ZAZEN NO YOJUTSU: Not Two Secrets of Sitting-Zen

“When an idea arises, just wake up. Just in the waking up to it, it ceases to exist. Taking plenty of time to forget involvements, spontaneously to become one piece: this is the secret of sitting-zen. What is called ‘sitting-zen’ is just the great Dharma-gate of ease.”

Or, as per Master Dogen's revised version:

"Sit still, 'Thinking that state of not thinking.' How can the state of not thinking be thought? Non-thinking. This is just the secret of sitting-zen. What is called 'sitting-zen' is not the Zen that is learned; it is just the Dharma-gate of ease."

These translations are my reward for being a good boy. I persist with the intellectual work of investigating Master Dogen's sayings and chasing his words, and I keep coming back to re-directing my light in the opposite direction, until body and mind spontaneously drop off and my original features appear. When my original features appear, I am not the translator of anything. The true translation does itself.

But what hits me as the true translation today might not be the same as what hits me as the true true translation tomorrow. And what hits me as the true translation today might not be what hits you as the true translation tomorrow, if you do the work for yourself.

Doing this work for yourself does not primarily mean doing the work of a brilliant academic, like a university scholar at the Buddhist Studies department who is progressively working through the BS, MSc, and Ph. D. process (Bull Shit, More of the Same Crap, Piled higher and Deeper). Doing this work primarily means learning the backward step of turning light around, until body and mind spontaneously drop off and the true translation does itself for you.

When the true translation does itself, that is not the end of anything. That is the beginning of further investigation into what the true translation means.

We have got two translations above that both strike me, at least for the moment, as totally true, spot on, each expressing the secret of sitting-zen. But there cannot be two secrets of sitting-zen. There is not one secret, expressed in the original version of Fukan-zazengi, that has to do with waking up to end-gaining ideas; and another secret, expressed in the revised version, that has to do with thinking and non-thinking.

Similarly, in Alexander work, there are not two golden keys.

FM Alexander's niece Marjory Barlow told me, with genuine compassion: "Listen, love. In this work, being prepared to be wrong is the golden key!"

Why is it the golden key? Because, in the field of working on the self, being prepared to be wrong is the antidote to end-gaining.

Again, Marjory often quoted her uncle's saying that "This work is an exercise in finding out what thinking is."

So the secret is to think -- not to do, but to think. Why is thinking the secret? Because when I am ill at ease, when my original features have been replaced by the face of grim determination, the original root of my un-ease lies neither in the mechanisms of facial expression, nor in the postural mechanisms, nor even in the mechanisms of respiration. The original root of my end-gaining is in the mechanisms of view formation, of idea generation, of thinking. Thus the secret of Alexander work is not to do, but to think. To think not in one's old way, to think in a new way, that leads, when the thinker goes into movement, to undoing.

Waking up to end-gaining, practicing non-thinking, being prepared to be wrong, and thinking that leads to undoing: these are not four secrets. There are not four secrets of sitting-zen. There are not two secrets of sitting-zen.

So what is the one secret of sitting-zen?

I don't know. I really don't know. I know, I have learnt through exasperating experience, only that my habitual attitude of grim determination to find out conclusively what the secret it, is always not it.

To try to express it positively in my own words -- as if it were something graspable or something knowable -- always seems to turn out to have been a mistake.

The secret of sitting-zen, mystery that it is, seems to lend itself better to negative expression. Expressed negatively, the secret of sitting-zen has to do with the negation of end-gaining:

“When an idea arises, just wake up. Just in the waking up to it, it ceases to exist. Taking plenty of time to forget involvements, spontaneously to become one piece: this is the secret of sitting-zen. What is called ‘sitting-zen’ is just the great Dharma-gate of ease.”



What is ease, after all, except the movements and non-movements of one who is not blindly driven by the desire to gain an end?