The Middle Way

2007-09-02T09:57:00.001+01:00

DROPPING OFF ALL VIEWPOINTS

WAS THE SITTING-ZEN HE SAT

USING CONSCIOUS MEANS-WHEREBY

I BOW TO HIM: KING GAUT

Dropping Off the Middle Way

2007-08-29T12:43:00.000+01:00

Ultimately, in pursuing stillness without fixity, there may be muddy forest tracks, steep stairways, and long and winding roads, but there is no such path as the middle way.

The tendency to fix, in contrast, is tangible, concrete, real and ever present. All I have to do is tell myself: Sit still!, and there he is -- my old friend Fixity, born of fear, my one truly constant companion, stiff-necked and narrow-backed, always inviting me to get to know him.

Fixity, born of fear, is the Zen disease. I hope that I am one of those sufferers who, in small increments, sees it more clearly.

In his true-Dharma-eye treasury, Gautama Buddha bequeathed to us a conscious means of waking up to blind fixing, and an open invitation to spring free from fear. That is my strong conviction.

When Jeff Bailey left Gudo and returned to the US nearly 20 years ago, I was afraid that my behaviour might have been a factor in Jeff’s decision, and I phoned Jeff up to express my concern. Jeff assured me that it was not so. “Sensei is a closed system,” Jeff told me then.

I did not accept Jeff’s conclusion, and I still do not accept it. Gudo is a human being. He is not a closed system. He is an open human system, who has a very strong will to the truth, but at the same time a strong wrong tendency to be fixed in his views. Jeff’s conclusion seemed to me to be defeatist and at odds with the fundamental bodhisattva vow. I took a different view: To the extent that Gudo had wisdom to teach me, I would endeavor to learn from him. To the extent that my understanding was more clear than Gudo’s, I would endeavor to teach him. That is the viewpoint that I have maintained for more than 20 years. To say that I have changed direction in recent times is not true.

This blog, which was instigated as a response to Gudo’s opening of Dogen Sangha blog, has been part of my effort to teach Gudo. I have tried to clarify what the wrong unconscious tendency is that I know from bitter experience exists in Gudo’s sitting-zen teaching -- the tendency to fix. I expected that, if I could succeed in this, although I may never forgive Gudo for killing our translation partnership, reconciliation between us might be possible. Gudo’s decision might then naturally follow, like day following night, to make me his successor, in accordance with his intention all those years ago.

I seem to have failed totally and utterly. Still, as a result of my stupid efforts over the last couple of years, something has become much more clear to me. I have become more aware than I was before of a wrong unconscious tendency in me. In my holding of strong views about the origin and stopping of fixity, and in my fearful and sometimes bullying attempts to uphold and propogate those views, I tend not to flow; I tend to fix.

Anybody heard any good jokes recently?

DROPPING OFF ALL VIEWPOINTS

WAS THE SITTING-ZEN HE SAT

USING CONSCIOUS MEANS-WHEREBY

I BOW TO HIM: KING GUAT.

Coming Back to the Middle Way

2007-08-28T06:05:00.001+01:00

To sit upright and still in the full lotus posture, as Gautama taught, with head shaved and body enfolded by a traditionally-sewn robe, is a very physical thing.

To do this physical thing WITHOUT stiffening the neck, WITHOUT pulling in the head, WITHOUT arching and narrowing the back, and WITHOUT fixing the jaw, shoulders, hips, et cetera, is, in the words of FM Alexander, “the most mental thing there is.”

So, inherent in sitting-zen as I have come to practice it, as my 25-year journey has led me to practice it, and as I have endeavored to clarify it on this blog, are two opposing viewpoints of what the practice is -- physical and mental.

Did Eihei Dogen understand sitting in the full lotus posture as the dropping off of both viewpoints?

Yes, he did. Therefore he wrote:

“Practice physical sitting in the full lotus posture.
Practice mental sitting in the full lotus posture.
Practice body-and-mind-dropping-off sitting in the full lotus posture.”

Did Gautama Buddha understand sitting in the full lotus posture as the dropping off of both viewpoints?

Yes, of course he did. His teaching of a middle way between irreconcilable opposites might have been intended not only as a touchstone for philosophers of the third world view, politicians of the third way, and other would-be leaders of mass movements, but also as a kind of solace, through the ages, to the odd lonesome beggar or broken-hearted loser who sat in the full lotus posture.

This blog does not seem to have attracted any kind of a mass following, much to the disappointment of me with my stupid expectations, but one non-blogger wrote to me in a private email that he thought some of the recent posts and comments on this blog were “the dogs bollocks.” Coming from somebody who is content just to get on quietly with enjoying his own sitting-zen and living his own life, this feedback really meant something to me. Maybe my unskilled efforts to clarify the fundamental meaning of the middle way haven’t been completely in vain.

Going Beyond the Middle Way

2007-08-23T11:23:00.000+01:00

Really the whole point of this blog, since its inception in November 2005 in response to Gudo’s starting up of Dogen Sangha blog, has been to clarify for self and others the principle of spontaneous flow in what Gautama called “the middle way” of sitting in the full lotus posture, easily, joyfully, fearlessly.

Gudo’s principle is non-thinking. Alexander’s principle is non-doing. I have been enormously fortunate to be taught these two principles by teachers who have devoted their whole lives to the clarification of these two principles.

The two are diametrically opposed to each other, and so, although I have struggled to reconcile the two viewpoints that both seemed to me to be the truth itself, no reconciliation has been possible at all.

In the process of my struggle, the mirror principle has become increasingly evident to me. I have come to see more clearly how, when human beings are afraid, we tend to act not in accordance with reason. We tend to project our own inner demons onto others. This is just how we human beings are. Both Gudo and Marjory have expressed to me their fear that the principle they have striven to clarify and to adhere to, might be lost.

In the end, however, when we learn sitting in the full lotus posture as truly a backward step, then body and mind spontaneously drop off, and it is originally neither non-thinking nor non-doing.

There is inherent in this world something so valuable that even we human beings, in our fear and stupidity, cannot lose it.

Marjory no longer adheres to the principle of non-doing. She gave it up on December 6th, 2006. In the not-too-distant future Gudo will relinquish the principle of non-thinking.

I think that, for the moment, I’ve said just about everything I wanted to say.

The Truth Will Out in the End

2007-08-22T11:00:00.000+01:00

When I started working as a professional Japanese-English translator in 1989, after Michael Luetchford got me a job at a company called Japan Convention Services, only then did I finally get round to buying the big green Kenkyusha Japanese-English dictionary. For years before that I used to go to Gudo’s office, sometimes several times a week, and ask him the meaning of any Japanese terms in his blue Shobogenzo books that I didn’t understand. Why trust a dictionary? I thought, when I could get it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Between 1982 and 1990 I lived in a flat in Sugamachi, about a ten-minute bicycle ride from Ida Company HQ in Iidabashi, where, from 1983 onwards, Gudo’s office was. (Before that the office was further away, in Asakusabashi.) From the local Marusyo supermarket I would buy notebooks with lines of squares designed to help children practice writing, and in these children’s notebooks I would write out sentences from Shobogenzo in pencil, and mark bits I wanted to ask about in red ink. There is a film record of me doing just this from a 1989 BBC documentary called “Turning Japanese” in which my life in Tokyo was featured. With my children’s notebook of questions, and Gudo’s blue book containing Master Dogen’s original text and and Gudo’s translation/interpretation in modern Japanese, I would cycle down to Gudo’s office to ask my questions. I would phone him up and ask if he was free, and the answer was invariably, “Oh, please come!” Rarely I would have to wait an hour or two for a business meeting to finish, but there was never a case of “I don’t really feel like it today -- I am not in the mood.” Just “Oh, please come.” I would sit there in the office slavishly dictating Gudo’s answers to my questions, and then cycle back home and type up my notes onto a personal computer.

After I got married and moved out to Bushi on the outskirts of Tokyo, where we lived from 1990 to 1994, I used to write my questions on the meaning of Shobogenzo in thick felt pen on A4 sheets and fax my questions in to Gudo’s office, and he, in similar style, used to fax the answer’s back.

I thus asked questions on the meaning of Shobogenzo almost non-stop from the time I first met Gudo in the early summer of 1982 right through to 1994 when Shobogenzo Book One was published. Over this 13 years of questionning, I must have asked Gudo several thousand questions on the meaning of Shobogenzo.

Incidentally, between 1986 and 1988 I would go to Gudo’s office on Thursday afternoons to take his dictation of Shinji-Shobogenzo, and then accompany him to his Japanese lectures of Shinji-Shobogenzo in Asakusabashi. Back in my flat, I would sit at the computer, basically transcribing the dictation, but with one eye also on the original text. I felt the fact that I had sat there absorbing the Japanese lectures somehow lent more authenticity to the work. By the spring of 1988, I had transcribed most of the 301 koans, but I then gave up work on the Shinji-Shobogenzo dictation in order to concentrate on Shobogenzo itself. If you read the published version of Shinji-Shobogenzo, you won’t find my name featured too prominently. Apparently this was because, by the time the work was published, Gudo had forgotten who it was that began taking the dictation -- he thought it had been Jeremy Pearson. Michael Luetchford and Jeremy Pearson completed the project without supposing the amount of work that I had put into it. (This is not to take anything away from the considerable effort they evidently put into the project themselves.)

I digress. In the spring of 1988, while I was in Thailand, Gudo wrote me a letter asking me for my full cooperation with the Shobogenzo translation. He asked me for five years. I gave him those five years, and more. In return Gudo started paying me a “scholarship” of Y50,000 per month. This scholarship continued even after I returned to England at the end of 1994, and didn’t stop until around the time that Gudo wrote me a letter -- I think it was towards the end of 1996 or in early 1997 -- expressing his hope that I would “come back to Buddhism.”

In addition to the scholarship, in view of my desire to provide for two sons born in 1991 and 1993, Gudo generously agreed to forego his half of the money which we received for the translation from the Japan Foundation.

Our translation partnership was a totally joint effort. “Fifty-fifty” in Gudo’s own words, but those words didn’t do it justice. The fundamental principle of the partnership, as I understood it, was that of the mutual veto. Neither side was allowed to change the translation text without the consent of the other.

This was the fundamental rule of our partnership that I never, ever, expected Gudo to break. Why would he need to? If he wanted me to correct some mistake I had made, all he had to do was ask. But in 1997, during the final editing of Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo Book 3, Gudo decided to break the rule. Apparently he felt he needed to put his foot down, lest some stupid person adulterated the pure, practical teaching of Master Dogen with a different kind of knowledge, borne of “Western intellectual civilization.” (Heard any good jokes recently? Spotted any examples of the mirror principle?)

Breaking the rule wasn’t a mere oversight on Gudo’s part. There was a meeting in Tokyo in which a conscious decision was taken to make changes to the text without consulting me in England. The meeting was initiated, as I understand it, by Michael Luetchford. But the decision to blank me was taken in the end by Gudo himself, together with Michael Luetchford, and overriding the objections of Jeremy Pearson.

When I heard from Jeremy what had happened, several months later, after Book 3 was already published, I went into shock. I couldn’t believe it had happened. I gave up translation work and retreated into my own sitting-zen/Fukan-zazen-gi. At the same time, I retreated into denial.

Now then, how can I spring this 47-year old body of mine, which is ordinarily governed by a dodgy vestibular system, totally free from denial?

A very interesting question.

Before trying afresh to ask it well, I wouldn’t mind forty winks.

The Mirror Principle Revisited Again

2007-08-22T08:29:00.000+01:00

• Almost 800 years ago, Master Dogen wrote that the student may be compared to a piece of wood and a true teacher to a skilled carpenter.

• A couple of weeks ago, Gudo wrote on his blog his suspicion that one of the joint translators of Shobogenzo would like to erase the name and efforts of the other.

• Then Michael Luetchford indicated that Gudo seems to be becoming a sad old man who is losing the mind in confusion.

• Michael Luetchford wrote further that Mike has in recent times turned against Gudo.

• Then James Cohen wrote that while some students of Gudo, including himself quite often, can express Master Dogen’s wisdom, students of Gudo in general need to show more compassion. (Heard any good jokes recently, Jimbo?)

• Yesterday I protested that a good teacher should not try to teach others using bullying and intimidatory means, because fear fucks up the learning process.

• Responding to my protestations, Jeremy Pearson wrote me that Gudo was never a bully to him. Jeremy added that he always feels grateful for what Gudo taught him, and that anyone that knows me also knows that I too feel grateful to Gudo.

Just reflections.

Show some emotion; Put expression in your eye...

2007-08-21T16:51:00.000+01:00

A “Zen Seminar in English” at the Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai HQ in Mita, Tokyo, in February or March 1984. In questions and answers after Gudo’s lecture on Shobogenzo, with ideas far above my station, I thought I would have a stab at expressing my intellectual enlightenment. In response, at least as I experienced it through my warped perception, Gudo seemed to get very angry at me. He went on about how human beings should not try to make themselves into gods. “This tendency is very comical,” he said. He seemed to be ridiculing me in front of everybody. I, whose sensory appreciation was already debauched, both from congenital vestibular dysfunction and from almost 2 years of sitting as if with a poker up my backside and a ruler down my throat, experienced this dressing down as a kind of trauma that seemed to go on for ever.

For several weeks after that I continued going to the Saturday lectures but steadfastly kept my mouth shut. I also stopped going to Gudo’s office to ask questions on Shobogenzo.

Eventually he phoned me up and asked why I hadn’t been asking any questions recently -- as if he didn’t know. After receiving his phone call, I got on my bicycle and went to visit him at his office in Iidabashi at once. “I hope you will recover the courage to study Buddhism,” he told me.

It occurs to me now, as I reflect on my present situation, as I reflect on why Marjory emphasized to me again and again and again: “Listen love, being wrong is the best friend we’ve got in this work,” it occurs to me now that on some deep, deep level I never have recovered my courage completely. All my efforts in pursuit of the Buddha’s truth since that day have been tinged with the fear of being wrong.

From the moment I walked through the door of her teaching room, Marjory had my number. She saw my fear. People who know me less well see anger. But Marjory saw the fear which lay beneath it. Good old Marjory.

Funny how it’s taken me 23 years to let the tears roll down.

The Way of a Non-Buddhist Non-Monk

2007-08-21T13:42:00.000+01:00

An old friend in sitting-zen, in a private e-mail, asks:

“It’s better to move on as freely as possible I think. Would you agree?”

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

The way of a non-Buddhist non-monk is just this -- it is not about literary fame, not about political power, not about trying to be buddha, not about putting on a show for others. It is just about freedom in practising and experiencing the sitting-zen that gets to the bottom of the Buddha’s enlightenment.

And the kind of freedom we are talking about, at the most basic level, is freedom from fear.

A few days ago I was swimming in the sea and realized I was a long way out of my depth. How far? I wondered. I duck dived, intending to find out. But the water down below was black and cold, and I felt fear, so I came back to the surface, gasping for air. I really didn’t feel like trying again, but I didn’t want to have given up, to have been beaten by fear. So I made a more determined effort, equalizing the pressure in my ears by holding onto my nose and blowing, and going for it again. This time I touched the bottom. I did it. My fingers dug into the sand. I did it by doing, by deciding I would bloody well do it and then bloody well doing it. Thus, in a sense, I defeated my fear. But in a more profound sense, as is habitually the case, my fear defeated me. I reached my goal, I touched the bottom, but the process was adulterated by fear; it wasn’t joyful. There was not much joyful flow, not much sense of humour, just plenty of grim determination.

Fear is the enemy. Deep, deep down, for all of us, fear is the enemy.

About 20 years ago, I asked Gudo what he feared most. “Old age,” he replied. “I don’t fear death. I fear old age.”

You can enthusiastically subscribe on a blog to the principle of realism, but when, in your sitting-zen practice, something really stimulates deep fear in you, how then are you going to react? How then is your philosophy of realism going to help you? Will you have the means at your conscious disposal to spring the whole body free of fear/denial, so that you will be able to keep sitting upright in the lotus posture every day, until the very end, with true ease and true joy -- that is, without stiffening the neck, without pulling the head back and down, without narrowing the back, and without fixing all the joints?

I expressed an emotional criticism in a post earlier today and then worried about what I had done, and worried about whether or not to delete the offending paragraphs. You see, I’m afraid of my anger, afraid of being wrong -- afraid of my best friend, Marjory would say.

