This is the third episode of three comprising the “Zazen” chapter of my book, “The Ten Fields of Zen Practice: A Primer for Practitioners.” I start by offering what I should have put at the beginning of my chapter on Zazen: Basic instructions for Zazen. I then discuss how my “Five Efforts in Zazen” suggest Zazen is a neat and linear process, but in actuality Zazen is a messy, organic, real-life experience. Finally, I talk about how to deepen your Zazen without getting caught up in self-centered striving.
Read/listen to Chapter 3, Part 2 or Chapter 4
See all Ten Fields of Zen Practice
Quicklinks to Article Content:
Practical Instructions for Zazen
Zazen is Messy
Deepening Your Zazen
Practical Instructions for Zazen
1. Dedicate time and space for Zazen.
Choose a comfortable, clean place to sit where you will not be interrupted by anyone. The space does not have to be silent, but it should be free from sounds that will unnecessarily draw your mind into activity, like audible conversations or entertainment. Decide how long a period of time you are dedicating to Zazen. If possible, set a timer to alert you of the end of your Zazen, so you will not have to watch the clock.
2. Position your body so you can remain perfectly still but also maintain alertness.
For most people, this is a seated posture where your spine is erect. Only use the back of a chair for support if you need to, as the physical effort to maintain the upright posture helps keep you alert. If you use the back of a chair for support, choose a chair that doesn’t require you to lean back, or else put a cushion behind your back so your spine is perpendicular to the floor. If physical issues prevent you from sitting upright, simply take a position – seated, leaning back, or lying down – which allows you to be comfortable; your physical discomfort is likely to keep you alert. See the Appendix/Episode 96 for more instructions on a good Zazen posture.
Many people wonder about the importance of seated Zazen, reasoning that there are many activities that can feel meditative, such as running, walking in nature, gardening, or playing music. It can be very beneficial to practice mindfulness while doing these other activities, but they are no substitute for sitting. Sitting motionless in Zazen, we learn to show up for Life without expecting it to be pleasurable or entertaining, and without covertly trying to kill two birds with one stone and achieve something useful while we sit. Just the act of physically setting aside all our usual activities in order to sit still is profoundly transformative.
3. Set your intention.
Consciously dedicate the period of time you have set aside for Zazen to building tolerance for Life, making peace with Life, becoming intimate with Life, or whatever best describes your deepest aspiration for sitting. You might decide to “be here now,” or to be awake for your life. Dedicate yourself to Zazen as a moment-by-moment practice that will naturally help you fulfill your aspiration without having to rely on any effort to bring about particular results in your sitting.
4. Open your awareness and sit, receptive and alert, like an infant experiencing everything for the first time.
Try not to exclude anything from your awareness or get caught in your ideas about what should be happening, or what you should be paying attention to. Imagine the edges of your awareness expanding outwards in space and time without limit. Imagine that something new could arise at any moment and come from anywhere. Notice when your interest in Zazen has waned, causing you to become passive or distracted, and lean into your intention or one of the Five Efforts.
5. When you become aware that you have become lost in thoughts, sensations, or dullness, recognize this as a precious moment of choice. You are no longer lost but have remembered your intention. Expand your awareness as you did before, taking care to include everything that just happened and is happening. Do this over and over again, letting go of any concern about how well or how poorly you are doing.
Try not to wish for thoughts, feelings, mind states, or sensations to disappear or continue. Just include them in your Zazen and they will not be a problem.
6. Surrender as completely as you can to the simple process of Zazen while you are sitting, judging the quality of your Zazen solely on the sincerity of your effort and not on the character of your experience while sitting. Evaluate whether the practice of Zazen is beneficial only after making it a regular part of your life for some time.
It is natural to wish your Zazen to be comfortable, pleasant, calm, and free from disturbing or pointless thoughts, sensations, and feelings. It is probably impossible for you to not have such preferences. Fortunately, even such desires can be included in our Zazen and therefore cease to be a problem.
Zazen is of much greater significance than the quality of your conscious experience while sitting. When you dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to the process, you change your relationship to Life – everything that happens within you, as well as everything that happens around you. This happens at physical, unconscious, subconscious, and conscious levels. Over time, you will hopefully find that the practice of Zazen helps you feel more sane, and inexorably leads to greater intimacy with Life.
Zazen is Messy
So far in this chapter (in the last two episodes), I have described Zazen as our “Total Response to Life,” and described Five Efforts we make in Zazen: Building tolerance for Life, making peace with Life, becoming intimate with Life, seeing the true nature of Life, and being one with Life. I hope my descriptions have been inspiring and have communicated some of the profound nature of Zazen.
Unfortunately, neat explanations of Zazen can easily give you the impression that the practice is much more straightforward than it actually is. You might end up thinking about the Five Efforts as five stages of Zazen you can expect to go through over the course of one sitting period, or one retreat, or over the course of a few years if you work very hard. You might expect that if you approach it in the right way, you will see your Zazen experience becoming more and more focused, peaceful, and quiet, until most of the time your sitting will be a blissfully intimate and enlightening encounter with Life.
The thing is, Zazen is a real-life experience of your whole being. It’s not meditation practice in the sense of a mental discipline certain people can master, where that mastery might have a recognizable linear progression for those lucky folks. Zazen is not a practice you do to gain more control over your unruly mind, body, and emotions. Instead, in order to sit Zazen completely, you have to radically realign your entire life – summoning the courage to face Life, transcending the limitations of self-centeredness in order to energetically show up even when you’re not getting anything out of it, and leaning with curiosity into what you do not yet know. This is not an easy or straightforward process. There can be “progress” – in the sense that you become familiar with all five of the efforts in Zazen – but that progress will not be linear, whether you’re talking about one sitting period, one retreat, or over years of practice. Your path of practice won’t be exactly like anyone else’s, and some people’s experiences will seem very different than yours.
