250 - In Zazen We Stop Imposing Ourselves on the World and Meet It Instead

In zazen we stop imposing ourselves on the world either through our habitual thinking or through any effort to control or judge our meditative experience. Only then can we meet the world us it is unfolding around, within, and through us – but this meeting requires energy and participation. This episode addresses the two essential aspects of zazen practice: What we are not doing, and what we are doing. Both are equally important and both are easily misunderstood.

Quicklinks to Article Content
“Doing” and “Not-Doing” in Zazen
How Do We Stop “Imposing Ourselves on the World” During Zazen?
Meta-Awareness as Contrasted to the Mind’s Thinking Faculty
Meeting the World During Zazen
What Gets in the Way of Our Zazen

Today I want to build on an idea I presented in Episode 244 – Zazen as a Religious Act. I like to think that my thoughts on how to share the practice of zazen are evolving – that I’m getting better at it, as opposed to just repeating myself in my many episodes singing the praises of Zen meditation. I’ll let you be the judge! And if your central practice happens to be a form of meditation I would call “directed effort meditation,” I suspect you will still find something useful in what I’m going to say. If you do, let me know!

In “Zazen as a Religious Act,” I argued that our zazen practice is not a practical or operational thing we do to achieve results such as stress relief, greater mental health, or insight. Or rather, zazen may have some positive benefits, but these are not the most important reasons to sit. Instead, zazen is profound and inestimable because it is our “total response to life.” In Episode 244 I suggested letting go of viewing zazen in a utilitarian way, which might lead you to focus on results or how well you think you are doing it, and instead view it as your sincerest response to life – to be yourself as wholeheartedly as you can, and to fully inhabit your own life just as it is.

I didn’t talk much in that episode about the practice of zazen itself – what we are doing (or not doing) as we sit there, which makes it such a meaningful “total response to life.” When it comes to shikantaza, the practice of just sitting, an effective description is a perennial challenge for Zen teachers. It is an activity unlike any other, so any of the words we use to describe other activities are misleading when applied to zazen. Dogen even said zazen is “not meditation practice”! Still, zazen is a deliberate, conscious act; it doesn’t spontaneously happen any time we happen to take a seat. It’s not just daydreaming or ruminating. And yet… any effort we make to manipulate our experience just gets in the way.

This episode is the result of my latest reflections on the incredibly subjective and existential matter of zazen.

“Doing” and “Not-Doing” in Zazen

The title of this episode is “In Zazen We Stop Imposing Ourselves on the World and Meet It Instead,” and that neatly summarizes what I want to say. I think this description of zazen addresses the two essential aspects of the practice: What we are not doing, and what we are doing.

Not doing in zazen is very challenging, but perhaps even more challenging is remaining fully engaged once we have set aside all our agendas. From the perspective of the small self, this sounds like the most boring and useless thing in the world. This is why, if we do manage to achieve a few moments of not doing, our zazen often becomes sleepy, dull, or murky. In order to rouse ourselves or increase the energy in our sitting, we then do something again, seeing no alternative.

In wholehearted zazen, though, we have a lot to do – even though it’s not the usual kind of “doing.” We aim to meet each moment of our meditation period as a precious moment of our life we will never experience again, which is exactly what each moment is. We set an intention to be fully and wholeheartedly present. However, this “presence” is not about cultivating a sense that “I” have achieved an unbroken consciousness of “each passing moment,” as if we have finally managed to slow the sands of our life as they fall through the hourglass of time.

In contrast, the way we show up in zazen is deeply personal. It’s about settling into your own skin bag for a time, showing up to meet the life that is unfolding within you and around you constantly, without ceasing. Meeting the world is about great intimacy, and it requires courage and strength of character. It becomes possible only when we momentarily stop imposing ourselves on the world and let things come to us. This is what Dogen meant in Genjokoan when he said:

Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice-enlightenment is delusion. All things coming and carrying out practice-enlightenment through the self is realization.[i]

How Do We Stop “Imposing Ourselves on the World” During Zazen?

Let me first discuss the not doing of zazen in greater depth. As we physically sit still in zazen, in a literal sense we have momentarily stopped imposing ourselves on the world around us. Of course, our mind doesn’t necessarily become still just because our body has. It continues to generate thoughts, including ruminations about the past, worries about the future, fantasies, and random daydreams.

