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zen nova scotia the original can be found on the zns podcast share this tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on tumblr like loading 6 comments posted in uncategorized no struggle zazen yōjinki part 6 sep 15 this is the last in a six part series on keizan s notes on what to be aware of in zazen you can click here for part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 and part 5 the original talk can be found on the zns podcast there s much more to be said about this wonderful text i d like to come back to it sometime for now i hope these have been a useful introduction in reading keizan s instructions for zazen we ve been told first that we should understand who we are in the great scope of the universe we were also told not to spend too much time on arts and crafts and to watch what we eat finally after pages and pages he starts offering concrete sitting instructions when you are sitting in zazen do not prop yourself up against a wall meditation brace or screen also do not sit in windy places or high exposed places as this can cause illness don t slouch and don t sit in a place that might make you sick you might think you don t need to be told this but there s a long tradition of people sitting in zazen on the edges of cliffs they scope out their meditation spot their zazen rock so we might hear in this maybe keizan teasing a little bit about that impulse sometimes when you are sitting you may feel hot or cold discomfort or ease stiff or loose heavy or light or sometimes startled these sensations arise through disharmonies of mind and breath energy harmonize your breath in this way open your mouth slightly allow long breaths to be long and short breaths to be short and it will harmonize naturally follow it for a while until a sense of awareness arises and your breath will be natural after this continue to breathe through the nose now this is similar to how i would usually teach someone to sit i was taught that when you first sit down you take a deep breath in through the nose then exhale through the mouth i was also told to exaggerate that a little bit to push in those few initial breaths that particular point doesn t seem to be included in what keizan is saying here harmonize your breath in this way open your mouth slightly allow long breaths to be long and short breaths to be short that s a very classic instruction the satipatthana sutta which really goes into the breathing and the mindfulness around breathing has this kind of talk about being aware of long breaths being long and short breaths being short it sounds very natural the reality however is that when you first sit down your breathing will not be natural nothing about this posture is quite natural just acknowledge that allow yourself in the beginning to pay attention to your breathing to work with that discomfort somehow we take up this posture and suddenly we don t know how to breathe anymore just notice that notice if you re intentionally trying to breathe deeply notice if you re having trouble breathing deeply spend a little time and after a while you ll just breathe when that happens when you find that you re just breathing you can move on the mind may feel i want to interrupt and point out that dogen doesn t talk like this dogen never gets into you might feel like this you might feel like this it s like a commercial for some sort of medication you may experience dizziness you may have irrational fear but keizan is happy to go there the mind may feel as if it were sinking or floating it may seem dull or sharp these are all within the umbrella of zazen sometimes you can see outside the room the insides of the body one way or another i suspect everyone has some version of this experience if you ve ever started to dream in zazen then in a way you ve seen outside the room i had a very intense experience of this when i first entered the monastery so much of monastic life has to do with knowing where things go i think the first place that i trained had eighteen altars and they all had to be just right everyone else had it memorized this goes here and this goes here and this goes here so in those first few months any time you re in the room you re memorizing the room you re constantly memorizing the space and what would happen was that very late at night or very early in the morning when i was sitting in zazen i would suddenly see in three dimensional space another room in the monastery i would be studying it as if i was actually there and then fooom i d realize ah i m sitting here facing a wall and it would happen again as i got sleepy again it wasn t that i would dream about high school or about something interesting i would just dream about the actual room next door in all its particulars it was very vivid i don t think i ve ever had keizan s experience of seeing the insides of the body but it s an interesting possibility the forms of buddhas or bodhisattvas we know from looking across cultures that in religious experience people see what they re looking for so if you have one mindset and you settle into a certain kind of place you ll see angels if you have a different kind of mindset and you settle into a similar place you might think that you see buddhas or something else none of it is real sometimes you may believe that you have wisdom and now thoroughly understand all the sutras and commentaries consider how he says that and then doesn t say anything more about it the message is clear if you believe these things you re wrong period these extraordinary conditions are diseases that arise through disharmony of mind and breath again disharmony of mind and breath is the disharmony of the mind with what s happening now these are juxtaposed multiple things are happening at once it s the whole organism not a chicken and an egg it s not just breathing it s not just the mind it s the present and when things are not on the same page you go all sorts of places when this happens sit placing the mind in the lap okay so have your hands in the cosmic mudra palms up thumbs touching and there s this common instruction place your mind here different people interpret this differently some people will say this means to place your attention here meaning to keep your attention on your hands it s a way of turning the lens to where you are in space so that you re not looking out here and out here and out here it s the positive version perhaps of navel gazing the other way to understand this is to literally place your mind where your hands are to relocate mind let s not say your mind to your centre of gravity so that mind is operating from a place other than your brain some traditions take this very seriously this idea of moving your consciousness around the body i wouldn t recommend dedicating your life to it but as an experiment i recommend trying it sitting in this posture and trying to feel what it s like to let your mind to let the base of your consciousness move away from your head one thing you ll find or that i have found at least is that you can t will it to happen because you re willing it from your head to the extent that you can do it it s an act of letting go and a fascinating one when the mind sinks into dullness raise attention above your hairline or before your eyes above the hairline is a really interesting place to be putting your attention i was taught we should be constantly aware of our eyes when we