Zazen instructions and descriptions can be very useful as long as you hold them lightly and try not to create too many expectations out of them. It’s like a thoughtful book on what makes a good marriage. You may get many useful tips out of such a detailed examination. Some parts of it may inspire you deeply or help put words to things you have experienced. In the end, however, no book can fully capture or describe what a good marriage is. All marriages are different, even though most of them have essential things in common.
Even more importantly, descriptions of aspects of a good marriage such as clear communication, mutual respect, and deep intimacy point toward experiences you will hopefully have from time to time in a partnership, but most of the time you’ll simply be living everyday life with someone – negotiating who should do what household task, putting up with your partner’s snoring, or realizing you’re too exhausted to be good company at the moment. If you were to track the amount of time you spend consciously appreciating your marriage versus the amount of time you’re just navigating life’s challenges with a partner in the picture, the conscious appreciation part of your relationship would probably be revealed to be quite small. This does not in any way invalidate the beautiful parts of marriage, it’s just the way life is.
Everyday life is messy, and so is Zazen. The messiness should not discourage you, though. If you keep up the effort, you will personally experience many of the things I have described. Just be ready to keep doing Zazen even when it isn’t obvious that you’re making any “progress.” Some sitting periods, some days, some weeks, even some years of Zazen may feel fuzzy, dull, or distracted – even if you’ve been sitting for years and have had Zazen experiences in the past that you feel were more alert and focused. Engaged and energetic Zazen is not simply a matter of will, it’s a matter of a choice made by your whole being. Many factors influence the state of your mind, body, and heart, and sometimes it can be a mystery why one Zazen period feels like a struggle, but the next one feels expansive and invigorating.
Deepening Your Zazen
There’s no denying that sometimes your Zazen feels like it’s more “on the mark” than at other times. What are you supposed to do about that? If you start evaluating your Zazen and striving for certain experiences, you get in the way of your own practice. As I hope I’ve made clear, Zazen is the practice of opening to whatever is happening, inside us and around us, including our experience in Zazen. We’re not aiming to fix or figure out anything, not even how to make our Zazen more quiet, spacious, insightful, intimate, or nondual.
Fortunately, there is a way to deepen your Zazen without turning it into a self-centered, agenda-driven activity. When you notice your Zazen feels “off the mark,” take this as a sign that you are not wholeheartedly choosing to do Zazen. It’s not that you are employing the wrong method or lacking in self-discipline, both conclusions you are likely to draw if you approach Zazen like meditation practice. In Zazen you avoid, as much as possible, creating a false division between some “Executive I” who is trying to meditate and whatever seems to get in your way, whether that’s your unruly mind, your uncomfortable body, the distracting world, or the difficult task of meditating “well.” In Reality, there are no such divisions.
Zazen is a choice to be intimate with Life, moment after moment. There are countless reasons why you might be less than wholehearted and enthusiastic in that choice. You may be sick, exhausted, stressed, worried, or depressed. Your sitting may be physically painful or mentally uncomfortable. Maybe you are excited about something else. Your Zazen may have felt pointless and unrewarding recently. There may be many aspects of Life you have not yet made peace with, and this obstructs the simplicity of heart necessary for wholehearted Zazen. You may not yet fully trust the practice of Zazen because you perceive it as disconnected from compassionate response to the world. You may be impatient for spiritual insights and profound meditative experiences. The most common reason we are halfhearted or unfocused in our Zazen is a subtle but compelling belief that we have plenty of time left in this life and will apply ourselves energetically to practice at some point in the future.
You can deepen your Zazen by cultivating your willingness to be present for Life. You can think of this as “enlivening” your Zazen rather than trying to fix it. There are many ways to do this. You can remind yourself that life is short and ephemeral; you may die this very day. You can connect with your heart by thinking about who or what you most care about and be motivated by love. You can stimulate your openness and curiosity by calling to mind profound teachings that intrigue or inspire you – not trying to figure them out, but reminding yourself of all you do not yet understand, and connecting with your sincere desire to know for yourself. You can settle into the mystery of your body, which miraculously sits upright, breathes, and pumps blood without any conscious direction. You can recognize your need for a complete and total break from all your responsibilities and give yourself permission to rest. Any turning of your mind or body which helps you appreciate the preciousness of Zazen can work.
You can also deepen your Zazen by diligently practicing in all the other fields of Zen. Zazen is like a catalyst – an essential ingredient that helps bring about change in all parts of your life – but the other aspects of your practice allow you to be more wholehearted and focused in Zazen. Cultivating Bodhicitta increases your determination. Dharma study challenges your delusions. Living according to the precepts brings greater peace to your life. Karma work leads to healing and acceptance. Awakening heightens your awareness of impermanence and the inestimable value of your human life. Often, changes in other areas of your life will deepen your Zazen more than any conscious effort you make in Zazen.
How do the Five Efforts of Zazen relate to deepening your Zazen? You might think you should identify which effort you’re making in your Zazen and try, eventually, to push on to the next effort. If this works for you without making Zazen into an agenda-driven activity, go ahead. However, the best approach is probably to be familiar with the efforts and let them inspire you to keep expanding your awareness and exploring the true nature of Life, without getting too literal or specific about one effort versus another. Most of the time, you will recognize the characteristics of a particular kind of effort only after the fact. During Zazen it’s just Zazen, which is really the same practice from beginning to end.
Read/listen to Chapter 3, Part 2 or Chapter 4
See all Ten Fields of Zen Practice