I’m calling our habitual thinking imposing ourselves on the world because even though it’s only through our thoughts, it involves actively asserting ourselves in the process of our lives – interpreting, analyzing, planning, trying to understand, or entertaining ourselves. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these activities; they are an important part of our everyday lives. In zazen we aspire to temporarily set these endeavors aside so we can perceive what the rest of the universe is saying and doing. So we can meet life directly and intimately instead of only interacting with it through the filter of our ideas and agendas.

How do we embrace not doing with our mind? How do we stop imposing ourselves on the world?

In Fukanzazengi, or “Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen [ii],” Dogen says (this translation by the Soto Shu translation project):

Do not think “good” or “bad.” Do not judge true or false. Give up the operations of mind, intellect, and consciousness; stop measuring with thoughts, ideas, and views. [iii]

He also says:

Think of not thinking. Not thinking – what kind of thinking is that? Nonthinking. This is the essential art of zazen. [iv]

When we hear these instructions, we naturally think zazen involves trying to slow down or stop our thinking. Don’t think, don’t judge, do nonthinking! Typically, people diligently practice noticing when they are caught up in thinking, and then “letting go and returning to the present moment.” This sounds all well and good, but there is a potential trap even in this subtle effort when we create duality in our experience by excluding our thinking from the present moment. It is very easy to create some concept of “the present moment” as being the sights and sounds in our immediate environment – what’s happening outside of our skin bag, or at least what’s happening outside of our brain.

Creating an artificial division between “the present moment” and the thoughts that arise in our minds is just another form of imposing ourselves on the world. The result is generally one of two things: One, the practice of “letting go of thoughts and returning to the present moment” doesn’t really go anywhere. We sit with just as many thoughts, and nothing in our zazen really changes. We may experience benefits from the practice, but it doesn’t feel particularly intimate or satisfying. The second result, if we’re fairly good at concentrating, is we manage to achieve a fairly thoughtless state of mind that is pleasant and calming. This may have benefits, but we are liable to become attached to our still state of mind and consider it a victory over our unruly thoughts. A still, calm mind is nice, but zazen is more profound than that.

So how can we extricate ourselves from imposing ourselves on the world through our habitual thinking without creating a false duality and thereby imposing ourselves on the world in a more subtle way? If we simply give up any effort in zazen, we’ll usually just daydream away our meditation time.

Meta-Awareness as Contrasted to the Mind’s Thinking Faculty

The thing is, there are different levels to our experience. When Dogen tells us to stop thinking “good” or “bad,” to stop judging “true” or “false,” and to “give up the operations of mind, intellect, and consciousness,” he is speaking, I think, about a kind of meta-awareness we have about our experience as a whole – a higher-level awareness that includes but is not limited to our mind’s thinking faculty. When we have meta-awareness, or you might say when our attention is wide open instead of being narrowed down onto a particular subject or activity, we are aware of what we’re doing and thinking as well as other things – our posture, what’s going on around us, our feelings, and the choices we are making.

At a basic level our thinking mind generates thoughts. That’s just what it naturally does. In a certain sense we’re aware when we’re caught up in thoughts (we’re certainly not unconscious in a sense of being asleep or passed out), but our meta-awareness is lacking. Our attention is narrowed down on our thoughts such that we are oblivious to most other things. Until we become aware of our experience as a whole again, we lack choice about what happens next. Then suddenly, inexplicably, our meta-awareness returns. We recognize what’s happening – that even though we sat down to meditate, we were lost in thought a moment ago. In this instant, we are no longer lost. We have choice. Now what do we do?

Now – when our meta-awareness has returned – is when we refrain from thinking “good” or “bad,” judging “true” or “false.” Now is when we “give up the operations of mind, intellect, and consciousness.”

In other words, we practice nonthinking – letting go of any kind of discrimination – about our experience as we sit there in zazen, without differentiating between inside and outside. Whatever has just happened, we refrain from rejecting it, commenting on it, improving it, analyzing it, anything. You may have just been sitting there fantasizing about buying a new car. That’s part of what was happening in that present-moment-a-few-moments-ago, no different from the warm breeze or the sound of birds singing. You had no control over those thoughts, but you have control now. What are you going to do? Identify fantasizing about a car as an unacceptable part of your reality and jerk your mind back to some arbitrary thing called “the present moment”? No.