But truly, isn’t it great to really see what anger is -- to sit in lotus and notice all that energy in the neck and shoulders, and the concomitant dearth of energy in the pelvis? That wrongness there is my best friend. There is the raw material for enjoyable work.

When the practice of sitting-zen is understood like this, when this point is got, then there really is nothing to fear -- no nets, no cages.

Whoopeee!

Pete’s Good Question

2007-08-21T09:19:00.000+01:00

Pete’s Question:

Hi Mike,
“If you practice the ineffable for a long time, you will be ineffable”.
How is it posssible to practce without endgaining when Master Dogen seems to be saying there will be a reward for our efforts. Does he mean that if we practice the balanced state we will become balanced? I have just written that sentence but I don’t know what it means.
Pete

My Answer:

Vital question, Pete -- thank you. Thank you very much.

The point is to inhibit the desire to go directly for the end, relying on old vestibular circuits that are wrong, IN ORDER TO create a space for the new conscious means that will reliably take us to the end.

In learning to swim without stress, for example, the challenge for the nervous non-swimmer is to inhibit the desire to touch the side by relying on his old non-swimming ways, IN ORDER TO allow the easy gliding movement that will cause the other side to seem to touch him. It is a very simple principle, but not easy for a non-swimmer to understand without help from a good teacher who can help the non-swimmer overcome the fear which, unless assuaged, will fuck up the whole learning process. (See for example my brother’s webpage at www.swimmingwithoutstress.co.uk)

In sitting-zen, when the thought of enlightenment causes us to stiffen up, we are like a nervous swimmer splashing about ineptly, but when we just sit easily and joyfully, this is just the practice and experience that gets to the bottom of the Buddha’s enlightenment. The old wrong messages, mediated by the inner-ear, are tied up with fear. The new means is characterized by fearlessness.

The 3rd noble truth, the truth of stopping suffering, does not mean to give up the desire for enlightenment; it rather means to suppress the urge to grasp for enlightenment relying on wrong instinctive means, IN ORDER THAT all living beings may reliably cross over, relying on true conscious means, to the far shore of the Buddha’s enlightenment.

Any Questions?

2007-08-20T14:12:00.000+01:00

To sit fully upright and totally still in the full lotus posture, easily and joyfully -- in other words, without stiffening the neck, without pulling the head back and down into the body, without narrowing the back, and without fixing all the joints: this is the challenge, the ongoing adventure. This is what interests me. This is what continues to interest me.

To tell the truth, I am not very good at it.

Even though I am not very good at it, having devoted myself to it four times a day since I first shaved my head 22 summers ago, I feel that this practice/experience is totally my possession. That is why I wrote that Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo totally belongs to me. I wasn’t talking about the translation; I was talking about the Treasury itself.

At the end of his Rules of Sitting-Zen for Everybody, Master Dogen promises:

HOZO ONOZUKARA HIRAKE TE JUYO NYO-I NARAN.

“The Treasury will open, spontaneously, for you to accept and use as you please.”

Master Dogen’s promise is universal. He wrote those rules not just for me to make Shobogenzo my own possession, but for everybody to do just that.

Are there any questions?

Parting Shot

2007-08-08T09:48:00.000+01:00

Dogen’s rules still enslave me.
I wish to let my neck be free.
A is A; B is B.
But A vs B can lead to C.

If A is the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, and B is the sympathetic branch, then A vs B is an autonomic matter -- one kind of unconsciousness against another kind of unconsciousness.

If A is gravity and B is levity, or if A is the wind and B is a person intending to open an umbrella, then A vs B may be a matter of unconsciousness vs consciousness.

But if A is a conscious decision to do, and B is a conscious decision not to do... then what?

I wonder if it will be another 750 years before anybody understands the meaning of this question.

On his blog, Gudo writes of knowing True Buddhism, as if there is something called True Buddhism, with a capital T and a capital B, that he knows. From where I sit, the Buddha’s teaching of the Middle Way encompasses truths that the Buddha knew but Gudo is very far from knowing, and furthermore Gudo, in his arrogance, does not even begin to suspect the depths of his own unknowing. I sincerely hope that I am not like that. I sincerely hope that it is not a case of “Like father, like son,” but I fear it probably is.

Anyway, I am off to the seaside for a few days, so if any good questions emerge, or any good jokes are heard, please save them up.

Dogen vs Marjory, Bird Music and an Umbrella Opening

2007-08-07T09:11:00.000+01:00

SUNAWACHI SHOSHIN TANZA SHI TE
Just sit upright.
“Free your neck.”

Sit upright.
“Free your neck.”

Sit upright.
“Say No! Free your neck....”

KANKI ISSOKU SHI TE
Breathe out fully.
“Back to lengthen and WIDEN.”

Breathe out fully.
“Back to lengthen and WIDEN.”

Breathe out fully.
“Say No! Let the neck be free, to let the head go forward and up, to let the back lengthen and WIDEN.”

Aaaaah!

Now then:

GOTSU-GOTSU TOSHITE ZAJO SHI TE
Sit totally still.
“Don’t fix.”

Sit totally still.
“Don’t fix.”

Sit totally still.
“Honestly, love, there is no such animal as being right. Being wrong is the best friend we’ve got. Don’t try to be right. Don’t fix.”

HI-SHIRYO
Non-thinking!
"Non-doing!"

Non-thinking. Just do it.
“No, the upward direction is an undoing. You can't do it. Just think it.”

Non-thinking. Just do it.
“No, love, you’re still doing it.”

Non-thinking. Just....

Doo, doo, doo, doo, da, da, da, da, is all I’ve got to say to you....

Twitter, twitter, twitter... chirp, chirp... twitter....

A memory:

Some time during Japan’s bubble years of the 1980s, I am stepping out with Gudo into a cold, wet and windy autumn evening. Gudo, back turned to the wind and rain, is struggling to unfold a compact umbrella; the wind keeps catching it and bending the spokes back upon themselves. “Point it into the wind,” I say. The old fool does so and the umbrella suddenly opens out. “Ah, yes!” Gudo laughs loudly. “It is a kind of wisdom.”

But I wonder if he truly ever got the point, or not.

“MIKE! BREAKFAST’S READY!”

Jordan’s Question on Beginner’s Mind

2007-08-04T09:58:00.000+01:00

Jordan’s Question:

What is the "beginner's mind"?
Where is there no "beginner's mind"? Where do we leave the "beginner's mind"?

My Answer:

Your asking me these questions, Jordan, is a very significant thing. In my answer, I will point you directly to the heart of the difference between the true teaching of Master Dogen and so-called Soto Zen.

Beginner’s mind in Japanese is SHO-SHIN. SHO means to begin. SHIN means heart or mind.

Beginner’s mind means the mind of a beginner, what a beginner has in his heart.

A common Japanese proverb, which every Japanese Shintoist and Confucianist knows, is SHOSHIN WASURERU BEKARAZU, “Don’t forget beginner’s mind.”

So if you study so-called Soto Zen, that is the secular teaching of the secular Japanese group called the Soto Sect, or if you follow some traditional Japanese way like swordsmanship or shakuhachi playing, it is very likely that the common concept of beginner’s mind will be emphasized to you.

But if you read Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo in detail, you will find that Master Dogen emphasizes another concept altogether and that is HOTSU-BODAI-SHIN. HOTSU means to establish or to awaken. BODAI means the supreme, integral enlightenment of Gautama Buddha, in short, enlightenment. SHIN means heart or mind.

HOTSU-BODAI-SHIN means to have it in your heart to save all living beings because of the supreme, integral enlightenment that Gautama Buddha realized.

I noticed that what you wrote on your blog was a kind of negation of enlightenment. Master Dogen called this view DANKEN-GEDO, as I explained in a previous post. This kind of negation is very common in American Zen today. And at the root of the problem it may be that Japanese so-called Zen masters who profess to follow the teaching of Master Dogen, in fact are just stuck through their whole lives in their traditional Japanese secular ways. This is what Master Dogen described as HOTONDO SHUSHIN NO KATSURO O KIKETSU SU, “almost totally lacking the vigorous road of getting the body out.”

The teaching of Master Dogen has got nothing to do with any kind of Japanese -ism -- not Shintoism, nor Confucianism, nor Japanese corporate realism, nor even Zen Buddhism.

In order truly to follow Master Dogen’s teaching, Jordan, is necessary for you and me, as individuals, if we really have it in our heart to save all living beings, to strive to spring this body free from all old patterns of thought and action.

Even if great and famous Japanese Zen masters can’t do it, you and I have to believe that we can do it.

Mon Dieu! Ay Caramba! Gazooks! What a challenge! But what an adventure!

And one thing we have got that they haven’t had, is the possibility of understanding at least a little of the teaching of FM Alexander. I recommend you to check out his writings, in his own words. Read his books. Get it straight from the horse’s mouth, and see what you make of it.

Suffering Loss Without Losing the Mind-Seal

2007-08-03T09:28:00.000+01:00

Have you ever heard a bell, unstruck
Begin to sofly ring?
She walked into Gym II, worse luck
And my heart began to sing.

With apologies to my wife, I wrote that poem about an event that took place nearly 30 years ago.

At the beginning of a relationship like that, when there is a mutual sense of “This is the one!”, it is very difficult for each side to envision anything other than a rosy future, and so an unconscious expectation is formed, leading in most cases to disappointment.

This disappointment, doubtless familiar to most readers of this blog, is akin to a bereavement -- there is a natural healing process beginning with shock/denial, then anger, et cetera. Incidentally, this grieving process also seems to follow the primitive reflex hierarchy, beginning with the fear paralysis response (which corresponds to shock/withdrawal/denial) and progressing through the Moro reflex (which corresponds to anger). For a first hand account of what happens when the Moro reflex shows itself in raw form, breaking a person out of fear paralysis, read Michael T’s courageous post “Breaking Point” on his blog One Foot in Front of the Other.

By the spring of 1984, when I received the shock of disappointed in love, I was already very fixed in my sitting-zen practice -- straightening the neck bones, pulling the chin back and down, et cetera. My response to what felt like a great loss was to fix even more, pushing my spine to lengthen more and more by narrowing my back.

When I next met my former girlfriend, on a trip back to England in the autumn of 1985 she told me, and I remember her exact words: “I am not getting at you, Mike. But what has happened to your back? You used to have such a beautiful broad back.”

My response to hearing this, in typical hardcore Zen style, was to bloody well do something about it. I started doing press-ups all the time, believing that widening of the back, and therefore possibly my former love, were things that I might get back by trying. Before long I was doing a hundred press-ups straight off for fun. Bloody idiot.

At that time, I could only see one face of the pyramid of sitting in lotus dropping off body and mind -- the doing face. I was almost totally blind to the other side -- the not doing face, the thinking face, the truly smiling face.

The truly smiling face does not mean a mind that hasn’t got the joke masked by a stage smile. (On the contrary, it might mean a mind that sees the joke, smiling behind a grumpy frown.)

On his blog One Foot in Front of the Other, Michael is sharing with us his experience of what may be the greatest loss of all. But we are all suffering lesser disappointments all the time.

How can we bring about the cessation of the suffering of disappointed expectations?

We can’t. A lot of the sporting contests that we enjoy, when you think about it, involve building up unreal expectations in each other (“He’s going to give me a low blow” “He’s going to return the ball to my backhand side”) and then confounding those expectations (“Whoops, copped one on the nut;” “There the ball goes down the forehand line”...).

Now then: is it possible to suffer such losses without losing freedom, but with an inner smile? Is it possible to suffer a loss and within that disappointment to fix not more but less?

In many cases, probably not. But 20 years ago I could not frame this challenge in the terms in which I now can frame it -- in terms of the dynamic inter-relation between body parts, beginning with the head being fixed down into or released up out from the body. I don’t feel confident now that I can meet the challenge well, but I do at least begin to see it in these real terms. It is like being given a constant supply of exciting new peaks to climb, from rolling green hills to great snow-capped mountains -- except this adventure is on the inside.

The ability to sit in the lotus posture smiling inside and breathe out fully, while keeping going not only a lengthening direction but also a widening direction, is a rare and wonderful gift. It is a wonderful gift to be able to give to oneself and a wonderful gift to be able to give to others. What follows from it may be something truly inspiring.

You may not understand right now what the hell I am talking about, but if you stick with me, I promise you will. Because I am pointing you to something that is not un-real. The Buddha-mind-seal that this dream-hero has re-discovered is something very real.

How to go about transmitting it, however, is more of a mystery to me than ever. I continued to expect -- against a mounting pile of evidence -- that I would be endowed with a certain position, a certain status, to help me in my task. But my expectation was disappointed. It turns out that I am not going to be as important, after all, as I was led to believe I was going to be.

That doesn’t change the importance of what I re-discovered, but it may mean that I will finally have to get down off my high horse. Bugger!

In any event, please don’t be discouraged if my answers continue to appear to be confrontational or dismissive. Recently those comments that I don’t value, I don’t publish. If I publish your question or comment, it is because I value it. So by all means be disappointed, but please don’t be discouraged.

Are there any questions?

Going Without (2): Massive Obstacles?

2007-08-01T08:58:00.000+01:00

- Attachments

- Delusions

- Extreme Views

- Instinctive Impulses...

These are the truly great obstacles -- things that don't exist.

The hip-joints exist. The spinal column exists. The head exists. The ears, shoulders and arms, teeth, lips, eyes and nose exist. The earth and sky exist. Water exists. The stars exist. Big cranial nerves connecting the spinal cord/brainstem/cerebellum and the ears exist. All exist together.

But attachments, illusions, views, mental impulses, misconceptions, ambitions, expectations, beliefs, superstitions... these are all things that don't exist.

Old Testament Jews believe in the real existence of an entity called for example God or Jehovah, who chose them as a people and gave them a promised land called Israel. Apparently God had an exchange -- involving the believer's willingness to murder a son -- with an ancient Jew called Abraham, who is still revered today not only by Jews but by all orthodox followers of the "great mono-theistic religions" -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islaam.

Enlightened followers of the non-theistic non-religion of Gautama, by contrast, strive every day to spring this body, which exists, free of the influence of every kind of un-reality. How?

Just by sitting.

It is the simplest practice in the world, but it is far from easy.

Yesterday somebody I regard as a brother non-buddhist non-monk said to me in an email, in connection with the discrepancy that tends to arise between our professed practice of autonomous just sitting and our actual practice of mutual unconscious expectation: "We tend to create our own confusion and then look for ways to get out of it... We end up fighting with ourselves."

As FM Alexander used to say: "The most difficult things to get rid of are the ones that don't exist."

It's in the Without

2007-07-27T09:35:00.000+01:00

The kind of spontaneous flow that makes sitting-zen joyful is not something I manufacture on the black cushion. It is a tendency inherent in all the energy in the universe (www.secondlaw.com). In endeavoring to realize it, the major difficulty always seems to be in the without.

To walk into an unlit place full of unknown things is not difficult: the difficult thing is to do so without fear.

To survive a stormy ferry crossing is not difficult: the difficult thing is to do so without getting seasick.

To lengthen the spine is not difficult: the difficult thing is to do so without narrowing and twisting the back.

To extend the neck while sitting in lotus is not difficult: the difficult thing is to do so without stimulating the monkey reflex in the arms.

The difficulty is always in the without:

Confidence without arrogance.

Stillness without fixity.

Lengthening the spine without narrowing the back.

Working towards a definite end, such as the Buddha's enlightenment, without end-gaining.

From translating Shobogenzo I picked up some understanding, mainly intellectual, about Master Dogen's teaching of just polishing a tile, not worrying about making a mirror.

My understanding was not totally intellectual -- before I started the translation in earnest, I spent two years in which I sat in the full lotus posture for a minimum of five hours, every day. And that kind of practice inevitably involves a certain amount of going without -- at least at a very crude level.

But I really only began to wake up to the problem of my own end-gaining tendency when I began working with Alexander teachers.

FM Alexander really was, in my opinion, a truly great human being. What Gautama Buddha discovered starting from one side, with a traditional yoga asana, FM Alexander discovered starting from the opposite side, with only his own conscious reasoning.

People in future will erect Mike Cross statues, because I was the first stupid donkey who really put two and two together. But for the present there is nobody who understands what I am talking about.

