Fearless Back in France.
Looking and/or listening are not only passive reception of sensory information: they include a component of volition, or thinking. But it is only partial. Thinking in Zazen is not partial.
It is like wishing to get back a lost belonging.
There is no woman on the earth who originally belongs to me. My sons do not originally belong to me.
But, originally, I belong to the forest.
In order to get back this belonging, I come alone to this place by the forest, where I am not susceptible to miscellaneous outside influences, where my senses are nourished by beautiful sights and sounds of nature, and by simple wholesome food, and by simple work; and I sit in the full lotus posture.
Guided by my senses, I sit upright, aware of my ears in relation to my shoulders, my nose in relation to my navel, aware of my tongue, lips and teeth, aware of my eyes, aware of breath passing through my nostrils. This is sensory awareness, feeling.
I exhale fully and the allow the breath to flood back into my lungs and the oxygen to replenish my blood. I sway left and right, remembering as I approach the middle that I do not know where the middle is. My senses do not provide me with an absolutely reliable criterion.
Sitting still, I think. By sitting, I think. I sit-think.
Sit-thinking is Zazen.
What we call “sitting-meditation” (Zazen), is neither the holding of a correct bodily posture nor a kind of meditation to be learned. It is just the Dharma-gate of effortless ease. It is the practice and experience that gets right to the limit, right to the heart, and right to the bottom, of the Buddha’s enlightenment. The laws of the Universe are all realizing themselves, uncaged. A tiger in this state is like a non-thinking non-monk surveying a forest that belongs utterly to him. We should understand exactly, relying on the second law of thermodynamics, how straight Dharma emerges spontaneously, and the fearfulness which manifests itself, through fear paralysis and fight or flight, in opposing states of imbalance of the autonomic nervous system, vanishes at a stroke.
posted by Mike Cross at 8:28 PM
3 Comments:
Tonight I dance. I dance! I jive, I rock. I allow myself to go shit arsed crazy. I work at having a good time with my mates. Yes, work at it. No need to be a miserable sod like some people I could name. Those self righteous middle class intellectuals with their birds and their forests and their country retreats and their fancy ideas don’t know what it’s about. Woods and forests indeed! Give me a break! For most of us life is a hard grind in the city. In the city! Tomorrow, in the city, sitting in full lotus on my zafu, I will try to allow the work that I have put in with my teachers, Buddhist and Alexander, to work me. I will get out of the way, if I can, and let the work work me. Yeah that’s it. Let the work work me. And Mike Cross don’t ask me who I think am, because I am everyman. But high ho, it’s back to the dance floor. I hope the DJ doesn’t play Joe Walsh.
Such is the life of a non-monk, POB. You can't beat it.
For the record, I sent this post to Nishijima Roshi for his kind consideration and received the following reply.
Dear Mr Mike Cross,
Thank you for your recommendation to read your blog, and I read it, but
I clearly noticed that Zazen is never "sitting-meditation, " but it is
just "sitting in the balanced state."
I think that sitting is never meditation.
I think that sitting-meditation can never stop thinking.
With best wishes
Gudo Wafu Nishijima
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