150 - Zazen as the Dharma Gate of Joyful Ease

In this episode I focus on how zazen is the dharma gate of joyful ease, because experiencing it as such is so profoundly restorative at a time when our lives tend to be stressful in many ways. I also think it’s necessary to explore the way in which zazen is the dharma gate of joyful ease because that dharma gate is subtle and can be elusive because to enter it we have to let go of all of our normal ways of operating.

Quicklinks to Article Content:
Disclaimer about this Episode on Zazen
Zazen Compared to Meditation
Zazen Compared to Prayer
Zazen is Not Something We Do
Entering the Dharma Gate of Joyful Ease
What Do We Do When Our Minds Wander?
Practicing Wholeness in Zazen
Ways to Deepen Zazen without Doing Anything
Really, We’re Not Trying to Do Anything
When Zazen is Difficult
Giving Ourselves a Break When Necessary
Conclusion

Disclaimer about this Episode on Zazen

It’s been a while since I sang the praises of zazen or Zen meditation, so that’s what I want to do today. I hope to convey the message Zen master Dogen expressed in his writings when he said, “The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice. It is simply the dharma gate of joyful ease.”[i]

I’m talking, of course, about the Soto Zen style of meditation — the zazen of Zen master Dogen. This kind of meditation is also referred to as shikantaza, or “just sitting.” Nothing but precisely sitting, or precisely nothing but sitting.

I realize you may do some other form of meditation, either some time, or all the time. Actually, I know very few people who, like myself, only sit shikantaza. Even fans of this form of zazen describe how they often start off with breath counting or following the breath, or some concentration practice, or they turn to such a practice if they find their minds are too busy.

Personally, I believe it’s best to commit yourself to shikantaza alone. (That is, if you like it, if you want to do it.) This is because shikantaza involves a complete surrender to being present with whatever is happening without trying to control it. If you always have an alternative in the back of your mind–a form of meditation, you could try if you don’t like what’s happening in zazen–then your surrender can’t be complete.

That’s me. I believe this 100%. But I also, frankly, can count on one hand the number of students who agree with me, despite a dozen podcast episodes pleading my case! (e.g. 64 – Shikantaza: Having the Guts to Just Sit and Let Go of Doing Anything, and 69 – The Soto Zen Goal of Goallessness: How to Awaken Without Trying). I hope, for this episode, you will bear with my rather fanatical ode to zazen and find something useful in it even if you’re not as committed to shikantaza as I am.

Zazen Compared to Meditation

To repeat my favorite Dogen phrase about zazen: “The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice. It is simply the dharma gate of joyful ease.”[ii]

Language is just an expression about reality and not reality itself, so there are infinite ways to describe zazen. Today I want to focus on how zazen is the dharma gate of joyful ease because experiencing it as such is so profoundly restorative at a time when our lives tend to be stressful in many ways. I also think it’s necessary to explore carefully the way in which zazen is the dharma gate of joyful ease because that dharma gate is subtle and can be elusive. This is because, to enter it, we have to let go of all of our normal ways of operating.

In contrast, our normal ways of operating are, I think, completely compatible with meditation as we usually conceive of it. For example, we set aside some time for our zazen and we tell other people we’re “meditating” because at least these days most people have some idea of what that means. Most people–perhaps ourselves included–think meditation means calming or concentrating our mind in some way for a period of time because of the benefits it brings. And those benefits are real. At least momentarily, perhaps, we feel more calm. We feel more independence from our emotions, get some perspective, perhaps even insight, greater awareness, and sense of mindfulness.

Perhaps we experience an ability to control our minds at least to some extent so we’re not so caught up in thinking or worrying, fantasizing, or stewing on afflictive emotions. Meditation in this ordinary sense, then, is something we do similar to exercise or therapy or some other healthy activity. And yet Dogen’s zazen, my zazen, is not like this.

Zazen Compared to Prayer

If it is comparable to anything, zazen is more like prayer. It involves setting aside time when we take up a humble open attitude–where we listen, orient ourselves towards something greater, something that transcends or runs deeper than our ordinary daily self-centered concerns. Where we make space, and set aside our ordinary activities and entertainments.

