214 - How Do You DO Zazen, Anyway? - The Zen Studies Podcast

I’ve offered many episodes about zazen, or Zen meditation, on the Zen Studies Podcast. In fact, out of my 214 episodes, 25 have been on zazen. Of course, this makes sense as it is the central practice of the Zen school of Buddhism.

Offering you another episode on zazen risks me repeating myself, but I don’t think it hurts to offer a fresh new talk on zazen periodically. The practice – while profoundly simple – also can be frustratingly elusive. What are you supposed to do during zazen, anyway? We’re told to just sit, and then allow thoughts to come and go, neither chasing them nor pushing them away. Is that it? In this episode I explore exactly what we’re supposed to be doing in zazen, and how to know if we’re doing it correctly.

Quicklinks to Article Content:
It All Starts with the Physical Posture of Zazen
Zazen as a Practice of Embodiment
Zazen As a Direct Challenge to the Small Self
Critical Moments of Choice in Our Zazen
Inviting All Parts of Ourselves to Trust and Rest
Doing Zazen Incorrectly
Trusting Ourselves

It All Starts with the Physical Posture of Zazen

If you visit a Zen temple in Japan and express interest in practicing, you are very likely to be sent to the meditation hall with a monk or a nun who will give you instructions for sitting zazen. They will show you how to sit cross-legged on a cushion, how to hold your eyes and hands, and how to sit upright and still. After those physical instructions you might get a vague phrase or two about “letting thoughts pass” or “letting go of everything,” but traditionally that would be about it. This is nothing like meditation instruction in the West, where many of us are eager to get through the boring but necessary part about how to stash your body during meditation so it doesn’t hurt too much. We want to know what we’re supposed to do with our minds! What is our conscious experience of meditation supposed to be like?

The traditional Japanese method of zazen instruction is, in some ways, very wise. Zazen is a physical practice, not a mental one. Another word for our form of meditation is shikantaza, meaning “nothing but precisely sitting,” and it really is just sitting. Rather than say our meditation is a purely physical practice, though, it’s probably more accurate to say zazen is a practice of embodiment – because body and mind are not two separate things.

I’ll explain more about what I mean by “a practice of embodiment” in a bit, but first I want to ground our discussion in a brief description of the physical posture of zazen. I discuss posture in depth in Episode 96, where I give full zazen instructions along with pictures, and in Episodes 193 and 194, where I discuss the value of the seated meditation posture and how to deal with the various kinds of pain you might experience while doing it.

The essence of the zazen posture is sitting deliberately upright and motionless. You can sit on a meditation cushion, kneeling bench, or chair. Your spine, including your neck, should be expanded in a straight but natural line, as if it were hanging from the ceiling on a string that is attached to the crown of your head. Ideally you don’t lean on anything but sit upright under your own power. If you do need support for your back, it’s best to arrange such support so you can maintain the upright posture without leaning back.

You should sit in a way that allows you to be comfortable enough to sit completely motionless. This stillness is not about avoiding the judgment of others, it’s part of the zazen practice itself. It’s best to ignore itches, minor discomfort, and urges to fidget, only adjusting your posture if you experience severe pain (see Episode 193 and 194). The whole posture should be very deliberate, ideally with your eyes open and your hands placed in the cosmic mudra I describe in Episode 96, or placed deliberately on your knees. There is nothing casual about the zazen posture, although it should be energetic as opposed to rigid. If you sit zazen in a public place like an airport or a park, people should think you look weird. There’s much more to the zazen posture, of course, but I believe that’s the essence of it.

Zazen as a Practice of Embodiment

I recently encountered a description of zazen by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, and it has become my favorite:

Zazen is “an effort to continuously aim at a correct sitting posture with flesh and bones and to totally leave everything to that.”[1]

Given the nature of our bodies, we do not put them in the zazen posture and then forget about them. The zazen posture is not a dead or static one, where our physical form sits in a lump like a sack of potatoes while our mind busies itself with strenuous meditative efforts or, alternatively, ranges far and wide in thinking and daydreaming. Zazen is to sit upright, deliberately, and be infused with energy and intention. The mind is an essential component of this effort. You might think of our body as a house, and the mind as the occupant of the house. In zazen, as Zen master Keizan says, we return home and sit in peace.[2] If we mentally check out while sitting, inevitably our physical posture suffers. Our spine will shrink into a slouch, our neck will shorten, our chin will jut out, and our cosmic mudra will sag. Therefore, aiming at a correct sitting posture is practice we continue to do moment after moment.

At the same time, in zazen we do not divide body and mind, imagining that “we” – that is, the sense of executive “I” identified with our being-consciousness – are engaging in the meditative activity of “paying attention to the body.” Instead, our intention is to temporarily forgo our mental wanderings in order to settle into the truth of our embodiment. If we become aware of a pain in our knee, for example, there is no need to construct a self-centered narrative about how “I” am meditating and will now concentrate on the pain in my knee in order to be embodied. Embodiment is the truth of our life, and the direct experience of the pain in our knee requires no effort or abstraction whatsoever.