Confidence? Or arrogance? I don't know. You decide.

If you are still here reading this blog, you must suspect there is a grain of truth in what I am writing. But in that case, why the hell don't you ask me questions?

We have got this wonderful tool here, through the internet. Why the hell don't you use it? What are you afraid of?

You....! You....! I would like to reach out of the computer screen and hit you with a big stick!

Fundamental Grumble of the Middle Way

2007-07-25T06:40:00.000+01:00

In 1999, after training as an Alexander teacher and a reflex inhibition therapist (but still having very little real understanding of what either Alexander work or reflex inhibition meant), I called my practice "The Middle Way Re-education Centre." Shortly after I posted up a web-page at www.the-middle-way.com (last year I scrapped this and set up a new one at www.the-middle-way.org). But on the original webpage, the sub-title I used was something like this:

Beyond the traditional forms of Zen practice and non-form as it is practiced in the Alexander Technique, there is a middle way of reflex action.

Not for the first time in my life, my "too excellent" brain had leaped ahead and found the answer, leaving my poor old lumbering body struggling to work out how.

One could easily spend a lifetime researching the transmission through India, China, and Japan of just one traditional form: e.g., the kasaya, the Buddha's robe.

FM Alexander considered that, in the matter of practicing non-doing he had in his lifetime only "scratched the surface of the egg."

Peter Blythe of INPP Chester, having spent a lifetime approaching some understanding how the vestibular part of the ear can be retrained, told me that if he had another lifetime he would like to devote it to trying to understand how to retrain the auditory part of the ear.

In 1244 Master Dogen wrote:

"There is sitting with the mind, which is not the same as sitting with the body; there is sitting with the body, which is not the same as sitting with the mind; and there is sitting as body and mind dropping off, which is not the same as sitting as body and mind dropping off."

This statement is of a similar order of truth as Einstein's statement that e = mc2.

It didn't matter tuppence whether Einstein whispered gently, or shout and swore, that e = mc2. Nothing changes the fact that e = mc2. E = mc2.

But Einstein was only expressing a truth of the material world. Master Dogen was expressing truth of a higher order: the truth of the matter-and-mind-dropping-off world.

Has anybody heard any good jokes recently?

A good joke, for me, one that makes me chortle inside, has a punch-line which reveals to me that I was expecting something different.

The truth is never what we expect the truth to be, and never how we expect the truth to be. Doesn't the history of science show us that? They say that quantum physics, while passing every scientific test thus far, is so counter-intuitive that even Einstein couldn't accept it might be true.

And yet, without knowing it, we expect Gautama's truth to be like such and such, and we expect it to have a sound like golden bells being rung by a golden Buddha. We don't expect to hear it being yelled by a man of conspicuously low self-esteem -- the non-venerable one, the not chosen one, Mr Angry, red-faced and swearing. But our expectations and preconceptions are one thing. The truth is totally another.

In the absence of any good jokes, are there any questions?

Talking 'Bout a Revolution

2007-07-22T09:04:00.000+01:00

In 1244 Master Dogen wrote:

"Bodily sit in the full lotus posture.
Mentally sit in the full lotus posture.
Dropping off body and mind, sit in the full lotus posture."

He wrote further:
"There is sitting with the mind, which is not the same as sitting with the body. There is sitting with the body, which is not the same as sitting with the mind. And there is sitting as body and mind dropping off, which is not the same as sitting as body and mind dropping off."

For 750 years nobody clearly understood the real meaning of these words.

What I experienced in 1994, after thirteen years of hardcore Zen, was a complete revolution in my approach to sitting-zen.

From "Don't think; just do!" to "Don't just do; think!"

From "oneness of body-mind" to "psycho-physical integration."
The same thing except totally opposite.

For the past thirteen years I have been struggling to make sense of it. And gradually I have made sense of it.

In years to come, people will write books, make TV programmes, build bloody statues, to celebrate the revolution about which I am talking. But for the time being there isn't one person who truly understands what the hell I am on about.

I am not worthy of it -- of that I have no doubt. And yet,
Master Dogen's Shobogenzo belongs totally to me.

Anybody heard any good jokes recently?

Sitting as Body & Mind Dropping Off

2007-07-21T07:10:00.001+01:00

An Old Non-Buddha said: "Zen practice is body and mind dropping off."

Zen Master Dogen said: "Sit in the full lotus posture as body and mind dropping off!"

Here, as I see it, are four aspects of it:

(1) Sitting as physical doing.

Just following the other. Just doing it. The body breaking out of inaction. Using the self.

Expressed negatively: Not doing my own thing. Losing myself in doing. Forgetting myself in doing.

Exemplified by: Hardcore Zen. When the wake up bell rings, everybody gets out of bed. 1,2,3 Go!

(2) Sitting as balance.

Balance of two opposites -- left and right, front and back, flexor and extensor tone, lengthening and widening, passivity and activity, parasympathetic and sympathetic nerves, yin and yang, accepting and using the self, et cetera.

Expressed negatively: mutual negation of feeling and thinking, of doing and not doing, of excitation and inhibition.

Exemplified by:
* a real conversation with both speaking and listening.
* Vipassana practice. Being awake to breathing and birdsong at the same time, in one unified field.

(3) Sitting as total commitment.

Mobilization of the whole self, centered on the lengthening spine. Thus becoming one piece -- by an act of psycho-physical integration.

Expressed negatively: dropping off old wrong patterns and attachments.

Exemplified by:
* a wren singing -- with its voice, with its ears, with its whole body
* a monk chanting Fukan-zazen-gi well, using everything -- eyes, ears, voice, breath, intellect, the whole body in a chanting/listening posture.
* the sitting in lotus of Master Kodo Sawaki -- with no hair on his head, no direction home, no book in his name, no wife (although he admitted that he wanted one), no stone having been left unturned in his kesa research. No false pretences. No gap.

(4) Sitting as spontaneous flow.

Sitting doing itself. Effortless ease. Like springing up out of the earth.

Expressed negatively: lack of superfluous effort; no consciousness of physical or mental effort.

Exemplified by: Gautama under the bodhi tree.

Sitting in Lotus with a Body and a Mind

2007-07-20T10:14:00.000+01:00

The tribe of Judah has produced more than its fair share of individuals whom I admire a lot. Old Testament Judaism you can keep, but I have had some good friends of Jewish heritage -- all non-belongers. Perhaps it is the courage of non-belonging individuals like Albert Einstein and Bob Dylan, swimming against the tide of their own strongly tribal heritage, that strikes me as particularly admirable.

Although I never met Master Kodo Sawaki, my impression of him also is that he was a very strong individual -- a man who truly made a difference, who was not just one of the Japanese herd.

There is something very powerful, insistent and real in Bob Dylan's words and voice when he demands to know:

How does it feel?
How does it feel?
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown....

How does it feel? How does it feel to be on your own? How does it feel not to be a member of a tribe united under the spurious banner of an -ism?

Not only Judaism, but all -isms you can keep -- up to and including Buddhism, realism, and so-called “real Buddhism.” You can keep that which hides itself in the guise of so-called Soto Zen; namely, Japanese corporatism/nationalism. You can even keep individualism. The point of sitting-zen is not to be an individualist but just to be a true individual.

How does it feel, to be on your own?

A mistake I have often repeated in the past, upon being knocked back, is deliberately not to ask how it feels, but instead to throw myself with renewed vigour into doing something. It is a habit I probably first picked up on the rugby field -- when you get a knock, shut out how it feels; just run it off.

There is truth in that approach, but it is not the whole truth. It is only a philosophy of doing.

It is the philosophy of the parade ground: Head up, chin in, spine straight, mind blank. Just blindly obey your sergeant major, dropping off your own body and mind.

It is the philosophy of hardcore Zen, of warmongering Zen -- Sit the fuck down, and shut the fuck up! 1,2,3 jump! Just fucking do it!

I doggedly knocked the Shobogenzo translation into shape using that kind of energy, but in later years, in light of Alexander’s wisdom, the wisdom of non-doing, I have come to see that the doing approach is not the whole truth. It is not the subtle technique of the truly enlightened. It tends not to result in true spontaneity.

As Marjory Barlow observed, when I showed her how I had grown accustomed to holding my head and spine in sitting-zen: “There is no freedom in it.”

Actually there is a certain freedom in just doing, in just robotically sitting in the full lotus posture with the body, pulling in the chin and keeping the spine straight vertically. It is a kind of temporary blocking out of worries and feelings. But it is the exact antithesis of the kind of freedom Marjory was interested in, which is freedom from doing. Freedom from doing means, in other words, freedom from wrong patterns of use of the self, freedom from pulling the head down into the body and all the rest of it.

To work towards this latter kind of freedom is what FM Alexander called "the most mental thing there is." To work towards the condition that Master Bodhidharma called "the body being naturally empty and still," turns out, ironically, to be the most mental thing there is.

This kind of effort, the most mental thing there is, requires us to actively decide not to do, but to see the wrong inner patterns and to actively wish to be free from them.

A real wish for freedom, for a bit of nothing, does not come easily. But the more real is the wish, the more clear is the seeing, and vica versa -- a virtuous circle.

Conversely, if the wish is not real, as I know all too well from experience, what you have is a gap and what you get is a vicious circle leading to separation between heaven and earth, confusion.

On the subject of circles, a Dharma-heir of Gudo who has known me for 25 years recently remarked, from reading some of my emails to him and my internet outpourings, that I seem to be continually going round and round in circles.

He may very well be right, but I prefer to hope that I am going round and round in spirals.

Shortly I shall return to the round cushion, I shall bodily sit in the full lotus posture, and, all being well, my mind will return to the same old questions, observing the ancient fourfold criterion of kaya, vedana, citta, and dhamma:

How am I, really? What is my emotional state?

Where am I, here and now? In particular, where is my head?

What am I really wishing for? What does it mean really to wish to allow the head to spill out, from the entirety of my sitting-in-lotus being, in a forward and up direction, while allowing the back to lengthen and widen, and the limbs to release out of the body?

How does it feel, what is it like, what does it mean, in the end -- whether you are in or out of a particular family, or in or out of a particular Sangha -- to be completely on your own? What does it mean not to be like a monkey in a tribe of monkeys, but really to be an upright individual, free from the influence of all the vestibular reflexes?

The Readiness Is All

2007-07-15T09:20:00.000+01:00

When a pupil requiring vestibular re-education was sitting on a chair in front of FM Alexander, FM would teach the pupil not to be interested in gaining the end of standing but just to attend to the process (the ‘means whereby’) of allowing the neck to be free, to allow the head to release forward and up, to allow the back to lengthen and widen, while directing the knees and pelvis away from each other -- altogether, one after another.

In this way, FM would give the pupil a new experience of standing up without standing up.

As long as the pupil was able to inhibit his desire to gain the end of standing, the pupil would remain relatively free from what, in the act of standing, ordinarily governed him -- i.e. his faulty vestibular processes. With his pupil relatively free, FM could use his hands to move the pupil out of the chair, and thereby give the pupil a whole new experience of movement.

But, and it is a very big but, FM knew very well how difficult it is to pursuade somebody to give up, or inhibit, the desire to gain an end in view.

So sometimes FM would play a trick on the pupil as follows:

FM would pivot the pupil forward and up from the hips, so that the pupil was still sitting on the chair, but teetering on the brink of standing. The pupil would be poised on the chair, ready to stand. With the help of FM’s hands, the pupil would be allowing the head to release out of the body, the shoulders to release apart, the ribs to expand and contract freely, the pelvis to open up and let out the legs, et cetera. This allowing of freedom in all the joints rendered the pupil totally available for the movement of rising from the chair, and the pupil would experience this condition of freedom, of poise, of readiness.

Then, cunning old FM, instead of going ahead with the movement out of the chair would pivot the pupil’s torso back to the vertical. And FM would say to the pupil: “There! I disappointed you, didn’t I?”

This was a way FM used of demonstrating to the pupil that, on some level, the pupil had not in fact totally given up his desire to gain the end of standing. This was an expedient means that FM devised to make his pupil conscious of the gap between two kinds of thinking, or two kinds of volition -- supposed and real.

Experienced like this, it is not so difficult to understand what the gap is between what we think we are thinking and what we are really thinking, between what we think we are aiming for and what we are really aiming for, between how we think we are and how we really are. It is not a philosophical problem. It is a very real and practical problem.

Hence, FM used to say: “A child of three can understand this work. But give me a man who has been educated, and God help me!”

SHOAKU MAKUSA -- The non-doing of wrong. A child of three can understand that teaching, but an old man of eighty cannot practice it.

These past few days, deep inside, I have been feeling a little bit disappointed. At the same time, my understanding of what the gap is, has become a little less intellectual and a little more real -- a little bit less like the old man of eighty who cannot practice it, and a little bit more like the child of three who can understand it.

Even with sitting-zen four times a day and Alexander work, I am pretty much lost. Without either of those two teachings, I might be totally and utterly lost.

Towards a Bit of Nothing

2007-07-14T09:22:00.000+01:00

Head shaved following the traditional example of I do not know how many hundreds of thousands of nameless monks, body wrapped carelessly in a 9-striped kesa gorgeously sewn by Pierre Turlur, I wish to allow my neck to be free...

To allow the head to be directed forward and up...

To allow the back to lengthen and widen...

Altogether, one after the other... a little bit of nothing.

The Gap Revisited (4): Something or Nothing?

2007-07-12T11:16:00.000+01:00

My credo:

I love just sitting. I don’t want to get something out of it. I don’t sit in the full lotus posture out of any personal ambition, out of any desire for fame and profit. I am not afraid of being the one who turned out to be wrong. I understand that trying to be right is a delusion. I shall be happy to be a nobody, restricted by nothing, except by enjoyment of sitting in the full lotus posture, with body, with mind, and dropping off body and mind. I wish to devote my life just to sitting like this, and thus to be caught by stillness. I don’t wish to get to the bottom of the Buddha’s enlightenment through the clarity of my own intellectual understanding about the vestibular system et cetera; I wish to devote myself to the very practice-experience which, transcending understanding, gets to the bottom of the Buddha’s enlightenment.

BUT, this declaration has to be real. The person who says it has to really mean it. If when I say it there is even the faintest trace of me not really meaning it, then there is a gap. And if the slightest gap arises, the mind is lost in confusion.

This continues to be my actual experience. Effort to make some sense of this experience leads me back to Master Dogen's fourfold criterion which, as I have argued by now ad nauseam, may have to do with four vestibular reflexes. For example, though I may say "I do not care," when my Moro reflex is unduly excited, I care. Though I may say, "I know where I am going," when my Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex is playing up, I am lost.

In the end, one has to laugh at oneself. What else is there for it? When I introduced myself on this blog as a big Zen fraud, I wasn’t joking.

Now, come on DL: Are you just saying that, or do you really mean it?

The Gap Revisited (3): Stillness & Fixity

2007-07-12T08:30:00.000+01:00

Fixity is non-movement due to attaching to something.

Stillness is non-movement due to nothing.

The truth is that I tend to be attached to this and that: to ideas, to feelings, to habits, to people, things and places, to my own body and life. I attach even to stillness itself.

If, even though I am like this, I am proud of having understood something of the Buddha’s teaching, then, just in that false pride, there is a gap. But this is mainly how I am.

So please let me be for a while, to fixate on my own fixity.
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But there again, are there any questions?

The Gap Revisited (2): Q & A with Gudo

2007-07-11T14:48:00.000+01:00

My Question: I notice that it is still very difficult for me, when I practice sitting-zen, to be free of idealistic effort (trying to be right, trying to become somebody). After almost 70 years of daily sitting-zen and studying and teaching Shobogenzo, do you still notice any idealistic tendency within your own sitting-zen practice?

Gudo's Anwer: After almost 70 years of daily sitting-zen and studying and teaching Shobogenzo, I do not have any kind of idealistic tendency in my life. When I am practicing Zazen, I always keep my spine straight vertically, and such efforts can not do anything for me to do other than sitting.

The Gap Revisited

2007-07-10T07:48:00.000+01:00

A contributor to this blog named Floating Weed, who turned out to be a student of Michael Luetchford by the name of Michael Tait, even though I haven’t met him, has taught me a lot about my own unreal tendency. MT, like me, is quite a convincing clever cloggs who tends to think he has understood what he hasn’t truly realized at all.

