Sitting (2)

“Shikan means ‘pure, one, only for it.’ Ta is a very strong word. It shows moving activity. When you hit, that movement is called ta, so ‘strike’ is ta. Za is the same as in the word ‘zazen,’ sitting.”

—Kobun ChinoOtogawa Roshi

In my study and practice of Zen, I am not much concerned with the culture of Zen or the preservation of a particular lineage, much less with matters of institutional continuity. I am motivated in the main by the desire to penetrate the mystery of zazen. Those of you who have perused the texts on zazen by Dōgen Zenji and other famous teachers of the Sōtō lineages will know whereof I speak. If they are to be believed, zazen cannot be learned, nor can it be won by effort. Zazen is a non-method.Yet we are admonished to pursue it with great devotion. In spite of its will-o’-the-wisp quality, we can’t seem to help talking about it as a practice, nay, the Practice and, what is more, Practice inseparable from Realization. It is the great prize that we are not permitted to wish for and—alas!—you can’t get there from here, anyhow (see “Huaijang Polishes the Tile”).

The months and years pass in a game of hide-and-go-seek with zazen. Am I getting any closer to understanding the problem? Does it matter? Unlike Buddhism, Zen practice is a path that is often described as having no end. Insights into the process of getting to zazen occur from time to time. My ideas about Zen and the whole contemplative enterprise continue to evolve. The way I express my understanding has changed, too. In any case, I enjoy sitting more than ever. This is how I see it now.

If there is a secret of zazen, it is contained in the words “shikantaza.” We usually translate them as something like “merely sit.” That compound word is about as unambiguous as you can get. If we have difficulty in believing that the phrase is really our instruction manual for zazen, it is because we suppose that zazen is a kind of meditation and, in common parlance, meditation is something you do with your mental faculties. As described in the texts of the mainstream Buddhist traditions, dhyāna entails such factors as attention, mindfulness, and discernment, while the bodily posture and mudra act as material and causal support for the mind.

Zazen in the Dōgen tradition reverses that relation. Mind supports body and is typically given little to do. The student is shown how to arrange her body and regulate her breath, and thereafter is left free to realize Buddha in due course. The absence of follow-up instructions can be frustrating, all the more if, like me, the student was trained in the methods of establishing mindfulness. In the satipatthāna tradition of Southeast Asia, the trainee follows elaborate protocols, moving step-by-step through finely graded stages under close supervision. Contemplation is undertaken with map and compass, as it were, guided and frequently evaluated. There are landmarks and watersheds aplenty to be noted, and a detailed itinerary.

The “awareness” that characterizes zazen has nothing of probing about it, nothing of scrutiny, analysis, or discrimination. There is no task, no pressure to get anything done. There is no stairway to paradise, with a new step every day. There is no goal or reward at the end of the path because, we are told, the sitting is in itself the realization of our true nature. There can be a gap between view and realization which, if it is as much as a hair’s breadth, separates us from awakening as if by a vast chasm. But that gap is not found within zazen!

Sherlock Holmes said that when you have eliminated what is impossible, then whatever remains must be the truth, however implausible or bizarre. It turns out that when you have eliminated all of the things zazen cannot possibly be, there is nothing left. In our customary way of thinking about human enterprises, zazen is nothing.

There is no activity that can be called zazen. If you are looking for a method that you can learn and teach to others, you will not find it. There is no way to attain zazen by doing anything, no way to train yourself into zazen through mental discipline. Certain masters of the Sōtō line have chosen to emphasize the physical act of sitting above all other practices precisely because the extraordinary posture and restriction of mobility tends to draw in and unify the faculties.

And yet there is that ta, the disposition to strike, yet without a particular target. Could we say that the target is the whole universe? And, who is about to hit? S/he cannot be named.

Although we are taught that zazen is no technique, it would not be wrong to say that the approach to zazen is a process of elimination, a gradual or sudden letting go. It is not a conscious process. It is not a series of acts of deliberate renunciation. On the contrary, the dropping away of body and mind is natural and effortless. It occurs in silence and obscurity while I am otherwise occupied. What is accomplished by the task of sitting itself—the posture, the mudra, the uprightness and balance—is nothing less than the loosening of the bonds of identity and intentionality.

Zazen is free of tension. That is, there is no particular object of attention, no particular intention with respect to anything, and none of the usual see-saw shifting of weight between self and other. The “awareness” of zazen is not that of an I-and-Thou perception, nor even the consciousness of perfect reflections in a mirror. Rather, it is simple presence, a fundamental sense of Being, inseparable from things, containing nothing and lacking nothing.

In a future post I will try to show how this somatic approach to zazen relates to the mainstream practice of satipatthāna.