Recall Uchiyama Roshi’s instructions to “continuously aim at a correct sitting posture with flesh and bones and to totally leave everything to that.” This sounds simple – and, in a certain sense, it is – but for most human beings it is very difficult. However, this is not an ordinary kind of difficulty, where we are faced with a challenging task and need to figure out how to do it. The difficulty of zazen arises because trusting the physical zazen posture to provide us with everything we need – at least for the period of time we are sitting – is exactly the opposite of what our small self is inclined to do.

Zazen As a Direct Challenge to the Small Self

Our “small self,” as I discussed in my last episode (Episode 213 – Deconstructing Self: Which Aspects Are Fine, and Which Cause Suffering?), is a phenomenon that emerges in the presence of a separate physical body with its own sensations, perceptions, personal interests, being-consciousness, and agendas. The small self exists in the same sense a forest exists – it’s real thing, in a certain sense, but it has no fixed center, essence, or boundaries. It’s an emergent phenomenon we evolved to make sense of our lives and explain our actions to others, but it is empty of any inherent, enduring, independent self-nature.

We perceive our small self, however, as a real thing with which we intimately identify. We think our small self is in charge of things – or at least should be – and that it needs to constantly busy itself with looking out for us. We’re certain that if the small self stopped evaluating, planning, judging, analyzing, fantasizing, worrying, staving off boredom, or grasping after pleasure, we would meet a terrible end – or maybe, even cease to exist entirely.

Spiritual liberation lies primarily in transcending our small self. In Zen, we do this by recognizing it as being empty of the inherent, enduring, independent self-nature we assume it has. Our sense of small self doesn’t go away entirely, but once we realize it is only part of us, we are no longer as strongly compelled by its narratives and agendas.

Our zazen practice is a direct challenge to the small self, as is any form of meditation which involves mindfully engaging in an incredibly simple, pointless activity with no agenda whatsoever. Leaving everything to aiming at the correct sitting posture with flesh and bones – without even evaluating the results – is the small self’s worst nightmare. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the small self may perceive zazen as being dangerous! Even as we sit, it will desperately attempt to look after us through thinking, or at the very least keep us dependent on it by amusing us with fantasies or daydreams.

Critical Moments of Choice in Our Zazen

What do we do, then, when we’re sitting in zazen and the small self resists leaving everything to our physical posture? As soon as we wake up from the dream of thought, we have a precious opportunity. We’re liable to think that our small self is in charge of our meditative experience, and that when we realize our mind has been wandering it’s time to discipline the mind and bring it back to our meditative activity. However, the small self is not in charge. In fact, it’s the small self that is behind the mind wandering. When we wake up on the meditation seat, it just happened. It’s absolutely critical how we respond to this opportunity.

Our moments of choice are all we have when it comes to guiding our zazen. It’s important that our moments of remembering are greeted with humility and gratitude, and that we don’t react with judgment, impatience, or a willful effort to change things. All those responses simply involve the small self again and defeat our purpose.

Instead, we simply recall our intention: To continuously aim at a correct sitting posture with flesh and bones and to totally leave everything to that. No effort should be made to end thinking or achieve any particular mind state. If we sincerely do this practice, the thoughts will dissipate by themselves – not because of any action on our part, but simply because that is the nature of thoughts if we are not grasping after them.

Inviting All Parts of Ourselves to Trust and Rest

As we recall our intention to leave everything to our zazen posture, we need to be careful not to apply this recollection as correction. Instead, we can gently touch base with the intention we had when we sat down for zazen, and then everything will take care of itself. To make sure we’re not creating division and struggle in our meditation, it can be helpful to briefly become aware of what it was you were thinking about just before you remembered you were sitting zazen. This can be a non-judgmental acknowledgement, like, “Planning what to make for dinner.” The thought doesn’t need to be rejected, and we don’t need to evaluate our zazen. Once we recall our intention, the planning will slowly fade away.

To further minimize struggle in our zazen, it can also help to compassionately and affectionately invite all parts of ourselves to trust zazen and to fully rest. For many of us, meditation is the only time in our lives where we enter this kind of complete rest. When we’re involved in leisure activities, there is often a sense that the small self needs to actively relish its rewards. When our mind isn’t fully engaged by an activity, it spends its spare energy on self-referential processing. Our mind is busy even throughout much of our sleep. Zazen is deliberate, total, conscious relaxation of all parts of ourselves.