I have written on this blog about the 2nd law of thermodynamics, aka time’s arrow. But if I truly realized the tendency that energy has to flow spontaneously out, why would I worry so heavily about transient states of the body-mind? If I truly realized the direction of time’s arrow, why would I fret about past mistakes?

I have written of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the ultimate theory of gravity. But if I were truly clear in regard to gravity, then why would the effort to sit upright cause me to pull my head back and down?

I have written of Newton’s 3rd law of motion. But if the principle of antagonistic action had truly entered my skin, flesh, bones, and marrow, then why would the idea of lengthening cause me to narrow? Why would my eyes tend to stray from the mid-line?

I have metioned quantum physics, quoting the principle that quantum physics deals not with certainties but with probabilities. With this in mind, I investigate the potential which I have to make an autonomous decision: I form an intention to move and yet decide not to do anything. By this means, I have been taught, I can allow the possibility of an action taking place. But the truth may be that I have never truly allowed, even once in my life, an action to take place. Like the hypocrite Jews, Christians and Muslims of which the world is full, I say “Thy will be done,” but don’t really mean it. I want God’s dice to be loaded in my favour.

These instances of non-realization, I have argued on this blog, are all a function of the ear, the original organ of stillness.

Pop psychologists, dabblers in Buddhist meditation, and readers of Zen literature, tend to latch on to the idea that true realization is right here within the grasp of everyone here and now, if only we would wake up to the wisdom that they have realized from their psychological or meditative insights and wide reading.

Alfred Tomatis, FM Alexander, Zen Master Dogen, and Gautama Buddha, to name four examples, were not like that. Those four guys all understood something profound about the human ear -- the original organ of both outer and inner listening, of both movement and stillness.

Those four understood that cheap intellectual understanding is never enough.

Sitting-zen practice cannot be like that. It can’t be a matter of cheap intellectual understanding. It has to be real.

This is why, in his rules of sitting-zen, Master Dogen cautioned us so clearly and strongly against un-reality, against the arising of any gap, against false pride in our understanding -- a tendency which causes us to poke our head in while almost completely losing the vigorous road of getting the body out.

It is a tendency that I have, it is a tendency that Michael Kendo Tait evidently has, and it must have been a tendency that Master Dogen also had -- or else how would he have known it so well?

It is not a tendency to be denied or hated, in self or others. It is something to be seen as it is. In our continuing quest for nothing, it is just a bit of something, a bit of something to drop off.

The Fourfold Criterion Revisited (4): Not That

2007-07-08T10:52:00.000+01:00

In contrast to the laws of the Universe, a human being like me can be unreal.

How is it that a human being becomes unreal. How can we begin to understand un-reality?

Here are four aspects of un-reality that I observe in myself:

(1) CARING = over-excitement of the fear reflexes, resulting in a temporary energy rush.

(2) LOSING THE HEAD = failure to integrate incoming sensory information, from within and without, into a meaningful whole; failure to filter out noise.

(3) DOING = directing my energy off to one side; hence losing the principle of antagonistic action in the middle way.

(4) KNOWING = undue certainty; reductionism; unreal confidence.

What does it mean to be a truly conscious upright being as Gautama was? What, ultimately, is the point: To be at the cutting edge of knowing, in some particular sphere, such as Buddhist philosophy, or Alexander teaching, or quantum physics? Or to be fully conscious of the much wider mystery?

In ‘My Credo,’ a speech given to the German League of Human Rights in Berlin in 1932, Albert Einstein is quoted as saying:

“The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.”

I think that what Einstein is expressing here might be partial consciousness of the wider mystery. Whereas Gautama’s teaching of the middle way always wants to bring us back from partial consciousness.

The real point of Gautama’s sitting-zen, as I see it, is not to make ourselves real. It is rather to see through, No!, to spring the whole body free from, un-real tendencies -- including for example the tendency which is leading me to write this post, craning my neck towards the computer screen in a caring way, while outside the sun is shining on oblivious of me, and inside a black cushion sits vainly pushing up against thin air.

The Fourfold Criterion Revisited (3): Non-Scientific Realities

2007-07-03T22:47:00.000+01:00

Since meeting Gudo Nishijima in 1982 I have been endeavoring to get to the bottom of Master Dogen’s rules of sitting-zen, in which may be observed the following four key imperatives:
(1) Don’t waste energy by grasping for what you already have.
(2) Sit upright.
(3) Sit still, non-thinkingly.
(4) Realize what freedom is.

Since starting in the Alexander work in 1994, I have also been endeavoring to get to the bottom of the four directions which, in the matter of sitting upright with maximum freedom and ease and minimum misdirection of energy, FM Alexander considered primary:
(1) Let the neck be free
(2) To let the head release upwards, out from the body
(3) To let the spine lengthen and the back widen
(4) Sending the knees forwards, out from the hips.

Since 1998 I have also trained and worked as a specialist in vestibular re-education of children and adults with balance, coordination and learning problems (e.g. dyslexia, dyspraxia, hyperactivity, and attention deficit disorder).
This work has gradually revealed to me the primary importance, in sitting-zen practice, of observing/inhibiting four vestibular reflexes. These four reflexes have been called the four cornerstones of all human behaviour. Equally, they may be called the four cornerstones of all misdirection of human energy. The four reflexes, to give them their scientific names, are:
(1) The Moro Reflex; the baby’s panic/grasping reflex
(2) The Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex; the reflex by which the baby responds to changing positions of its head in the gravitational field.
(3) The Asymmetrical Tonic Reflex; the pointing reflex which separates the baby into two sides. As the head turns, the limbs extend on the side to which the face turns, and the limbs flex on the opposite side.
(4) The Symmetrical Tonic Reflex; the reflex which enables the body of the infant, from around 6 months, to defy gravity for the first time, so that the infant rises into the cat-sit position, with arms and neck extended, and hips and knees flexed. This reflex also thus separates the infant into two halves; top and bottom.

The two tonic neck reflexes, ATNR and STNR, in their raw, infantile, uninhibited form, both dis-integrate the self. The corollary of this is that inhibition of these reflexes -- for example by the action of cross-pattern crawling, or by other actions requiring co-ordination of the four quadrants -- works in the direction of re-integrating the self.

In previous posts I have suggested that the four vestibular reflexes may be seen as constituing an underlying a priori basis (“a criterion before knowing and seeing”) not only for Dogen’s rules of sitting-zen and Alexander’s four directions, but also for the four foundations of mindfulness outlined by Gautama Buddha in the Maha-sati-pattana Sutta; namely,
(1) Kaya; body
(2) Vedana; feeling
(3) Citta; intention
(4) Dhamma; realizations

A couple of weeks ago, Joyce Evans, the widow of the late Ray Evans, my former Alexander head of training, gave me some of Ray’s old books, including biographies of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

Having been deeply impressed by the life stories and words of both Newton and Einstein, men who devoted themselves to seeking out the underlying simplicity and unity of nature, I would like to tentatively propose a further sub-set of four, as follows:

(1) Reality of energy.
(2) Reality of the Earth in spacetime.
(3) Reality of interaction.
(4) Reality of reality.

(1) The reality of energy is beautifully described by the 2nd law of thermodynamics; namely, that energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out.

(2) The reality of the Earth in spacetime is brilliantly described by Einstein’s general theory of relativity -- a theory of gravity.

(3) The reality of interaction is elegantly encapsulated by Newton’s 3rd law of motion: To any action there is always an opposite and equal reaction.

In light of Newton’s 3rd law, we can understand that the intention to sit still is, when non-buddha ascends beyond buddha, not only the intention to realize a state of the nervous system. Stillness is not a state of something. Stillness is absence of noise in a dynamic interaction. It is absence of disturbance, absence of dissonance.

In other words, stillness is not a fixed thing in a person; it is a bit of no-thing, and a bit of no-thought, in a mutual relationship between person and world.

A baby extends its neck and arms, and flexes its hips and knees, thereby instinctively pushing itself upright for the first time. A monk consciously performing the same action for the several thousandth time may notice that not only is he pushing himself up against the floor but also that the floor is pushing up against him.

A sitting body is pulled towards the centre of the Earth. And, equally, the surface of the earth pushes a sitting body upwards. Just that.

Equivalence of just sitting and just being sat -- a body thus being naturally empty and still. Isn’t this the point of sitting-zen, as indicated by Master Bodhidharma?

(4) It seems that physicists today are on the scent of a grand unified theory which will combine gravity and quantum theory in a theory of everything.

It is said that quantum physics deals not with certainties like e = mc2, but only with probabilities. This, apparently, was the discovery that led Einstein to object, “I cannot believe that God plays dice.”

Master Dogen was recording the rules of sitting-zen 680 years before Einstein wrote that e = mc2. But one can suppose that if Master Dogen were to express his own theory of everything in mathematical terms, it might contain expressions along the following lines:

Let e = e.
Let mc2 = mc2.

If a physicist followed Master Dogen’s rules of sitting-zen, he might discover that the ultimate reality to which Dogen pointed has to do not only with the e and the mc2, but also with the freedom to let, which is never certain.

In such a case, however, “physicist” might not be an adequate label for the discoverer. Non-physicist might be closer to the mark.

Gautama Buddha was a non-physicist, a non-philosopher, and a non-politician. He did not wish, from above, to force down upon us lesser beings, as a dogma, that “reality is reality” -- still less did he pronounce that “Buddhism is realism.” Instead, Gautama gave us, in the practice of sitting-zen, the means whereby each non-buddha might discover for himself the freedom to let.

The essence of that gift from Gautama Buddha, I believe, is inhibition of all four vestibular reflexes and, ultimately, inhibition of the Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex -- because inhibition of the STNR, as manifested in a truly upright sitting posture, is the hallmark of one who has transcended monkey-like behaviour -- a true, autonomous, individual human being; a non-buddha.

In his biography, Einstein is quoted as follows: “Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.”

I bow to Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein as revered ancestors in the original invisible Sangha.

Idle Reflection

2007-06-30T06:48:00.000+01:00

On the other side is Lavender,
In stillness showing how.
Each flower flowing upward
Loves being here and now.

On this side sits a questionner,
Often asking how,
If the hurdle is vestibular,
To clear it and allow?

The Fourfold Criterion Revisited (2): On Right Laws & Wrong Practice

2007-06-28T19:04:00.000+01:00

The point of sitting-zen is got when the laws of the real universe are realized -- as those laws were realized when Gautama Buddha, guided by the concept of a middle way, sat under the bodhi tree.

Thus, the inherent rightness of the universe can be realized in a person’s practice of sitting-zen. But that does not mean that a person who practices sitting-zen necessarily becomes right.

Those laws of the real universe which are much more likely than a person to be right, might include, for example, the 2nd law of thermodynamics and Newton’s 3rd law of motion.

This week I have been reading James Gleick’s biography of Isaac Newton, quoted thus:

Law 3. To any action there is always an opposite and equal reaction; in other words, the actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and always opposite in direction.

My arse squashes down the black cushion, and the black cushion pushes right back up against my arse.

Probably the principle of resonance is relevant too. According to Wikipedia, “Strings or parts of strings may resonate at their fundamental or overtone frequencies when other strings are sounded. For example, an A string at 440 Hz will cause an E string at 330 Hz to resonate, because they share an overtone of 1320 Hz (3rd overtone of A and 4th overtone of E).”

I don’t clearly understand this principle of resonance, although I ought to, because it is a cornerstone of the listening work that I am supposed to be trained in professionally. Moreover, sympathetic resonance is the metaphor that Gudo Nishijima uses for the transmission of the Buddha’s teaching intuitively from teacher to student.

According to Paul Madaule of The Listening Centre in Toronto (follow the link on my webpage if interested), the ear is the organ of both inner listening and outer listening. The vestibular part of the ear is responsible for inner listening to relatively slow movements (like swaying left and right in sitting-zen, or like a 100-metre sprint), whereas the auditory part of the ear is responsible for outer listening to relatively fast movements (sound vibrations up to 20,000 cycles per second). But the ear is basically one. So it may be that listening to the resonant chanting of an old monk, or listening to violin music that is rich in overtones, can help the ear to tune into the kind of stillness (without fixity) which we want in our sitting-zen.

The vestibular system is responsible at brainstem level for integrating all kinds of sensory input to do with posture and muscle tone. Hence, we rely on the vestibular system much more than we tend to realize. And, in general, we don’t suppose how unreliable our vestibular system might be.

This is the essence of the problem identified by FM Alexander as “unreliable sensory appreciation.”

At root, it is the unreliability of our vestibular system that can mislead us into believing that we are balanced, right, and still in sitting-zen; when in fact we are just fixed.

On a previous post (A Fourfold Criterion Before Knowing and Seeing), I tried to outline the connections I perceive between four stages in Master Dogen’s instructions for sitting-meditation, the four elements of the Maha-sati-patanna Sutta, four Alexander directions, and -- underlying all these -- four vestibular reflexes.

Often I find myself, especially during my first sitting of the day when the mind is fresh, observing these four criteria -- or, more holistically, this fourfold criterion.

The first criterion has to do with body-energy, emotional state, and muscle tone -- particularly centred on the neck.

The second has to do with processing of sensory information, especially information pertaining to head balance.

The third has to do with clarity of intention, with ability to keep one’s eyes on the ball, and with preventing the kind of narrowing/tightening/holding/twisting of the back that hinders free breathing.

The fourth has to do with a person’s ability, especially through opening of the hips, to allow the self to be taken over by objective laws of the universe -- so that upright sitting may become a matter not of sophisticated subjective effort, but of spontaneous upflow of energy, or basic action and reaction.

In the end, the whole thing is circular because, as long as my hip joints are not free then I am not truly free of care.

In sitting-zen yesterday morning, for example, I was bothered by persisting noise from an engine outside. Not only was I bothered; I cared that I was bothered. After a while, I noticed that I cared that I was bothered. This is related with the first criterion.

I noticed further that, in my infantile state of caring and being bothered, I was holding myself in a kind of startle pattern. To some extent, I could perceive this pattern kinaesthetically. This is related with the second criterion.

What might have happened then, on a good day, is that I might have heeded Master Dogen’s teaching to, Sit still, “Thinking the state of not thinking.” How? “Non-thinking.”

I might have clarified the intention to be just unthinkingly sat by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, Newton’s 3rd law of motion, et cetera.

But I failed to heed Master Dogen’s teaching. Instead, I started thinking about writing this blog post and I continued thinking about this blog post until my hour of sitting was up.

Why did I fail to stay on the right track? It was a problem of intention. I fell at the hurdle of the third criterion.

Rather than intending to realize what Master Bodhidharma called ultimate merit -- the body being naturally empty and still -- I intended to make a little mark by having my say on this blog. Rather than intending to allow a bit of nothing, I intended to realize a little bit of something, a little bit of my thing. So it was a problem of intention. At the same time, intention is a vestibular problem. Veering off track is always a vestibular problem. Once again, therefore, I would like to claim the vestibular amendment.

In the final analysis, however, even if my straying from the middle way stems from congenital vestibular dysfunction, I am still responsible for it. So I do not wish to put forward vestibular dysfunction as a justification for wrong practice.

But for anyone who wishes to understand why a gap is liable to arise between the inherent rightness of the laws of the universe, and the wrong practice of people who pursue the realization of those laws by sitting-zen, I recommend investigation of the vestibular system in general and the four vestibular reflexes in particular.

The Fourfold Criterion Revisited (1): Not a Prayer

2007-06-26T14:35:00.000+01:00

In zazen, I tend to care.

The head is held, I’m not sure where.

When holding stops, ribs let in air.

Can I do it?

Not a prayer.

The Buddha’s Teaching is Not Realism

2007-06-24T13:27:00.000+01:00

The teaching of Gautama Buddha is not a view; it is the Law whose realization, in the stillness of sitting-zen, is freedom.

Gudo’s view that “Buddhism is Realism” is not the Buddha’s teaching itself; it is a philosophical view.

The teaching of Gautama Buddha is not a view; it is the Dharma-robe, wrapped in which a shaven-headed sitter is dangled out... and, all being well, bitten.

