeper within me than I am liable to realize. Marjory makes this clear in her account of FM Alexander's backward steps, deeper and deeper within himself, until he got to the root of his voice problem. This is where the subtlety comes in -- in excavating the last little vestiges of deeply buried end-gaining, in exposing the last traces of wanting to be the one who is right.

All this writing about inhibition has got nothing to do with what Marjory meant by practice of inhibition. What Marjory meant by inhibition was, for example, deciding not to move a leg... and yet, liberated from all anxiety about being right... allowing the leg to move.

The view of inhibition that I am expressing now is never true inhibition. True inhibition is sitting in the full lotus posture and bowing, or going for a walk, as the dropping off of my view.

The inhibition whose meaning I sleeplessly fret about in bed is not true inhibition. True inhibition is falling asleep.

Maha-kasyapa's face broke into a smile because his father, Gautama the Buddha, had nurtured Maha-kasyapa's growth as a gardener tends a plant, truly teaching him the truth of inhibition -- nirodha-satya. That is how Marjory was with me, and that is how I have endeavored to be with my own biological sons. I don't say that I have always succeeded, but I have endeavored to follow Marjory's principle -- inhibiting my own end-gaining ideas and allowing my sons to grow as they will.

In the original version of Fukan-zazengi Master Dogen writes of Gautama's twirling flower and Maha-kasyapa's face breaking into a smile. But the translation of those words that I do now, with resentment towards my unskilled and manipulative father in the Dharma, with my habitual grim-faced determination, is not true inhibition. True inhibition is a real face spontaneously breaking into a smile.