Even though the small self may resist entering the relaxation of zazen, it can be gently encouraged to do so. Although I just said zazen is a challenge to the small self, it is not meant to be a punishment or rejection of the small self. After all, the small self is just looking out for us. In fact, the small self is usually quite stressed and exhausted, or restless and at loose ends. Great relief can be found by convincing it that everything will be okay even if it rests for 10 minutes, or 30 minutes, or an hour. The small self is part of us, and as a whole being we long to be able to “return home and sit in peace,” as Keizan says.

The small self’s endless thinking and striving, worrying and evaluating, is a compulsion based in fear and desire. It’s possible to convince the small self that – at least for the short period of meditation – everything is okay. We are safe. We can spare a few minutes to relax completely. Over time we build trust in the practice of zazen, and in the nature of the reality that surrounds and supports us no matter what the small self is up to. This shifts our relationship to the small self, and eventually can lead to profound insights about our true nature.

Doing Zazen Incorrectly

For most us, though – unless we’re in the middle of a long meditation retreat – the small self relaxes in zazen for a few moments, maybe a minute, maybe in rare instances for several minutes or even a whole sitting period. Then, due to deeply ingrained habit energy, it gets busy again. Does this mean we are doing zazen incorrectly? It’s very tempting to come to this conclusion. After all, it’s natural to enjoy and wish for those calm, spacious moments in zazen where everything seems okay just as it is. If, despite our best intentions, our zazen is instead full of thinking – even after many years of practice – we tend to think we’re going about it wrong, or perhaps we just aren’t very good at it.

You may have heard it said that we’re not supposed to judge our zazen. For example, Zen master Keizan, in his essay “Points to keep in mind when practicing zazen,” says “Don’t be concerned with how well or how poorly you think you are doing.”[3] However, when you’ve just slept or daydreamed through your zazen, does this mean there is nothing you can or should do about it? Surely zazen isn’t about sitting still while habit energy takes over our mind! What’s the good of that?

You can do zazen incorrectly, but that statement doesn’t mean what you might think it does. Here’s a statement I hope you will take to heart:

We should judge our zazen not on the quality of the results, but on the sincerity of our effort.

Zazen is a practice, not a particular meditative state. It is the nature of our body and mind to depart from the radical simplicity and relaxation of zazen. As long as we are alive, our mind will generate thoughts, our body will perceive and respond to stimuli, and our sense of small self will arise with its agendas. Remaining utterly motionless and thoughtless is not the point of zazen, because ultimately that’s only achievable when we’re dead. The practice of zazen is wholeheartedly aiming at the correct posture with flesh and bones and leaving everything to that – over and over and over. It is the repeated surrender that transforms us, and ultimately there is nothing more we can do than that.

If we’re honest with ourselves, when we reflect on a zazen period that was full of mental and emotional busyness, we usually need to admit our effort was not so sincere. Part of us didn’t want to be sitting. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes our life is particularly stressful, and it is especially challenging for the small self to relax. Sometimes we are tired or sick. Sometimes we are excited about something. Sometimes we’re bored by zazen because it doesn’t seem to be very rewarding.

There’s no point in judging ourselves for our half-heartedness in zazen. That just creates more division and struggle in our practice. If you don’t want to sit zazen, that’s fine. No one’s making you do it.

Trusting Ourselves

On the other hand, if you’re sitting your body down on the meditation seat, there’s at least part of you which does want to do zazen. Assuming you’d like to fulfill that aspiration, all you have to do is work on your willingness to sit. I discussed how to do this in Episodes 184 and 185: 14 Ways to Enliven Your Zazen. I think you will find that creatively inspiring yourself to sit zazen wholeheartedly will be a lot more beneficial and rewarding than beating yourself up for mediocre meditation. Your zazen may still be full of thoughts or marked by dullness – mine often is – but every moment of choice you experience can be perfect zazen. If, when you wake up from the dream of thought, you gently and compassionately recall your aspiration to leave everything to your zazen posture, you are inviting the small self to relax completely. Just a few moments of this in a period of zazen is enough.

I like to think zazen is about learning to trust ourselves. When it’s just you, sitting on the meditation seat, what do you really want? Despite the tendency for our small self to resist practice and run ceaselessly in its habitual patterns, part of us longs to return home and sit in peace. Part of us intuits that there is more to life than the narrative presented by the small self. In the stillness of zazen we get in touch with our deepest longings and aspirations, and may be surprised to find they are selfless and pure.

I’ll end with a few more words from Keizan:

“Now, zazen is entering directly into the ocean of buddha-nature and manifesting the body of the Buddha. The pure and clear mind is actualized in the present moment; the original light shines everywhere. The water in the ocean neither increases nor decreases, and the waves never cease. Buddhas have appeared in this world for the sake of the one great matter; to show the wisdom and insight of the Buddha to all living beings and to make their entry possible. For this, there is a peaceful and pure way: zazen.”[4]