Willow Warbler & Wobbler Warbling

2007-06-20T11:27:00.000+01:00

A Willow Warbler Warbling:

The Warbling of a Wobbler:

Delusion and doubt?
Vestibular illness!
So dangle self out
Till bitten by stillness

Letting the Other (4): No Net, No Cage

2007-06-08T20:40:00.001+01:00

RARO IMADA ITARAZU

RA: nets
RO: cages
IMADA: yet
ITARAZU: not arrived

"Nets and cages have never arrived."

In the Gyoji chapter of Shobogenzo Master Dogen relates how his Master Tendo declined the gift of 10,000 pieces of silver. In all innocence, I asked Gudo why Tendo declined the gift. I couldn’t understand why. Gudo replied, “Master Tendo was just enjoying his simple life.”

I am going to stop posting now.

I have had enough of responding badly to people’s cheap views and opinions. From now on I am not going to tolerate or publish any more of those. I am going to make more use of the reject option.

But if you have an expensive question on Master Dogen’s rules of sitting-zen, please ask it, not only for your own benefit, and I will endeavor to answer it, not only for my own benefit.

My answer will undoubtedly be unduly wordy and complicated, not clear and simple like Master Tendo.

Are there any questions?

Letting the Other (3): Impermanence

2007-06-08T15:43:00.000+01:00

Fifty years

Isn't long

To make a friend

Of being wrong...

GYOSHITSU WA SO-RO NO GOTOKU

GYOSHITSU: the body, physical substance
SO: grass
RO: dew
NO GOTOKU: be like

"The body is like a dew drop on a blade of grass."

KOAN GENJO
"The universal law is realized."

I think that when Master Dogen looked at the real world, he saw the law of energy change, i.e. the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Energy changes. It is not that sitting-zen practice creates energy change. Energy changes. That is the fundamental rule. That is the Law.

In regular daily practice of sitting-zen we can gradually begin to observe and to understand the law of energy change - how flowers fall, how weeds grow. The fragility of this dew-drop life.

The Law is not susceptible to any interference from us whatsoever, however excellent we might be at sitting in the full lotus posture for x hours per day.

The power of even a great sitting buddha is not a change that he or she creates. The energy that is available to us in sitting-zen comes only from digestion of the food we eat; it is not a change we create; the potential for change was already there in the food that is now releasing its energy for us.

The possibility does arise, however, of us learning in practice to re-direct this energy more and more autonomously.

So Master Dogen wrote: EKO HENSHO NO TAIHO O GAKU SUBESHI.
“Learn the backward step of turning light.”

The question that then arises is: How? How might I re-direct my energy?

That is the question we tend to jump to. That is the essence of Saddha’s question in the previous post.

A few years ago I asked Marjory Barlow if she was aware of her student’s progress from lesson to lesson. “Oh yes,” she replied, “I know it in my hands.” “Can you put into words what are the criteria of progress?” I asked. “Three things.” Marjory answered: “Less trying. More freedom and ease. Less misdirection of energy.”

The way she phrased the last criterion is all-important.

Similarly, when the Buddha set out the fundamental rule for his new order of wandering mendicants, he said:

Not to commit wrongs.
To let rights be done.
Naturally purifies the mind.
This is the teaching of the buddhas.

Notice where the Buddha started -- with a negative. Stop doing the wrong thing first. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to do the right thing. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to learn how to direct your energy more effectively. Start by learning how to misdirect your energy less.

Without explicit neuro-physiological knowledge of the vestibular reflexes, what both Gautama and Marjory understood, as I see it, is that it is all too easy, when dealing with an imperfectly co-ordinated person, to start by over-exciting the Moro reflex, in which case the whole vestibular system is knocked out of kilter, and confused grasping ensues.

Thus, in his rules of sitting-zen for everybody, the English translation of which you can read on my webpage at www.the-middle-way.org, Master Dogen starts with his fundamentally optimistic view of the world -- a view that signals that there is no emergency, no reason to panic, no urgent need to dash to the bookshop and start learning Russian.

DO MOTO EN ZU, IKADEKA SHUSHO O KARAN.
DO: the truth, bodhi, the Buddha’s enlightenment
MOTO: originally, fundamentally
EN: all around
ZU: pervades
IKADEKA: how...?
SHUSHO: practice/experience
O: [object particle]
KARAN: ... could it borrow?

“The truth originally is all around. How could it rely on practice and experience?”

Letting the Other (2): Widening and Lengthening

2007-06-08T13:57:00.000+01:00

MIMI TO KATA TO TAI SHI, HANA TO HESO TO TAI SESHIMEN KOTO O YOSU.

MIMI: ears
TO: (conjunctive particle)
KATA: shoulders
TAI SURU: oppose, align with
HANA: nose
HESO: navel
TAI SESHIMEN: (causitive form of TAI SURU) cause to oppose, cause to be aligned in opposition with
KOTO O YOSU: it is vital that....
"It is vital to cause the ears and shoulders to be opposed, and the nose and navel to be opposed."

In my sitting, the direction for the ears and shoulders to be opposed to each other ("to be aligned with each other" in some interpretations), has less to do with symmetrical alignment than it has to do with preventing a certain kind of reaction.

Marjory Barlow wrote of the force of gravity and the opposing force that is cultivated in Alexander work: the force of levity. At the same time, Marjory often used to tell me in the lessons she gave me, "We all go mad on the lengthening and neglect the widening."

Master Dogen's direction for the nose and navel to be opposed, has to do with a lengthening, anti-gravity direction. But the direction he gives before that, for the ears and shoulders to be opposed, has mainly to do, as I see it, with widening -- or, to be more precise, with preventing the narrowing tendency which sitting-zen practitioners are very liable to exhibit in our eagerness to lengthen.

In muscular terms, to ask ears and shoulders to release away from each other is to ask for a release of the big outer muscle of the upper back, the trapezius. At the same time, this direction has a lot to do with are called in Alexander jargon "the Dart spirals" -- after Professor Raymond Dart, a famous anthropologist, anatomist, and supporter of FM Alexander's work. Dart identified a great swathe of deeper muscle, a broad muscular sheet, that crosses from the left ear, across between the shoulder blades, and round to the right side of the rib-cage, then across the belly to the left side of the pelvis -- and vice versa, from the right ear round the left ribs and over to the right side of the pelvis. If you wish to follow the line in an anatomy book, look up splenius capitus/cervicis >> rhomboids >> serratus anterior >> external oblique >> internal oblique.

On a good day, release in this direction seems to cause the whole of the back to widen, including the pelvis, so that I feel the sacro-iliac joints freeing up. And when this happens it is as if the breath is passing right down into that area.

This kind of talk is liable to put us wrong -- because we are all prone to try to do the widening direction, just as we are prone to try to do the lengthening direction. We are prone to try to create a change.

But we needn't necessarily worry about going wrong. Going wrong is how we learn. Going wrong is fine, as long as the wrong tendency is illuminated by at least a glimmer of detached awareness.

The point to come back to, the point that goes against the grain of our frenetic achievement-oriented culture, is that in the sitting-zen of Master Dogen we are not in the business of creating change. Our primary work is preventing the wrong kind of change, not creating a Buddhist empire like that of Emperor Wu.

Thus, Master Bodhidharma’s expression of ultimate merit is recorded, in Shobogenzo chapter 30, Gyoji, by four lines of four Chinese characters:

JO: pure -- i.e. not defiled by greed, anger, and delusion; free of undue influence of the panic reflex
CHI: wisdom -- ability to reflect what is, as it is
MYO: subtly, delicately -- not a function of gross muscular doing
EN: surrounding
“Pure wisdom being subtly all-encompassing”

TAI: the body -- the body of a sitting-zen practitioner extending maybe to the physical world of nature (aka “the whole body of the Tathagata”)
ONOZUKARA: naturally, spontaneously -- not as a result of our deluded efforts to create change
KU: empty -- plus minus zero; not a physical experience of something; a bit of nothing; no undue excitement of the autonomic nervous system
JAKU: still, quiet -- no undue excitement of the ear
“The body being naturally empty and still.”

NYO-ZE: like this, as it is
KU-DOKU: merit, virtue -- the target to which the Master pointed us
"Merit like this"

FU: not, beyond
I: by
SE: the world -- the community of subconsciously controlled human beings
KYU: sought
"Is beyond what is sought by the world."

Preventing the wrong kind of change, in the context of this post, means not narrowing. The non-wrong kind of change -- widening -- is not something we create: it does itself, following the fundamental law of the Universe.

SHINJIN JINNEN NI DATSURAKU SHI TE, HONRAI NO MENMOKU GENZEN SEN.

SHINJIN: body, mind
JINNEN: naturally, spontaneously
DATSURAKU: drop off
HONRAI: original
MENMOKU: face & eyes, features, face
GENZEN: emerge

Body and mind drop off spontaneously, and our original features emerge.

Letting the Other Hit the Target

2007-06-03T10:21:00.001+01:00

When eyes focus on a target it not only a function of vision but also of eye movement -- a vestibular problem.

When the ears focus on a target, it is not only a function of audition but also of what Alfred Tomatis/Paul Madaule have called "the listening posture" -- again, a vestibular problem. (For more on this, follow the listening link on my webpage at www.the-middle-way.org)

Hitting, or not hitting, a target is always a vestibular problem.

In recent posts I have discussed my own past history and persisting strong tendency to miss the target, and have expressed my conclusion that this is primarily a vestibular problem.

In response, MT, CB, OB and J&T all have had the guts to manifest the results of their own sincere but, as I see them, incomplete efforts to hit the target.

Wondering how to respond to the comments left on this post, I had the idea just to draw attention to some relevant lines from Master Dogen's rules of sitting-Zen.

Where did that idea come from? It came from my recognition that whereas I am deeply prone to miss the target, Master Dogen himself seems to have had some peculiar ability to hit the target, in his thoughts and in his words.

In Shobogenzo chap. 74, Temborin, Turning of the Dharma Wheel, Master Dogen discusses the comments of several revered teachers of the past on the teaching that "When a person exhibits the truth and returns to the origin, space in the ten directions totally disappears."

For example, he quotes, as a wrecking-ball of romantic thought, the comment of his own teacher, the Old Buddha Tendo:

"When a person exhibits the truth and returns to the origin, a beggar boy breaks his food-bowl."

Then Master Dogen delivers his own comment:

"When a person exhibits the truth and returns to the origin, space in the ten directions exhibits the truth and returns to the origin."

I remember sitting in my teacher Gudo's office more than twenty years ago discussing the translation of this chapter. Gudo explained and praised the comments of the various masters and then said: "But we feel that Master Dogen just hit the target."

Again, in chapter 27, Zazenshin, A Needle for Sitting-Zen, Master Dogen quotes Master Wanshi:

"The water is clean right to the bottom,
Fishes are swimming, slowly, slowly.
The sky is wide beyond limit,
And birds are flying, far, far away."

Master Dogen's own variation, and his conclusion to the chapter, is this:

"The water is clear, right down to the ground,
Fishes are swimming like fishes.
The sky is wide, clear through to the heavens,
And birds are flying like birds.

The needle for sitting-zen of Zen Master Wanshi is never imperfect in expression but I would like to express it further like this. In sum, children and grandchildren of the buddha-ancestors should unfailingly learn in practice that sitting-zen is the one great matter. This is the authentic seal which is received and transmitted one-to-one."

Again, one is left with the strong impression that Wanshi may have hit the target, but Dogen scored a bulls-eye.

In sitting-Zen, hitting of the target means practice/experience of the same state that Gautama Buddha practiced/experienced under the bodhi tree.

That target is unknowable to me; it is not a target that is susceptible to me aiming for it directly -- although the words of past teachers, and the living example of living teachers, are available to point me in the right direction.

It seems to me that Master Dogen's rules of sitting-Zen for everybody are designed to guide me -- a person of poorly integrated vestibular reflexes and faulty vestibular functioning, who is liable by himself to miss every target -- first to allow the vestibular system naturally to quieten down, and then to allow the vestibular system to direct the body naturally to open up (and not only intellectually), so that even I might become a target that is available for Guatama Buddha's enlightenment, partially and temporarily, to hit.

Master Dogen wrote the first edition (Shinpitsu-bon) of his Rules of Sitting-Zen for Everybody, when he was still in his twenties. From where I sit, that edition already hits the target just about as well as any words can. But, evidently not satisfied with his earlier effort, Master Dogen revised this work into another edition (Rufu-bon), which is the one presented on my web-page.

I have been endeavoring above to clarify why, in wanting to hit the target for O|B Pete, Conrad, et al, I am going to fall back on a literal exposition of Master Dogen's own words.

So, after another unduly lengthy pre-amble, here goes:

FU KAN ZAZEN GI
FU: universally.
"Buddhism is an international religion," someone once said. Mmmm. "The Buddha's teaching is universal" may be more like it. A problem of
Japanese- English translation? Maybe.
Universal means for all, for everybody, for all manner of celestial, human, and infernal beings. For MT, CB, OB, J&T. For all true amateurs -- for all who truly love sitting-zen. Also for non-amateurs, for professional monks who ignorantly believe themselves to belong to a group called "the Soto Sect" founded by Master Dogen. For new recruits, seasoned warriors, and broken veterans of the US marine corps. Also for those guys shooting from the other side. For east-coast Jewish lawyers. For west coast Buddhist punks. For people suffering from any form of vestibular problem, however extreme or mild. Nobody is excluded. Not me, not you, not him or her. Neither us, nor them.
KAN: to recommend
ZAZEN: (one word) sitting-dhyana, sitting-zen.
GI: rule, standard method.
"Rules of Sitting-Zen for Everybody."

ZEN-AKU O OMAWAZU
ZEN: good
AKU: bad, evil
O: object particle
OMAWAZU: don't think
"Don't think of good and bad."
I think Master Dogen might tell us, Pete, along with William Shakespeare, that we are not really inherently bad, but thinking makes us so. But, yes, thinking does make us so. And it is not always so easy to stop such thinking -- because such thinking sometimes has its basis in vestibular dysfunction. As I mentioned before, people with poorly integrated Moro reflexes usually suffer from low self-esteem, which they may disguise in myriad ways. If the cause of low self-esteem is vestibular, there is no way for psychological counselling to get to the root of the problem.

ZEHI O KANSURU KOTO NAKARE
ZE: right, correct, true
HI: wrong, incorrect, false
O: object particle
KANSURU: care
KOTO NAKARE: don't
"Don't care about right and wrong."
The right side of an argument can be a very restricting place to be -- recognition of which is reflected in the old gypsy curse. I think the consciousness that Master Bodhidharma expressed to Emperor Wu as "true wisdom being subtly all-encompassing" was not too unfocused, but not too focused either. Similarly, in connection with Alexander work, Patrick Macdonald said something along the lines of that if you are careful you will never get anywhere; if you are careless you might. Knowing you as I do, Conrad, I think that you might be liable to err on the side of carefulness. There are good teachers I have been fortunate to know who have not always been careful and correct, but who have known a bit about what freedom is. I think that in the vipassana tradition, Ajahn Sumedho, who is reknowned for his good sense of humour, may be one such example -- although I haven't met him in person, but only listened to some tapes of his talks.

ANI ZAGA NI KAKAWARA N YA
ANI .... N YA: How could it be... ?
ZA: sitting
GA: lying down, reclining
KAKAWARU: to have to do with, to be connected with
"How could [this approach to sitting-Zen] have to do with sitting and lying down?"
Both in Buddhist practice and in Alexander work, we are liable to go around all day subtly trying to be right, carefully practicing Buddhist mindfulness or dutifully organizing ourselves by means of our Alexander directions. I think that Master Dogen wants to point us beyond all that, to a condition of greater ease and freedom.

BODAI O GUJIN SURU NO SHUSHO NARI
BODAI: bodhi; the Buddha's enlightenment. Short for the Sanskrit phrase anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, supreme, integral, full awakening.
O: object particle
GUJIN SURU: to perfectly realize, to reach the limit of, to get to the bottom of
SHUSHO: practice-experience
NARI: is
"[Sitting-zen] is the practice-experience that gets right to the bottom of the Buddha's enlightenment."
The Buddha's enlightenment is to sitting-Zen as the flag is to golf. If a teacher tells you it is not important to get there, it might be because the teacher is encouraging you to attend to the means rather than the end, to keep your eye on the ball, or it might be because he hasn't yet truly understood the subject he is trying to say something about.