sit specifically we should be aware of how we narrow and widen the aperture how our field of vision gets narrower and narrower as our mind gets narrower and narrower when you see that clearly you also see how easily you can just open it up the degree to which we open it up is the degree to which we re here when the mind scatters into distraction place attention at the tip of the nose or at the tanden that s the spot below the belly button after this rest attention in the left palm in other words the one that s on top it s ok to switch them though sit for a long time and do not struggle to calm the mind and it will naturally be free of distraction there are various zazen instructions that speak to what we should do if we start falling asleep if we re overcome by drowsiness i hear some of that in this sometimes the advice is to splash water on your face or hit yourself or even get up and walk around keizan is offering us some more concrete tips again not to get into a particular mind state but simply to not get too distracted and in every case you re bringing yourself back to here none of it is very deep think about the tip of your nose think about the edge of your hairline which perhaps you ve never thought about in your life place your attention on your belly button or in the palm of your hand come back to the body over and over and over again although the ancient teachings are a longstanding means to clarify the mind do not read write about or listen to them obsessively because such excess only scatters the mind that s a very classically zen thing to say go ahead and read the sutras but don t get stuck on them you can go listen to teachings but don t get stuck don t let that be where you spend your time any time you make a decision to do something or be involved in something or look at something that s a decision to have a certain kind of thought to fill your mind with a certain kind of activity it s like food and just like food it s useful to start to recognize what different kinds of thoughts do to you how they affect you to get there you need patience you need to pay attention and you also need some faith in the process read any teachings you want to but trust that you already have what you need go ahead fiddle with your breathing a little bit but trust that it s going to come into its own play with your brain a little bit if you want to even move your awareness around you can trust that eventually it s going to land where it needs to land just don t let yourself get caught up just don t look away share this tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on tumblr like loading 12 comments posted in uncategorized avoid getting caught up zazen yōjinki part 5 sep 7 this is the fifth in a six part series on keizan s notes on what to be aware of in zazen you can click here for part 1 part 2 part 3 and part 4 the original talk can be found on the zns podcast but yams are ok as we continue with keizan s notes on what to be aware of in zazen we learn he has something to say about arts and crafts avoid getting caught up in arts and crafts prescribing medicines and fortune telling i suppose the rule about arts and crafts can apply to anyone but there was a time not so long ago and certainly in keizan s time when the village priest did a lot more than what you would think a village priest would do so the village priest was also the local fortune teller and he was also the doctor here keizan is saying don t get sucked into what people expect of you stay away from songs and dancing arguing and babbling fame and gain composing poetry can be an aid in clarifying the mind but don t get caught up in it the same is true for writing and calligraphy this is the superior precedent for practitioners of the way and is the best way to harmonize the mind don t wear luxurious clothing or dirty rags luxurious clothing gives rise to greed and then the fear that someone will steal something this is a hindrance to practitioners of the way even if someone offers them to you to refuse is the excellent tradition from ancient times if you happen to have luxurious clothing don t be concerned with it if it s stolen don t bother to chase after it or regret its loss he also has some thoughts on old dirty clothes although we shouldn t be too anxious about bodily comforts inadequate clothing food and sleep are known as the three insufficiencies and will cause our practice to suffer and it just gets better don t eat anything alive hard or spoiled such impure foods will make your belly churn and cause heat and discomfort of bodymind making your sitting difficult don t indulge in rich foods not only is this bad for bodymind it s just greed you should eat to promote life so don t fuss about taste also if you sit after eating too much you will feel ill whether the meal is large or small wait a little while before sitting monks should be moderate in eating and hold their portions to two thirds of what they can eat all healthy foods sesame wild yams and so on can be eaten essentially you should harmonize bodymind it s very practical eat well don t dress up too much but what interests me is this first part avoid getting caught up in arts and crafts and songs and dancing or writing poetry or calligraphy or whatever it is a point that we come back to over and over and it s particularly relevant in talking about this text because there s a lot of don t is that none of this is about morality there are certainly buddhist texts from this era that would say singing and dancing are immoral so i don t want to pretend that the idea isn t out there but what s at the heart of this is not some idea about purity or impurity he s talking about preparing for sitting what is it that distracts you what is it that invites you to disengage from being here if you re not sure it s an easy experiment go home in the middle of all your stuff and just sit down on the sofa with nothing to do and then start to feel what the magnet pull is for you after you ve been sitting there doing nothing for a while when you start to feel antsy and star thinking i should do something notice what that is for many people today it s their phone you think you have control over your phone but if you could watch a fast forward video of your life you d see that you re just constantly checking it you don t know you re checking it but you re checking it i do this sometimes i leave it in the kitchen and as i walk by i push the button because maybe there s something important that will reveal itself to me and then i keep going and i think oh look i didn t engage but i engaged i checked the window into another world and then i stepped back really what i m doing is i m hoping something exciting happened so that then i can pick it up and play so i can read something someone will tell me something i didn t know when i was younger i didn t have this back then i think my distraction most often was my own mind i was a daydreamer so if i just sat there on the sofa pretty soon i wouldn t be on the sofa anymore my body would be on the sofa but i d be somewhere else i wouldn t stay where i was if there was a remote control i d be in the television and if there was nothing to do at my house i d get in the car and i d drive around or i d go see a friend i wanted to be in motion i wanted to be engaged now in my mid forties i see myself on the other side of that equation where my life 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