To do zazen wholeheartedly, “Do not think “good” or “bad” about anything you experience in zazen, including your thoughts. Do not judge true or false about anything you experience in zazen, including your thoughts. Stop measuring with thoughts, ideas, and views with respect to your meditative experience, which, after all, is simply the experience of your life during the time you are sitting zazen.

Most people hear “do not think good or bad,” or “stop measuring with thoughts, ideas, and views,” and assume this means they are violating these instructions when they fantasize about buying a new car in zazen. “Uh oh,” they think, “there I go again, doing bad zazen.” People evaluate the quality of their zazen based on how many thoughts intrude on their experience while they sit there. But when we interpret Dogen’s instructions for zazen to mean we should aim to stop the arising of thoughts, we are misunderstanding them entirely. It is not possible to stop the arising of thoughts.

You have no choice in the matter of what thought pops into your head, but you do have a choice about what to do once your meta-awareness returns. If a hundred thoughts arise in your mind during a 30-minute period of zazen and a hundred times you become aware of this and think, “This is not zazen! I must let go of this thought and return to the present moment,” you are doing exactly what Dogen asks you not to do – you are choosing to think good and bad, and choosing to measure with your thoughts, ideas, and views about zazen and the state of your mind. If a hundred thoughts arise in your mind during a 30-minute period of zazen and a hundred times you refrain from reacting in any way to the fact that you were just thinking, you are doing perfect zazen.

Meeting the World During Zazen

If we do perfect zazen in this way, won’t we simply end up embroiled in our thoughts? Surely we will waste our time on the meditation seat if we do not make a course correction when we realize we’re thinking, if we don’t make an effort to let go of thoughts and return our attention to the present moment, if we don’t identify “being caught up in thoughts” as something we are trying to avoid!

This is where the other half of my latest description of zazen comes in. After we “stop imposing ourselves on the world” either through our habitual thinking or our efforts to control our meditation, we meet the world.

Meeting the world is challenging because the instant we’re not doing, our “small self” – the part identified with our desires and agendas – becomes confused and bored. When we recognize that, a moment ago in our zazen, we were caught up in fantasies of buying a new car and we do absolutely nothing about that fact, the small self loses interest. If we’re not going to fantasize and we’re not going to try to improve our meditation, there’s no point in sticking around for this utterly pointless exercise. We usually find our attention wandering, or find ourselves getting dull or sleepy, or find ourselves pulled back into another train of thought.

In wholehearted zazen, we challenge ourselves to show up in a new and refreshing way – a way that makes no sense to the small self. Despite the fact that we are not trying to get anything out of our zazen, despite the fact that we are refraining from imposing ourselves on the world in any way, we aim to remain alert, aware, energetic, interested, and receptive. We aim to bring utter sincerity, curiosity, and enthusiasm to each moment of our zazen, showing up as wholeheartedly as we would for our very favorite activity or form of entertainment.

When we completely surrender to zazen, there is no boredom. It doesn’t matter that we’re sitting there while nothing is going on in our immediate environment. Every instant, every atom, every arising is the world coming to meet us, seamlessly becoming the stuff of our life without any action necessary on the part of our small self. The thoughts that arise in our minds are part of the myriad phenomena, no more or less significant than anything else. We stop taking the thoughts personally, much less the fact that they are arising.

At times, and for some people this may happen fairly often, the thoughts in our mind decrease in number and intensity. When we are deep in zazen, they may subside completely for a matter of time. This is a valuable state that we cultivate in sesshin, and it is to be celebrated because of the clarity it brings. However, it is not achieved through vanquishing thoughts. It is a natural outcome of diligently refraining from imposing ourselves on the world, and instead showing up to meet it. It is not a reward for strenuous effort and meditative skill, it is a matter of humility, surrender, faith, and sincerity – showing up, moment after moment, inhabiting this skin bag and not trying to change a single thing.