CHIKEN NO SAKI NO KISOKU
CHI: to know, to recognize intellectually
KEN: to see, to have a view
NO: particle
SAKI: before
KISOKU: criterion
"a criterion before knowing and seeing" -- Master Dogen pointed to something more simple and primitive, and yet more truly powerful in bringing about real change, than intellectual knowledge and the visual sense. Experience in Alexander work leads me to believe, with Conrad, that this something has to do not only with the autonomic nervous system but also, more pivotally, with the way that a person's relates with gravity -- a vestibular problem. My Alexander head of training, Ray Evans, would sometimes describe Alexander work as "vestibular re-education." Ten years later, I am just beginning to glimpse the profundity of what Ray understood.
It is my stupidity to expect people who haven't experienced this work of "vestibular re-education," to get a sense of what it is about, just from what I have been writing about the vestibular system. I am sorry about this stupidity on my part, but I can't help it -- as a teacher I always have this impatient tendency. Once I have understood something, I find it difficult to understand why others can't get it straight away too, as soon as I explain it to them.
Some of the thoughts expressed by MT and J&T, while impressive at a certain level, are more representative of the usual thoughts of intelligent, educated people in our culture -- more based on psychology/philosophy rather than understanding of the centrality of the vestibular system. The comments of Pete and Conrad may be missing of the target, but I think they are missing of the true target. That is why I felt so excited and gratified when I read them on Thursday night.

MOSHI ZA YORI TATABA... SOTSUBO NARU BEKARAZU
MOSHI: if
ZA: sitting
YORI: from
TATSU: to rise, stand up
SOTSU; hurried
BO: violent
NARU BEKARAZU: should not be
"If you rise from sitting.... do not be hurried and violent."
What is the difference between (a) allowing a spontaneous action (which may involve extremely rapid and energetic movement), as an appropriate response to a given situation, and (b) giving way to a violent emotional reaction which is not appropriate?
How is it that some people, even in the heat of combat, or even under the spotlight of a musical performance, can appear to have time and to be very calm? I think of a great martial artist I have watched in training, generating incredible power at the punching board without much apparent effort, and of a virtuoso concert pianist I know.
I think that this man and this woman, have established, through diligent and regular training, clear pathways through which they are able to send energy strongly and with a minimum of fuss, with a minimum of leakage. So their actions, even when a lot of energy is expended in a very short space of time, have an air of unhurried effortless ease.
Gudo would say that such people are able to keep their autonomic nervous system balanced at all times. But I think it may be more accurate to say that the key factor is how well or poorly the Moro reflex is able to be integrated in the given situation. If the Moro reflex is well integrated, the sympathetic nervous system is able to access large reserves of extra energy without too many adverse vestibular side-effects, such as losing the head.
I started trying in earnest to be such a person 30 years ago, when I began training in the Japanese martial art, karate-do. After 30 years of endeavour, I haven't succeeded at all in becoming such a heroic individual. Rather, I am easily liable to be defeated by a trip to the supermarket. But I think that I have begun to understand a little what the major obstacle has been, why I am so prone to losing my head in unfamiliar surroundings.

BUTSU-BUTSU NO BODAI NI GATTO SURU
BUTSU: Buddha, one who is awake
BODAI: bodhi, the enlightenment of a buddha
NI: object particle
GATTO SURU: This is a compound of two characters. If I remember rightly, GATSU means to fit, to bring together (as in GASSHO, joining palms), and TO means to hit the target.
"Accord with the enlightenment of the buddhas."
How to spring the body free is a vestibular question. It is useless to guess at the answer before truly understanding the question. Just to stay with the question is difficult enough.

Errata (4): Undue Pessimism

2007-05-29T08:35:00.000+01:00

A few days ago I bought from the local LIDL store in La Ferte Mace, a bag of mini kit-kats, and couldn't stop eating them, one after another. The morning after, not unusually, I woke up feeling very sorry for myself.

There are moments here by the forest in France when I really do feel like a dragon that found water. But it generally turns out to be the kind of dragon that is easily knocked off its perch -- a dragon with dodgy vestibules.

On the post before this one I discussed JO-KEN-GE-DO -- the view, which is off the way, that transient situations might last forever. The flipside is DAN-KEN-GE-DO, lit. "cut view, off the way," in short, nihilism.

Whereas the former view violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics in its naive optimism, the latter view goes too far the other way: it fails to take account of the potential upside of the changeability of energy.

Wanting to leave one's own indelible mark in a flux -- whether by building temples as in the case of Emperor Wu or by translating Shobogenzo as in the case of yours truly -- is only a recipe for disappointment. It is like trying to paint one's signature in a pond.

On the other hand, because all is in flux we are always potentially connected with, not cut off from, that which Gautama Buddha awakened -- called in Sanskrit anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, supreme integral enlightenment.

Master Dogen compared enlightenment to a moon reflected in water. I don't make a mark on it, and it doesn't leave a mark on me.

Thus, despite Gudo's efforts for more than 20 years to teach me the true philosophical meaning of the middle way, I continue to wobble between selfish optimism and undue pessimism. I think it is mainly a vestibular problem.

At the end of his rules of sitting-Zen for everybody, Master Dogen promises us all that if we practice for a long time the matter of the ineffable, we are bound to be the ineffable itself.

But when I am physiologically out of balance -- Gudo would say when the autonomic nervous system is out of balance -- Master Dogen's promise means nothing to me. In the depths of kit-kat induced despondency, I cannot even remember it.

There again, I do not need to eat too much chocolate in order to feel discouraged and worthless. The merest hint of another's criticism, and my ensuing unconscious reaction, is more than enough to do the trick.

Once again, milord, can I plead not guilty on the grounds of diminished vestibular capability? (Low self-esteem is documented as a common secondary symptom of immature vestibular reflexes.)

Brad Warner on his blog provided a crystal-clear example of undue pessimism (or low self esteem?) when he negated any possibility of his own enlightenment. I think that this was probably a disappointed reaction to being too interested, earlier on in his Buddhist career, in the unduly selfish/optimistic hope of enlightenment as his permanent possession.

Master Dogen's promise gives grounds for unselfish optimism. He wrote: HISASHIKU INMO NARU KOTO O NASABA, SUBEKARAKU INMO NARUBESHI, "If for a long time you practice the matter of the ineffable, you will be the ineffable."

I say this is grounds for "unselfish optimism," because the possibility of me being ineffable includes the possibility of me transmitting the ineffable to others.

The wording is interesting -- in the first clause the object is INMO NARU KOTO, in the second clause the object is simply INMO. INMO means it, the ineffable. NARU KOTO means "the thing which is..."

I think that Master Dogen's wording may include the suggestion that we cannot practice the ineffable directly. The ineffable is always not that, nor that. What is readily available to us all, even as beginners, is the matter of the ineffable, the thing in which the ineffable inherently resides -- the practice of sitting-Zen. We can sit still in the lotus posture and open ourselves to the possibility of it. We can dangle ourselves out and hope (but not too expectantly) to be caught by it.

After a bit of practicing like this, I am liable to think, like a real non-dragon: "Yes, this is it! This is true uprightness! This is it!"

But no, that is never it. That is just a bit of a gap. That is just my vestibular system playing tricks on me again. I don't know anything called true uprightness. All I truly know is that even a homeopathic trace of the word "uprightness" causes me to stiffen up and hold myself in, to fix.

I know that under Gudo's crudely manipulating hand I indulged myself in a veritable fixing fest. Judging from his blog, in his mind Gudo would like to leave as his permanent legacy the bridging of Buddhism and humanism, so that he might go to Heaven secure in the knowledge that he has sown the seeds for the saving of human civilization. Here on planet Earth, however, Gudo's actual legacy among many of his students is a variety of stiff necks, frozen shoulders, headaches, bad backs, and aching hips. I hate to be so ungrateful, but this is true.

My response over many years to the two sides of Gudo -- excellence in philosphical understanding, incompetence in practical guidance -- has been to imitate the action of (in the words of Pierre Turlur) a yo-yo. Pierre has observed me yo-yo-ing between renewed belief that Gudo might be an eternal buddha after all, and despondency that such a crude hand cannot be true.

Meanwhile, Master Dogen's promise continues to point us, to point us all, to the existence of something, I don't know what it is, in the middle way between the unreality of JOKEN-GEDO and the despondency of DANKEN-GEDO.

Yes, it is heartbreaking that the most inexpressibly gorgeous, warm and familiar accumulations of energy are prone to disperse spontaneously, unless prevented from doing so. On the other hand, because of the tendency which energy has to change, whatever it is that Gautama Buddha awakened may not be totally cut off from us yet.

Having practiced for six years the sitting-Zen in which the ineffable resides, Gautama Buddha became the ineffable itself. Practicing for nine years the sitting-Zen in which the ineffable resides, Master Bodhidharma was the ineffable itself. How could a person of the present -- even if he is a grumpy kit-kat scoffer who can't stop wobbling -- fail to keep striving for it?

What is it? What is "the ineffable"?
It is not that. Nor that. I don't know what it is.

What is "the matter of the ineffable"?
That much I do know, thanks primarily to Gautama, Bodhidharma, Dogen and Gudo. It is to sit in the full lotus posture, upright and still.

But uprightness and stillness are vestibular functions. So, my final question is this:

Not necessarily as a once-and-for-all liberation, but just for the odd moment or two that makes all the struggle seem worthwhile, how to spring this body free from the influence of the faulty vestibular functioning that ordinarily governs this body?

With this question, I shall stop posting for a while, and limit myself to responding to any questions that OB, MT, J&T or others might like to raise.

Errata (3): Wanting to Be Effective

2007-05-28T06:04:00.001+01:00

While living as a student in Shefffield aged around 20 to 21, I got caught up in a kind of pre-Zen koan, an Accounting & Financial Management koan -- What is organisational effectiveness? What makes an organisation truly effective?

I would think about this problem all day long, and lie in bed thinking about it too.

There were two main approaches to the problem: the goals approach, and the systems approach. Wanting to find a definitive answer as a foundation for my own prospective career in corporate management, I wobbled back and forth between the two approaches.

The reason I had chosen management accounting as a subject of study in the first place was a strong desire to be effective, to make my mark. As a schoolboy I was both altruistic and ambitious -- a dream-hero. The pleasures of living a humble, simple life as an ordinary bloke didn't occur to me. I thought I was destined for great things. And to make a great mark in the real world, I figured, you need great material power -- the kind of power that lies in the hands of leaders of big corporations.

In many ways, I have behaved like the Chinese Emperor Wu, who strove to accumulate great merit by building loads of Buddhist temples, having sutras copied, et cetera.

Have I completely sprang free from that deluded viewpoint yet? No, I haven't. It has been too difficult for me so far, despite the input of several excellent teachers, to give up the deep-seated belief that real, lasting change is only affected by a big effort to shift matter about.

Delusory belief in the permanence of what cannot be permanent is traditionally represented by four Chinese characters:
JO-KEN-GE-DO.
JO = constancy, permanence.
KEN = view
GEDO = off the way.

Energy, even in its most gorgeous & warm accumulations, even in its most sharp & brilliant combinations, has an inherent tendency to disperse, and it will disperse spontaneously unless prevented from doing so. This truth is glaringly evident, but very difficult to accept.

To see things, notwithstanding the 2nd law of thermodynamics, as if their existence were permanent, is a deluded and one-sided view, off the middle way.

Only recently have I begun to see that holding onto such a one-sided view is at root not a philosophical problem. It is a vestibular problem, a kind of grasping for security. Straying from the middle way in any sphere is always a vestibular problem. Wobbling is just a vestibular problem.

My failure thus far to achieve any true merit has been just a vestibular problem.

When Emperor Wu asked Master Bodhidharma what merit he had acquired through his temple-building and other efforts to promote Buddhism, Bodhidharma replied: "None at all."

So the Emperor asked, "What is true merit?"

The Master said, "The body being naturally empty and still."

Errata (2): Confession

2007-05-26T08:04:00.001+01:00

When we receive the bodhisattva precepts, we do prostrations and practice confession.

Doing prostrations, I have no doubt, can be a big help in vestibular re-training. I have no doubt because a few years ago I guided an anonymous reader of this blog, a vipassana devotee and Alexander teacher, through a reflex inhibition programme that was based almost solely on bowing work. The experiment seemed to be successful -- although if it had been more successful, at least from my point of view, the man in question might now be more than an anonymous reader of this blog.

For the confession, we recite four lines. In Japanese, they are:

GA SHAKU SHOZO SHO AKU GO
GA = I
SHAKU = in the past
SHO = object particle
ZO = committed
SHO = many, various
AKU = bad
GO = acts
"The many bad acts committed by me in the past,"

KAI YU MUSHI DON JIN CHI
KAI = all
YU = stem from
MUSHI = [times] without beginning
DON = greed
JIN = anger
CHI = stupidity, delusion
"All have stemmed since times without beginning from greed, anger and delusion."

When I reflect back on what seem to me to have been my most serious mistakes, the karmic deeds whose ripples I still feel most keenly today, especially in the period between waking and sitting, bodily passions have played their part, but I see increasingly clearly that the real reason why, for example, I cheated on the woman I loved, was delusion: I was lost, disoriented, had no sense of a true direction, had no wide and true perspective in which to see things.

So, yes, it had to do with imbalance in the autonomic nervous system; but more than that, I now believe, it had to do with vestibular dysfunction.

I still feel lost, disoriented, and lacking a true sense of direction. For example, where am I going now with this blog? I have no idea. I just seem to blunder on day by day.

When I was working in earnest on the Shobogenzo translation, tough though it was, persevering with that work had a true direction in it, which was a kind of salvation to me. But since I stopped work on the Shobogenzo translation, ten years ago now, in 1997, I seem to have been guilty of a tremendous amount of aimless wandering.

The only difference between my being lost 30 years ago and being lost now is that recently I do see increasingly clearly that being lost is at root a vestibular problem. And vestibular problems do tend to run in the Cross family -- giving rise to the recognized phenomena in Ireland and Wales of "the Cross temper," and the interesting fact that, despite being a leading member in his youth of his school rugby and cricket teams (games generally played with the eyes open), my father, when I tested his tonic labyrinthine reflex with his eyes closed, fell over at once.

GA SHAKU SHOZO SHO AKU GO
KAI YU MUSHI DON JIN CHI
JU SHIN KU I SHI SHO SHO
ISSAI GA KON KAI SAN GE

The many bad acts committed by me in the past,
All have stemmed since times without beginning from greed, anger and delusion.
They were done with body, mouth, and mind.
I now totally confess and repent them all.

ERRATA

2007-05-24T07:28:00.000+01:00

On further reflection, I see that in the conclusion to my yesterday's post, there was a gap.

It may be truer to say that true uprightness is ineffable -- no-one knows what it is.

But in investigating how energy is not transmuted upwards but is instead poisoned and misdirected by greed/end-gaining, fear/anger, and delusion/disorientation, I have come to the definite conclusion that faulty vestibular functioning plays the pivotal role.

Having arrived at this, I realize that Gudo already got here many years before me -- at least he understood it in principle. In practice, he put his hand in front of my chin and pulled my chin crudely backwards, as if he knew what uprightness was. But that mistake remains for him to address. I can only endeavor to make amends for my own mistakes.

Spontaneous Opening of the Treasure House

2007-05-23T09:48:00.000+01:00

That the treasure-house opens naturally, or spontaneously, is Master Dogen's fundamentally optimistic realization, expressed at the beginning and at the end of his rules of sitting-Zen for everybody. It is the fundamentally optimistic realization expressed in the Lotus Sutra, that the Universe is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end.

When Gudo first met Kodo, he became a target that was hit by this teaching, and he has spent nearly 70 years endeavoring to clarify it. The truth, Gudo proclaims, is available to us naturally because our natural state is balance of the autonomic nervous system; and, to enjoy this state, we should just sit upright, keeping the spine in the position that feels to us to be vertically straight.

What I am proposing to you is a more dynamic clarification of what true uprightness is -- based on testing out Gudo's hypothesis, by trial and frequent error, in the painful laboratory of my own life.

According to Prof. Frank Lambert, all spontaneous processes are manifestations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (=energy-change), because they involve energy dispersing.

So if we wish to clarify the real meaning of body and mind spontaneously dropping off, and the treasure house spontaneously opening, we should understand those phenomena dynamically, in terms of energy change.