Of course, zazen is unlike prayer in that we are not conceiving of some being or force who will receive our devotions. We’re not imagining a supernatural being or force is asking us to sit zazen, or will be disappointed if we don’t, or who will tip the scales in the favor of our good fortune because of our practice

However, if you stop short of conceiving of some supernatural being or force in relation to your zazen, you can tap into a sense that the universe as a whole does indeed benefit from, and harmonizes with, and in a subtle way responds to, your effort. There is, in a sense, a positive response to your act of making space, listening, bearing witness, and being present for your life.

Also like prayer, zazen is best done with no expectation of reward. Theists–at least the more mystically minded–will usually agree that prayers involving listening and openness and offering are more profound than prayers asking for specific favors.

Zazen is Not Something We Do

Therefore, I recommend making space for zazen in your life in way that’s somewhat similar to how you might make space for prayer in your life if you if you believed in God (or if you do believe).

This means dedicating yourself to zazen because it aligns you with a deeper reality, and doing it without an expectation of particular results – or even a particular experience. This is what is challenging to most people about zazen: It’s emphasis on spaciousness, stillness, and letting go. We want to know, “What are we supposed to do in zazen?” But that is the wrong question. We aren’t meant to be doing anything in the ordinary sense of the word.

You might say zazen is something we allow, rather than something we do.

Still… even with prayer there’s a difference between prayer done wholeheartedly and prayer done with resistance and distracted mind. Zazen rarely becomes a dharma gate of joyful ease unless we know for ourselves how to enter that dharma gate.

(Although I will say that I do believe there’s still a great value, immense value in zazen, even if or when it doesn’t feel like a dharma gate of joyful ease. Just as, as a theist, you wouldn’t stop praying or hopefully you wouldn’t if you were truly devotional just because your prayers don’t feel particularly profound at the moment.)

Entering the Dharma Gate of Joyful Ease

The trick is to find ways to more fully engage your zazen without engaging in any kind of activity – any kind of effort to control your mind or your experience.

In most forms of meditation you have an object of concentration, and when your mind wanders you “return” your mind to your meditative object. Many people think zazen is similar, but that our “meditative object” is the present moment. So, when your mind wanders you return it to “the present moment.” But this involves an idea about the present moment. What is the present moment? Is the present moment defined as being our bare sensations with no thoughts attached?

Concentrating on the “present moment” also involves ideas about ourselves (“I” am now in the present moment, or a few seconds ago “I” wasn’t in the present moment). Conceiving of the “present moment” as being thought free, or at least not being caught up in thoughts, divides our experience into times of “successful meditation” versus “failing at meditation.”

This is not the dharma gate of joyful ease. Joyful ease means shining the light of awareness on everything that happens during zazen without judgement, and with appreciation because all of it is your experience of being alive. Zazen is based on the fact that it is a miracle simply to be alive, and therefore being fully present within our lives just as they are gives us stability, peace of mind, and even joy.

What Do We Do When Our Minds Wander?

Surely “shining the light of awareness on everything that happens during zazen without judgement” doesn’t mean indulging in the various obsessions and fantasies and distractions that arise in our minds as we sit!

True, but during zazen we also do not fight the obsessions and fantasies and distractions. Believing we need to fight them prevents us from entering the dharma gate of joyful ease. Believing we need to fight them also sets some imagined “executive I” within us against our unruly hearts and minds.

Zazen is about wholeness. Everything we encounter is our life, including our desire to control things and our unruly, self-obsessed hearts and minds. We simply shine the light of awareness on it all, and in that subtle and simple act, much of the inner turmoil driving us toward our obsessions and fantasies and distractions decreases or fades away. When we awaken from the dream of thought for a moment, this is not the triumph of some “executive I.” Centuries of Buddhism and modern research tells us there is no such thing as an “executive I.” Our conscious self is simply a narrative we construct to explain our actions to self and others.