What Gets in the Way of Our Zazen

Zazen may sound like a simple thing to do, but anyone who has tried will know it is not. However, the reasons zazen is challenging are not what we think they are. You may assume your zazen is difficult or unsatisfying for the following reasons:

You are new to it and therefore haven’t developed the necessary skills.
You have a busy mind with lots of thoughts and feelings.
You have little self-discipline in the sense that you can’t control your mind.
You just don’t have what it takes. (Whatever that is – some kind of mysterious characteristic that person over there seems to have.)
You are too distracted by physical or emotional pain.

However, none of these things has anything to do with zazen and do not present any kind of obstacle to it. I hope my description of zazen so far in the episode has made it clear that good zazen is not a matter of suppressing thoughts or developing some kind of special meditative skill. It’s also not a matter of attaining some rarified blissful state that might be out of your grasp because you have to deal with pain instead. Pain, like thoughts, is simply part of what is happening in the reality that is the-world-not-separate-from-self.

Here are the real reasons your zazen might be difficult or unsatisfying:

You lack faith in the practice. This is perfectly understandable, especially if you’re new to it. It sure doesn’t sound like a very useful thing to do, and these crazy instructions to do nothing don’t sound like they’ll actually work.
You misunderstand what zazen is. Most people think it’s about “letting go of thoughts and returning to the present moment,” or aiming for a pleasant, calm, spacious state of mind with few thoughts – something we keep hoping for even if it eludes us most of the time.
You have little self-discipline in the sense that you can’t make yourself sit zazen even when it’s difficult or unsatisfying.
You don’t want to settle into this skin bag and inhabit your life wholeheartedly, just as it is. You reject or resist parts of yourself, or your life, or the world, and can’t bring yourself to stop imposing yourself on the world even for a moment.
You fear the intimacy of meeting the world directly, and the emptiness that meeting implies. Our experience of Reality-with-a-Capital-R when we truly surrender to zazen is intense and unfamiliar. It is wonderful, but the small self may dream up all kinds of fears about what will happen to us if we really let go.

What can you do about these real obstacles to zazen?

The only way to build faith in the practice of zazen is to do it. Fortunately, long before it feels profound and transcendent, long before you think you’re any good at it, the practice is inexplicably beneficial.

To get over your misunderstanding about what zazen is, notice that your practice is difficult and unsatisfying and explore why, using my list of real obstacles as an entry gate. Don’t just assume you should try harder at what you’ve already been doing, or that you don’t have what it takes and just need to accept blasé zazen.

Lack of self-discipline is a tougher obstacle, but if you manage to sit even when you don’t particularly enjoy it, you will hopefully experience some benefits. These can then inspire you to sit more. Over time, your faith in the practice should increase, especially if you can attend sesshin.

An unwillingness to settle into this skin bag and inhabit your life wholeheartedly is a huge obstacle to zazen, probably the primary one we face throughout our practice lives. There are countless reasons we reject or resist parts of ourselves, our lives, or the world. These reasons may be obvious, such as physical or mental illness, suffering injustice, or poverty. They can also be judgments we make about ourselves, or subtle reasons not to be satisfied.

Much of our non-zazen practice is aimed at studying the self and gradually learning to accept ourselves and embrace our Buddha-Nature. This work can help our zazen. Zazen can also help the rest of our work, and it may help to keep in mind that when we sit, we are only temporarily refraining from imposing ourselves on the world – only temporarily setting aside any effort to figure things out, attain things, take care of things, create things, or improve things. Sitting zazen wholeheartedly does not mean we give up all our life activities, no more than a good night’s sleep means we never again get out of bed. In zazen we restore balance so we can meet the world directly and be more present in our everyday lives.

Finally, we can gradually overcome our fears about what will happen to us if we surrender completely to zazen – if we really meet the world in an undefended way and see how superfluous the small self really is in the grand scheme of things. It is permanently liberating to face our fears of isolation, annihilation, groundlessness, voidness, and meaninglessness and find that Reality-with-a-Capital-R is none of those things. However, it wouldn’t be a good idea to face all our fears at one fell swoop even if that was possible. Instead, we face a little bit at a time, like dipping our toe into cool water, then stepping in up to our ankles, then slowly wading in.