And so now, standing on Gudo's shoulders, I am suggesting that true uprightness is a spontaneous transformation of energy that is sensed and directed primarily by means of the vestibular system.

Four Reflexes & Eight Precepts

2007-05-22T07:56:00.000+01:00

Perhaps, when our hands are released from the tight grip of the Moro/palmar reflex, when loving ears are open, when the intention actually to help others is established firmly, and when we realize as human beings that we are all in the same big boat... perhaps it is then that we can begin to relate to each other as Enlightenment-Beings, as beings whose true nature is Gautama Buddha's state of enlightenment -- as Bodhisattvas.

Going further, Gautama Buddha bequeathed to us his ultimate teaching in the form of eight precepts, namely:
(1) SHOYOKU, (2) CHISOKU.

When the Moro reflex is aberrant, we are liable to be temporarily hyper-active, or over-motivated, and all the senses are liable to be too open, as a result of the release of adrenaline and other stimulating neuro-transmitters.

SHOYOKU, on the other hand, means to have small desire, or not to be greedy, not to grasp -- either for objects of the senses or for desired results.
CHISOKU means to know satisfaction, to be content.

Gautama Buddha's ultimate teaching was:
(3) GYO-JAKUJO, (4) GON-SHOJIN.

When the Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex is unduly excited, the inner ear is over-stimulated, so that we are liable to be disturbed by internal and external noise, and to feel disoriented.

GYOJAKUJO means to enjoy peace and quiet.
GON-SHOJIN means to get on with some work, to carry on with some actual, real, non-abstract job -- with one's feet on the ground.

Gautama Buddha's ultimate teaching was:
(5) FU-BONEN, (6) SHU-ZENJO.

The Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex has to do with pointing in a definite direction and, by extension, it has to do with concrete intention; the concrete intention to do something.

FU-BONEN means not to lose mindfulness, attention, awareness. At the same time, it may mean not to lose desire, volition, intention.
SHU-ZENJO means to practice Zen-balance, Zen-stillness; in other words, it expresses the concrete act of practicing sitting-Zen.

Gautama Buddha's ultimate teaching was:
(7) SHU-CHIE, (8) FU-KERON.

Inhibition of the Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex has to do with bridging the gap between the more or less subconsciously-controlled state of a monkey and the state of a conscious human being.

SHU-CHIE means to practice the intuitive wisdom (called prajna in Sanskrit) that is associated with sitting-Zen practice.
FU-KERON means not to engage in idle discussion.

Having a strong tendency to get lost in idle dreams and tangential discussions, I wake up feeling shattered; I go back to square one.

When something within us cries "Pick me up!" but the call goes unanswered, just there, in the raging fire of a raw Moro reflex, SHOYOKU-CHISOKU may be a blue lotus opening.

In other words, just in not being too greedy to get out of the fire, there may be a bit of Nirvana already.

Thus, an eternal buddha named Marjory Barlow said to me: "Listen, love. Being prepared to be wrong is the golden key."

How Not to Practice Sitting-Zen -- Personal Testimony

2007-05-21T09:17:00.001+01:00

The primary importance of the vestibular sense and the four main vestibular reflexes underlines the danger of not taking due care of loving relationships -- so that we either become too dependent upon the love of others, or too lonely and alienated in our independence.

Taking due care (= not too careless, not too careful) is itself a vestibular problem -- because it is the vestibular system which, in all conflicts between opposites, enables us to find the middle.

Thus, dualistic thinking also is a vestibular problem. The key to transcendence of dualistic thinking lies not, as people are prone to think, in the cerebral cortex, but in the vestibular system.

Shortly after I first met the sitting-Zen of Zen masters Dogen and Gudo, a dichotomy arose in my mind between my own emotional happiness and the Samadhi of the ancestors.

Seeming to confirm my own dualistic thoughts, Gudo himself told me, in response to a question I asked in a lecture given at the Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai center in the Mita district of Tokyo, in the autumn of 1983: “It is a question of selection.”

The English lecture was sandwiched in between two sitting-Zen sessions. After the second sitting, while preparations were being made for the subsequent lecture in Japanese, Gudo approached me and attempted to back track from his former position. He recommended me at least to call up my then other half in England.

But I had spent the previous 45 minutes redoubling my resolve, shutting out the pain in my legs, stiffening up my neck and pulling down my chin, and thus feeling myself to be strong, upright, balanced -- the embodiment of a freewheeling dream-hero.

“The situation does not affect my balance so much,” I unknowingly lied.

I had strong confidence -- confidence of a certain kind, based on much excited reasoning but very scant experience -- that by forcing the spine to be as straight as I felt possible, I could make my autonomic nervous system balanced and thus, relying on these means, keep myself heroically balanced in any circumstance.

That youthful confidence, of course, turned out to be utterly false. At the root of the mistake, I see more and more clearly, was vestibular dysfunction.

The aim of being balanced, and thereby performing a heroic service to humanity, wasn’t in itself so very wrong. But my conception of how to go about it, my conception of the appropriate means, was upside down. And getting things upside down, or putting the cart before the horse, grasping for the end before giving due attention to the proper means, is at root a vestibular problem.

A truly upright sitting posture cannot be forced; true uprightness is the flower of a vestibular system that is functioning freely, unencumbered in the first instance by unduly excited fear reflexes.

Yes, true uprightness frees us from fear. But more fundamentally, following the hierarchy of the vestibular reflexes, freedom from fear opens the way to true uprightness.

True uprightness arises out of quietness, that is, in the first instance, out of a sense of not having to try, out of detachment, out of not caring about noise.

“I wish to assume the truly upright, fearless posture of Gautama Buddha, in which the autonomic nervous system is balanced. Therefore I will go off on my own, and make a concerted deliberate effort to keep my spine in the position which feels to me to be as close as possible to the vertical. In short, I will try my damnedest to become Buddha.”

This is just the means whereby a person who has vestibular dysfunction -- and who is consequently worried about being wrong, afraid of being unloved or rejected from the herd, and who is therefore anxious to occupy a position in the herd -- may try to become Buddha. This is exactly how not to practice sitting-Zen.

On a deep, intuitive level, Gudo understands the above very well. His guidance caused me to clarify it.

But he didn’t understand it well enough to help me when I most needed help. On the contrary, it was he who had guided me with his hands, at the temple in the summer of 1982, to pull my neckbones back and pull my chin downwards.

Even if I live to be a hundred, I will never be able to explain in words the true way to practice sitting-Zen.

But Gudo's mistake I have understood a little. My own mistake I have understood a little.

How NOT to practice sitting-Zen, THAT I have understood a little, THAT I can explain a little.

“Seated meditation” is not it.
Abdominal breathing is not it.
The requirement of “proper posture” is not it.
The exhortation to keep the spine straight vertically is not it.

In sum, any slight tendency to try to be right (even a hundredth or a thousandth of a gap), arising out of vestibular dysfunction and the associated deep-seated fear of being wrong, is not it.

A Fourfold Criterion before Knowing and Seeing

2007-05-17T07:31:00.000+01:00

I was first made aware of the influence on human behaviour of four vestibular reflexes, by the late Ray Evans, who was a marine engineer, a student of yoga, my Alexander head of training, and a lifelong striver in pursuit of understanding of the human condition. Following Ray's example, in 1998-99 I underwent a year of professional training under Peter Blythe in Chester in order to look into the reflexes more deeply. From then on the process of investigating the reflexes gestated slowly in me -- hindered by doubt about whether excursions into the body of sometimes reductionist scientific knowledge called neuro-physiology might be an escape from truly holistic work.

Then about a year ago I was asked to give a talk on the reflexes at the annual conference of the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT) in Reading. I chose as the title "Four Primitive Reflexes." The talk seemed to go well, much better than I expected. Preparing for the talk, and follow-up work since, has encouraged me to think again about the four reflexes as the necessary a priori basis of Alexander work, of sitting-meditation as taught by Gautama the Buddha and Zen Master Dogen -- indeed as the a priori basis of all efforts to bring about true constructive change.

The four reflexes are all vestibular -- they are mediated at brainstem level by the vestibular nucleii and their development is broadly responsible for regulation of postural muscle tone. If the vestibular system is the foundation stone of human behaviour, the four reflexes can be seen as the four cornerstones.

To give them their 'scientific' names -- the names by which neuro-physiologists refer to them, they are:
1. The Moro Reflex.
2. The Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex (TLR).
3. The Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (ATNR).
4. The Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR).

To give them more descriptive names that reflect my understanding of them, they are:
1. The panic & grasp reflex;
- the reflex of instinctively breaking out of fear paralysis, stiffening the neck and throwing the arms out in panic, then clasping the arms in and grasping for security.
2. The head balance / vestibular training reflex;
3. The side-to-side pointing reflex;
- the reflex of intention, which opposes the instinctive panic reflex in the same way that the panic reflex opposes fear paralysis.
4. The top-and-bottom bridging reflex

I submit that underlying the four Alexander directions, underlying the four noble truths, underlying the underlying structure of four philosophies in Shobogenzo, and also underlying the four elements enumerated in the Maha-Satipattana Sutta, is this a priori foursome. The four vestibular reflexes constitute an a priori universal truth in that they are present in every human baby -- the first three reflexes at birth, the fourth when an infant comes onto hands and knees at around 6 months.

If it is true that any real change in human behaviour must take account of the four main reflexes, then maybe it should not be surprising that the number four, and multiples thereof, tend to crop up in practical teachings that are concerned with real (not only intellectual or psychological) change.

To anybody used to working with the four directions that Alexander recommended us to give "altogether, one after the other," the connection with the four reflexes is obvious once attention has been drawn to it.
1. Let the NECK be free
2. To let the HEAD release out
3. To let the BACK widen
4. To let the LEGS out

In the four noble truths:
1. Suffering may be equated with emotional attachments and reactions that are fuelled by and associated with the panic/grasping reflex.
2. Grasping (or "end-gaining" in AT jargon) is the origin/accumulation of suffering because of the universal defect that Alexander identified as unreliable sensory appreciation -- essentially a vestibular problem associated with imperfect integration of all four reflexes but no. 2 in particular. The faultier a person's vestibular-proprioception is, then the more that person tends to create harmful side-effects by grasping for a result. A dog whose coordination is perfect does not create harmful side effects when chasing a stick. The movements of a well-coordinated person fully committed to gaining an end, similarly, emanate only beauty. But most of the time most of us are not like that.
3. Stopping suffering might depend primarily on inhibiting the panic/grasping reflex and thereby quieting all the unconscious attachments and reactions that are secondary to it. As a movement, the panic reflex is a symmetrical pattern, which is opposed or inhibited by reflex no. 3, the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex. At the same time, whereas panic is an instinctive, unconscious, involuntary state, the pointing (or punching) reflex may be seen as at the root of all intentional activity -- so on this level too, the ATNR opposes or inhibits the Moro pattern.
4. The establishment of right pathways involves bridging the gap between instinctive, unconscious, reactive behaviour and more enlightened, conscious, decisive behaviour. (In physical terms, this may be equated with a harmonization of the energy centres in the head, the heart, and the pelvis.) This bridging of the gap between unconsciousness and consciousness depends on the mature evolution of all four reflexes, but ultimately on integration of the STNR, the bridging reflex. It has been said that a crucial difference between monkeys and humans is that (some) humans are able to walk upright with neck, hips, and knees fully and easily extended, thereby demonstrating inhibition of the STNR.... Anybody care to join me for a banana?

In the Maha-Satipattana Sutta, the four elements are:
1. Kaya; body.
2. Vedana; feeling
3. Citta; intention
4. Dhamma; realizations

In light of the four reflexes and also in light of the four stages that can be observed in Master Dogen's rules of sitting-meditation, I offer the following interpretation of the four elements:
1. Bodily non-emotion.
Just being physically present. Noticing how I am, without caring; being aware of what is going on in the body emotionally, without reacting further to bodily reactions that are already going on. If the ultimate aim is really to be free, to liberate the body from emotional attachment and reaction, the primary thing must be not to grasp, emotionally or intellectually, for that or any other result. In short, not to try to be a buddha. To be content to be the non-buddha.
2. Sensory non-perception.
Being open to sensory feedback about where I am, especially about where the head is relative to the rest of the body. Relying on the unreliable (but not totally relying on it) -- like Ray Mears consulting a cheap compass.
3. Intentional non-thinking.
Intending to allow. Willing fearless spontaneity, like a baby pointing (as if to say, "I want THAT one!"). Not only willing it, but also, eventually, intentionally doing something to get the ball rolling -- breathing out fully and swaying.
4. Non-doing.
Not me doing it. It doing itself. A spontaneous upflow of energy. Sitting as a spontaneous process. Body and mind spontaneously dropping off. Realizations of non-constancy in all its manifestations

To express it in sum, in light of the integral upward direction that unites the four:
1. Allowing oneself to be not necessarily up.
2. Sensing the possibility of an upward direction.
3. Thinking up.
4. Going up

Preamble (2): On Arrogance & Imperialism, Modern Psychology, Seeking Ease in Suffering, Not Being Up to the Task, Etc.

2007-05-16T20:11:00.000+01:00

In his rules for sitting-Zen Master Dogen cautions against pride in understanding. This pride is liable to be unconscious, and it is not always an individual thing. It can be a cultural thing. Perhaps it is a matter of what Carl Jung called “the collective unconscious.” Or perhaps not.

Certainly there can be institutional intellectual arrogance -- when I was 10 years old I passed an entrance examination in order to attend one such elitist institution, called King Edwards School, Birmingham. Founded in 1663 (I think), the school churned out more than its fair share of builders of the British Empire. Even at Oxford and Cambridge, we were told, KES boys had a reputation for being deep thinkers.

If might makes right, does that mean that the cultural or racial arrogance of empire-builders is justified, for a while?

What kind of elite is going to be the builders of the next great empire?

What role in that empire might be played by Master Dogen’s rules of sitting-Zen FOR EVERYBODY? A unifying role? A subversive role? A negligible role? None of the above?

It seems to me that several excellent Buddhist teachers in the world today have not only a background in ancient religious wisdom but also some grasp of modern sciences such as psychology. James Cohen, whose heritage appears to be Judaism, may be one example. Richard Morrissey, whose heritage appears to be Christian, may be another. The Dalai Lama, whose heritage is evidently Buddhist, is another.

Meanwhile, the criterion that precedes knowing and seeing is manifested in actions like brandishing a fist or a reverberating yell; it is not primarily a religious or psychological phenomenon.

Two Dharma-heirs of Gudo, one who has never met me, one a British friend who has sat with me on numerous occasions, have recommended me in the past year or two to undergo psychological counselling. I don’t rule anything out, but I myself would never recommend others to go down that route. Both those guys seem to have taken pains not to get on the wrong side of Gudo, whom they naturally revere for bestowing the Dharma on them, but their recommendation suggests to me that neither of them -- neither the one whom I consider a friend nor the other one -- are coming from the same place as Gudo himself. They may be legitimate heirs of Gudo, legally speaking, but biologically speaking his lifeblood is not like that.

Anger is one of the three poisons, a physical thing. Being angry, I come to the forest and sit in lotus.

I never heard Gudo recommend anybody at all ever to take even one small step in the direction of psychotherapy. Generally speaking, he recommended people to practice sitting-Zen itself and to study Shobogenzo, whose root is sitting-Zen.

During solitary retreat here in France, I listen to a lot of BBC Radio 4. I like Radio 4 a lot. But everybody on it is an amateur psycho-analyst -- every news reporter or presenter of Desert Island Discs is an expert on human psychology.

Maybe it is a source of unconscious pride for we “educated” Radio 4 listeners that nowadays we have understood just about everything there is to understand in human life, on the basis of modern psychology.

Psychology is generally accepted as a bona fide science, higher up the food chain than Alexander work. In future, people may see that the teachings of both Alexander and Dogen, being concerned with acceptance and use of the whole self, are a cut above psychology.

Today I took a close-up digital photo of a robin, with which I was thrilled. Looking at the photo brought a smile spontaneously to my face. In my excitement, however, I erased the photo. I took some other photos of the robin too, but I erased the best one. It was a small loss within the greater scheme of things, but a loss all the same, and a useful reminder to me of how I am prone to react to any kind of loss -- by holding the breath.