However, that does not mean we are without free will, without the ability to decide how we want our lives to go. What we have is moments of choice. When we awaken from the dream of thought, it is a precious moment of choice. We are not directly responsible for, or in control, of awakening from the dream. It happens, then what do we do? What do we do with that precious moment of choice?

We can, however, make such moments of choice happen more often depending on what we do. In zazen, in that moment of choice, we shine the light of awareness on whatever is happening. This is an absolutely effortless, natural thing. You don’t have to work to be aware of your hand in this moment, do you? Or your breathing?

Now, it becomes work when you then conceive of an “I” who is now aware of your hand, and who needs to remain aware of your hand for at least the next minute or so in order to succeed at meditation. Of course, as soon as zazen become work, you shine the light of awareness on that, too. No problem.

Practicing Wholeness in Zazen

To practice wholeness, we simply include whatever has just happened in our embrace – include it our sense of our life, whether we like it or not, whether we approve of it or not, whether it fits with our sense of what spiritual practice or zazen should be or not. Whatever just happened – getting caught up in worry, or reviewing the plot of last night’s TV show, or drowsiness, or fantasy – is part of what is.

Absolutely nothing that happens during zazen is excluded – even our preferences about meditation, our hope for calm, our confusion, our resentments… The light of awareness is what brings together all of the disparate and warring parts of ourselves; like a cool breeze it calms the waters; like a lullaby it tames the crying child.

As Zen Master Keizan wrote in Zazen-Yojinki:

“Although we speak of ‘practice,’ it is not a practice that you can do. That is to say, the body does nothing, the mouth does not recite, the mind doesn’t think things over, the six senses are left to their own clarity and unaffected.”[iii]

When we hear this description, we’re likely to think of some placid, thought-free state we strive to achieve, but the practice of zazen is not about what happens during zazen, it’s about our attitude toward what happens during zazen, which is a microcosm of our life.

When our minds wander in zazen, we don’t “return to” some idea of “the present moment;” there is no “returning” because we have not gone anywhere, there is simply the light of awareness appearing and spreading out over what’s happening. The light illuminates and brings into consciousness, it doesn’t judge or exclude or avoid, it falls equally on everything.

Ways to Deepen Zazen without Doing Anything

Still, there are subtle practices we can do to encourage ourselves to be more wholehearted in our zazen – practices that we try to use very, very gently, so they don’t become doing (trying to control our meditative experience, trying to achieve a particular outcome).

Set your intention at the beginning: For the next _____ minutes, I want to (insert what works for you here). Just say ‘I want to just sit.’ ‘I want to sit zazen.’

My version: “For the next _____ minutes, I want to set aside all activity in order to align with what is most important.”

Then, when I awaken from a dream of thought in which I’m planning a project or something, I shine the light of awareness on what just happened, on what’s happening, and my intention is also present, made stronger because of my explicit formulation of it.

Other approaches I’ve heard is to repeat a word or a verse to yourself that helps you open up to the space of zazen (wholeheartedness, be here now, let go)–judge whether these words or practices work based on their effect on our body mind. Do we feel a sense of relaxation? A sense of our chest opening? A sense of a widened perspective? We’re trying to align our mental and emotional posture with our physical. A ways back, I introduced the four “S’s” for meditation: sitting upright, still, silent, simply be. And you might add a fifth, shine the light of awareness on everything that arises.

However! We should not use even these practices as corrections.

Even these things we can apply as reactions when we realize our minds have been wandering, as a way to cut off the thoughts, or to return to a particular kind of experience we identify as being better meditation (calm, or pleasant, or thought-free). Instead of using any of this as a correction, even returning to our intention/aspiration, simply engage in an utterly free, sincere reconnection with what we ourselves most want. We don’t even have to recall our intention, when the light of awareness is shining, our intention is there.

Really, We’re Not Trying to Do Anything

Even after 25 years of sitting zazen, I will find myself sitting there thinking, “This zazen session isn’t so good.”

