Bhāvanā & "Practice"

Bhāvanā is an Indic term that was adopted by the early Buddhists to designate the broad range of somato-psychic exercises commonly known as meditation. The word can be translated as “development” or “cultivation.” The field of self-investigation and mental therapeutics, taken as a whole, is more accurately described as a balance of cultivation and neglect. The following analogy may be helpful: just as the prudent farmer cultivates some of his fields and lets others lie fallow, certain faculties of mind can be strengthened or intensified, while others are allowed to rest. Here is another analogy: the flow of a river can be reduced by damming and irrigation; or, the digging of a canal can divert the river into a different course. In like manner the faculties of attention, etc., are diverted from the usual everyday tasks such as planning, and set to performing well-defined exercises intended to foster specific qualities and attributes.

Just as bhāvanā entails voluntary control over certain mental faculties, its successful practice also requires the intentional loss of control under particular circumstances. The ability to make adjustments in focus and tension, to know when to hold the faculties steady and when to back off, improves with experience. Some exercises will require more mindfulness and “concentration,” some less, and some almost none at all.

Dōgen’s zazen is an interesting case because, although it is demonstrably a practice that gets results of various kinds, we are taught that it is, in the words of the Fukanzazengi, “not a dhyāna of training.” We are encouraged to read that passage as suggesting that there is no learning curve in the course of doing zazen and no skill to be acquired over time. In fact at least two kinds of learning occur as we sit for months and years and decades. First, whilst we strive to approximate what we are told was the Buddha’s posture, we are developing mindfulness of the body-image and the bodily sensations associated with it. Once the method of correct sitting has been mastered and drops below the threshold of awareness, we cultivate the art of non-resistance—that is, letting go, letting in, and letting be—without which we cannot “merely sit.” Dōgen’s insistence upon non-action (“Just don’t do it!”) was an expedient aimed at preventing the arising of egotism. By sticking to the line that “zazen does itself,” teachers in the Dōgen lineage aim to undermine the trainee’s tendency to take credit for progress in meditation and improvement in the quality of life, and to pre-empt yet another layer of self-conscious reflection.

A handwritten sign was left outside the door of the zendo recently. It read

     

How can we learn (!) to sit without any idea? As a New York cabbie answered when asked how to get to Carnegie Hall, “Practice!”