Why will I be thinking that? I’m caught up in planning, worrying, writing, describing. Or I’m daydreaming about the plots of TV shows, movies, books… rehearsing things I’d like to say to people. Or falling asleep… Dull, unfocused. Maybe I only “awaken” a few times during a half-hour sitting. Then I realize I have some idea about meditation practice, some idea that I should be sitting there doing something, and I’m failing to do it.

Then I remind myself zazen is nothing more than making space and seeing what happens. There is nothing I’m supposed to be doing, nothing I’m supposed to be achieving. All I’m doing is sitting there and seeing what happens. Whatever happens, as long as I embrace it, it is my zazen. And in that moment of embracing, there is a moment of joyful ease… letting go of the burdensome idea that something needs to be different, needs to be fixed or improved.

“Haha,” I will think, “look at my busy mind playing with its projects. This being really does have a lot of passion! How nice that I awakened and have a moment of choice… with this moment of choice, I embrace it all.”

Even if such moments happen only a couple times during the zazen session, they are deeply restorative; they realign everything.

When Zazen is Difficult

What is challenging, of course, is when what we encounter in zazen is something we don’t want to embrace: Pain, distress, confusion, anger, anxiety, random or disturbing thoughts…

When we are brought face-to-face with ourselves in zazen, we usually feel negative judgment about what we see. Our character, personality, practice, isn’t up to par – somewhere on the spectrum between utterly pathetic and worthy only of rejection, and vaguely disappointing. Some people mention their minds are so busy they hardly have a moment of stillness, and this is unpleasant, makes them dislike zazen; but I suggest it is less that the mind wandering is itself unpleasant, than it’s unpleasant to witness the lack of control we have over our minds

In other words, what’s difficult to embrace is a sense of self that fails to live up to our expectations. Even if our self esteem is okay, a final analysis of ourselves is impossible because the self is empty of any enduring, inherent nature. So embracing whatever we encounter in zazen, whatever we encounter in our life, is not necessarily easy. Doing so does not necessarily result in an experience of joyful ease that makes everything better.

The embrace, the wholeness, is more subtle than that. But it is also profound. We don’t have to like what we embrace. We don’t have to make a positive judgment about it. We do need to recognize that whatever we’re encountering is part of our reality. In order to practice wholeness, we stop denying or resisting what has come to pass, what is unfolding in this moment. In so doing, we surrender the conviction that things should not be this way.

Our embrace of whatever we experience or encounter says absolutely nothing about what actions we should take in the future. But for the moment, we establish a sense of wholeness. That wholeness itself is what gives us some measure of joyful ease, some measure of sanity, some peace of heart and mind.

Giving Ourselves a Break When Necessary

So as a necessary disclaimer, when things are really tough it can be even more difficult to sit zazen. It’s challenging to embrace our experience when it’s painful or when our minds get stuck in harmful loops of depressing, or anxiety-producing thoughts.

At such times we can certainly do other forms of meditation that help us connect with our bodies, disrupt the harmful mental patterns. We can do meta practice, we can do walking practice. It’s absolutely fine to do practices that nourish us in another way.

In the end, we want to face what is really going on in our lives. So you would have to build up your tolerance for zazen at such times, or take it in small doses.

Conclusion

Our zazen is not meditation practice. It is more like contemplative prayer – making space, setting aside self-interested activities, listening – although without an external object.

Regardless of our experience of zazen, we are sitting upright, still, silent, simply being. How would we not be simply being? How can you be doing anything other than the reality of your life? The main challenge is you may not like the reality of your life, so you try to reject, understand, improve, dis-identify with it.

Our practice is to use our precious moments of choice to embrace whatever is happening. To include, to practice wholeness, to shine the light of awareness on everything. Over and over, without counting the number of moments of choice we end up having during a meditation session.

But at the same time trying to be as wholehearted in our embrace as we can possibly be… this is the dharma gate of joyful ease. We don’t have to do anything except shine the light of awareness on whatever happens, the easiest and most natural of activities.

As Zen Master Keizan says in Zazen Yojinki: “zazen is like returning home and sitting in peace.”[iv]