Uptight breath holding is a strong unconscious tendency that I have observed in myself in response to many difficult stimuli along the way -- from disappointment, disorientation, and difficult choices, through to the desire to stretch out painful legs.

Isn’t the scenery of every sitter’s journey inevitably littered with these kinds of experiences -- times of loss, of missed boats; feelings of being disoriented, or seasick; frustrations, unforeseen stops at unmarked crossroads; and ultimately sheer pain, unavoidable physical discomfort?

And isn’t the tendency to restrict the breathing, when confronted with such stimuli, a universal one?

Because the tendency is unconscious, it often goes unnoticed, unless brought into awareness by an effort of attention.

According to some commentators the effort required is more than an effort of attention. There are Dharma-heirs of Gudo who have written of belly breathing -- for example, Michel Proulx and Richard Morrissey. Their advocacy of abdominal breathing shows that they have not got Gudo’s lifeblood either. Gudo only ever recommended me to attend to the matter of sitting upright, because, when we are truly upright, the breathing takes care of itself.

Of course, most of the time I am not truly upright. Alexander work made me aware of that. In general, I am more or less uptight. In that case, the traditional way is not to do something with the belly to help the breathing; it is rather to stop being uptight and get back on the vigorous road to uprightness. Then the breathing will become easier, naturally.

A few years ago during a solitary retreat here in France, I wrote the following verse:

Thirty years after school,
Here I am, still a fool.
What I feel to be true uprightness
Turns out to be just uptightness.

The two kinds of extreme response to suffering are (1) to be overwhelmed by it and collapse, as if wishing to curl up and die; and (2) to refuse to be bowed by it and stiffen up. Either response is accompanied by restriction of the respiratory mechanism; in other words, by a lack of physical ease.

Master Dogen’s rules for sitting-Zen guide us to seek that physical ease, which lies in the middle way between giving up and trying too hard. Dogen exhorts us to get the point that sitting-Zen is not meditation to learn (not “seated meditation” or “seated Zen”); it is rather a gate to effortless ease.

This search is not primarily a psychological journey. It is a search for ease in sitting -- a sitting posture that is characterized by true uprightness, which, in other words, is characterized by neither slumping nor uptightness; a sitting posture in which, after one deliberate out-breath to get the ball rolling, breathing is left to take care of itself.

Seeking ease in sitting might be like seeking a blue lotus, in which case the principle to remember might be this:

Fire does not turn into blue lotus flowers. Blue lotus flowers open in fire.

Thus, in the daily quest for true uprightness, observing Master Dogen’s rules, I attend first of all to how I actually am in my body, and where I am in spacetime/gravity. Out of this attention, eventually, on a good day, there may arise the concrete clear intention to sit truly upright, not uptight, and to sit still. Ultimately, the gap between intention and the real act of easy upright sitting in stillness, has actually to be bridged.

Is there a single criterion that covers (and not only in a linear, serial way), each of the above four bases -- emotional state, spacetime awareness, intention to sit upright, and uprightness itself?

In seeking to clarify what this criterion might be, psychology may not be the traditional place to start.

According to Gudo, the criterion is not a psychological one but a physical one: namely, balance of the autonomic nervous system.

Maybe to touch the first base is to have covered all bases already -- I don’t know. But it seems to me that to repay the old man’s benevolence requires us to clarify the criterion further, covering all bases more explicitly.

Clarifying the criterion does not mean only to write clear explanations of it; it means, as authentic successors to the Samadhi of ninety-odd ancestors (all of whom were celibate monks), to manifest the criterion in practice. To accomplish all this without falling into the trap of pride in the understanding of little me… strikes me as an extremely difficult proposition. My track record so far, clearly, has not been spotlessly free of errors.

Now I will draw to a conclusion this intended pre-amble which has turned into a lengthy ramble. My final thought is that to repay a master’s benevolence does not mean to suck up to him, out of gratitude for having received a few feet of silk certifying that Joe Bloggs is a Zen Master. Truly to repay Gudo’s benevolence is, without going against the essence of his teaching, to be clearer about the essence of his teaching than he is himself. That is the task. Regardless of our own deeply unreliable and ever-wobbling feelings as to whether or not we are up to the task, that is the task.

A Criterion before Knowing and Seeing: Preamble

2007-05-13T10:00:00.000+01:00

As a young man of 22, I met an old man who seemed to meet my criteria of what a Buddha might be. Later I found that it was not so; the old man was very far from perfect; there were many things he did not know. In retrospect, the clue had been there in his monk’s name: Gudo, Stupid Way. Neither knowing nor wanting to know what he did not know, the stupid old man acted in stupid ways that produced, unbeknowns to him, all kinds of imperfect side effects. The old man was, it turned out, a non-buddha.

Acting in the naive and false belief that this non-buddha might be a true Buddha I made all kinds of tremendously stupid mistakes of my own, producing my own unpleasant side effects.

Under the old non-buddha, I came confidently to misunderstand that the teaching of Gautama, the historical Buddha, was not primarily a matter of psychology or spirituality. I came to believe in the existence of a criterion that precedes even the knowing of the great scientists and even the spiritual insights of the great religious seers -- that criterion being primarily a matter of how to sit upright in the full lotus posture, thereby (or so the non-buddha said) “bringing the autonomic nervous system into balance.”

Thus, naively believing that the strange and simplistic teaching of the non-buddha might have some kernel of truth in it, I became obsessively and unhealthily interested in the matter of how to sit upright. And this obsessive and unhealthy interest led me back to England to investigate the discoveries of FM Alexander.

(4d) Spontaneity

2007-02-17T09:57:00.004+01:00

Spontaneity is realized for example in a true smile (not a stage smile), or in an orgasm, or in a sneeze, or in a release of the respiratory mechanism resulting in a true deep breath. A true deep breath is not done with great muscular effort; it is more akin to a sigh of relief.

Everybody is familiar with the traditional Chinese image of the big-bellied happy Buddha, his vital energy sending his arms up in the air. He, to me, is a symbol of spontaneity -- Yippeee!

A thing I was taught while training in traditional karate-do is that to maintain a good strong fist you only have to be mindful of two things: the little finger and the thumb. If you pay attention to those two points, all the stuff in between takes care of itself. (But if, in the heat of the moment, you lose attention, then something is liable to get broken.)

The same may be true in the performance of a somersault by a gymnast, or in the non-performance of a non-somersault by a non-buddha -- from the raw material of delusion to Yippeee! and back again.

Master Dogen’s Rules of Sitting-Meditation for Everybody actually work in practice. If we keep coming back to them for 5, 10, 20, or 25 years, treating them with the respect they deserve, they take us reliably from here to there and back again.

There again, who am I to make such a pretentious statement, as if I were the one who knew?

A big Zen poser, his heroic ambitions all disappointed, slinks away to the forest, to be ignored even by the birds and squirrels.

YIPPEEE!

(4c) Fearlessly being yourself

2007-02-17T09:57:00.003+01:00

Who guided non-buddha to realize himself as non-buddha?

A conniving, treacherous little yellow bastard.

(4b) Not meditation

2007-02-17T09:57:00.001+01:00

Non-buddha is not meditating.

Non-buddha is sitting.

(4) Enlightenment

2007-02-17T09:56:00.003+01:00

“Enlightenment,” for our purposes, means the awakening to the very bottom of which our great teacher Sakyamuni got, through his practice and experience of sitting-meditation under the bodhi tree.

Metaphorically speaking it was an evolutionary leap, the bridging of a gap, a crossing over, a kind of somersault. But as a historical fact, it was only a human being sitting upright with his feet on opposite thighs while stars shone, worms dug the earth, the sun came up, grass waved in the breeze and birds sang.

Sitting-meditation (even that of a non-buddha) is the practice and experience that gets to the very bottom of Sakyamuni’s enlightenment.

So said Dogen in his Rules of Sitting-Meditation for Everybody. Wasn’t that a truly remarkable statement? Wasn’t Dogen’s writing of his Rules of Sitting-Meditation for Everybody a truly momentous event? I tend to forget just how remarkable and momentous.

(3d) Non-thinking

2007-02-17T09:56:00.001+01:00

Who is non-thinking?
What is non-thinking?

Non-buddha is sitting.

(3c) Swaying left and right

2007-02-17T09:55:00.002+01:00

The action of swaying can help to retrain the vestibular system, which has to do with regulation of muscle tone.

There are four early reflexes through which, in human development in the womb and in infancy, the vestibular system lays the essential foundations for regulation of muscle tone. The four reflexes are, to give them their scientific names:
1. The Moro reflex.
2. The tonic labyrinthine reflex (TLR).
3. The asymmetrical tonic neck reflex (ATNR).
4. The symmetrical tonic neck reflex (STNR).

To give them alternative, non-scientific names, they are:
1. The “How Am I?” reflex.
2. The “Where Am I?” reflex.
3. The side-to-side integration reflex.
4. The top-to-bottom bridging reflex.

Number 1 has a lot to do with emotional attachment or detachment, end-gaining or non-end-gaining, grasping or letting go, pushing forward or stepping back.
Number 2 has a lot to do with proprioception.
Number 3 has a lot to do with the integration of our two sides in movement and non-movement.
Number 4 has a lot to do with bridging the evolutionary gap from ape-like to more enlightened human behaviour.

Number 1 has a lot to do with the Alexander direction to “let the neck be free.”
Number 2 has a lot to do with the Alexander direction to “let the head be released out of the body (‘forward and up’)”.
Number 3 has a lot to do with the Alexander direction to “let the back widen.”
Number 4 has a lot to do with the Alexander direction to “send the knees forwards and away (to allow freedom at the hip-joints).”

Anybody for a banana?

(3b) Breathing out

2007-02-17T09:55:00.001+01:00

The head is obviously a vital centre in a human being, and so is the heart & lungs. But after a long out-breath, if it has been a good one, I experience something -- maybe oxygen -- passing into a vital centre lower down still.

Once when I asked Gudo about what the Japanese call “ki,” or vital energy, he observed that those Japanese who liked to discuss about “ki” were generally the more spiritual ones.

That observation was doubtless true. At the same time, it may also be true that consciousness of something passing to and from the lower vital centre -- what the ancient Chinese called the dan-tien, and what Japanese martial artists call the tanden -- can be a very practical state.

(3) From thinking to action

2007-02-17T09:54:00.004+01:00

(2d) Deciding to breathe out

2007-02-17T09:54:00.003+01:00

Because feeling is an interference and thinking is an interference; because partial propriopecption of ears vs shoulders, nose vs navel, and the rest is an interference; because total proprioception of the whole sitting posture is also an interference; and because the effort to detachedly observe the breathing without interfering with it is also an interference, non-buddha eventually decides deliberately to interfere, by causing there to be a long, controlled exhalation.

The spirit of this decision, expressed by a saint, might be: “Inshallah,” or “Thy will be done.”

Expressed by non-buddha, it might be: “**** it. Let’s get on with it.”

(2c) Not interfering

2007-02-17T09:54:00.001+01:00

Not interfering is the fundamental rule. It might also be a very fundamental interference.

(2b) Active proprioception

2007-02-17T09:53:00.003+01:00

Ears and shoulders. Ears and shoulders.

Nose and navel. Nose and navel.

Tongue. Tongue and connections.

Lips and teeth; eyes; nose - breath.

(2) From feeling to thinking

2007-02-17T09:53:00.001+01:00

According to the World Book Encylopedia: “The primary colors in light are red, green, and blue. When red and green lights are mixed, the result is yellow light. A mixture of blue and green lights forms blue-green light, and blue and red lights form purple light. Combining all three primary colors in light in the proper proportions results in white light.”

As it is with mixtures of red, green and blue light, so it may also be with feeling, thinking, and action in sitting-meditation -- the reality of practice is likely to involve no clearly defined red, green, and blue, but mostly a lot of murky yellow.

Originally light is pure, like nothing, but when we think about light we call it white and analyze it into red, green, and blue.

There are two kinds of thinking, at least -- thinking, and thinking about. Thinking in sitting-meditation, thinking that concrete state beyond thinking, is not thinking about.

Gudo Nishijima taught me when I was in Japan how to think ABOUT things, in four phases, following Gautama's four noble truths -- the truth of suffering, of origination of suffering, of stopping suffering, and of the way of stopping suffering.

That is why I write now of red, green, blue and white; of feeling, thinking, action and enlightenment; of four Alexander directions; of four vestibular reflexes responsible for regulating postural tone.

There is no red, green, blue and white; no feeling, thinking, action and enlightenment; no four directions; and no four reflexes.

In 1906 Sir Charles Sherrington wrote of the fiction of simple reflex. The four reflexes, then, are a convenient fiction, along with the four categories of feeling, thinking, action and enlightenment.

There is no somersault.

Or is there?

(1d) Ascending beyond buddha

2007-02-17T09:52:00.002+01:00

At times, when I am sitting, I deeply experience the three poisons. I am greedy. I am angry. I am lost, worried, confused. A seed of salvation at those times might lie in the middle of each line -- in the am, the are, the is.

If my response to experience of being eaten by three poisons is to try to become free of the three poisons, to aim to make myself into a buddha, then the situation really is hopeless.

There are various kinds of non-Buddhist. I don’t know what kind I am. But I do know that it is very vital for me in my practice as a non-Buddhist not to try to become buddha. Not trying to become buddha is the hallmark of a non-Buddhist -- whether the non-Buddhist is practicing his non-Buddhism in a brothel, on a bar-stool, or on a round black sitting cushion.

So should we conclude that it is in being, not in trying, that non-buddha ascends beyond?

No! That proposition sounds like the empty views of those existentialist philosophers, Alexander teachers, Shakespearean actors and the like, who have never seen Master Dogen’s ultimate teaching in a dream.

When the straight truth of sitting-meditation spontaneously emerges, it might sound more like this:

Ascending beyond trying and being, it is in sitting in the lotus posture -- putting right foot on left thigh and left foot on right thigh, and just sitting upright -- that non-buddha ascends beyond.

When I am sitting, the fact that I am might contain a seed of salvation; but ascending beyond I am, non-buddha is sitting.

Such, as I understand it just now, is the first and most important part of Master Dogen’s rules of sitting-meditation.

The secret is in the preparation.

(1c) A step back

2007-02-17T09:52:00.001+01:00

Stepping forward is generally associated with a desire to achieve, to get, to grasp, to hold on. A backward step has more to do with dropping out, dropping off, giving up, letting go.

When I focus single-mindedly on the goal of letting go -- concentrating in the way that I practiced concentration in the classroom, in the examination hall, and on the rugby pitch -- that kind of concentration turns a drop-out into a greedy Zen grabber. It turns “dropping off body and mind” into holding on for dear life. It turns letting go of everything into a kind of grasping for something.

The backward step requires a kind of un-concentration that does not come naturally to me; it requires me to make a decision to go against the habit of a lifetime.

Some time soon I will let go of posting on this blog, at least for long enough to prove to myself that I am not totally fixed in this habit of sitting before the computer screen and pontificating. I will make a decision and bloody well stick to it.

Master Dogen wrote that sitting-meditation is not a kind of meditation to be learned. But he also wrote that we should learn the backward step -- that we should learn the backward step of turning light and returning luminance. Then body and mind will drop spontaneously off and our original features will emerge.

(1b) Mind the gap

2007-02-17T09:44:00.000+01:00

Mind the gap means don't be a Zen poser.

Don't give yourself the airs of one who knows. I hate this tendency, primarily in myself. "I am the teacher. The one who knows what feeling is, what thinking is, what action is. You are below me. I am above you. I am the special one, to whom people pay their hard-earned money for instruction in how to be. I am the Great Pontificator, above menial tasks like housework."

When I see this tendency in others I feel very angry. Grrrrrr! I go red, and use foul and abusive language.

Rules of Sitting-Meditation (1): Preparing for a somersault

2007-02-15T10:27:00.000+01:00

Gudo’s answer does not come. But life goes on.

My state this first thing this morning was one of emotional feeling, worry, suffering from imperfect understanding of who I am and what the nature of my vocation is. Translating Shobogenzo was a vocation -- no doubt about that. But since that process was halted 10 years ago, I have remained unsure about what kind of teacher I might be. Except that I am sure that I am not a monk of the Soto Sect -- no doubt about that either.

Sitting-meditation every morning is primarily an opportunity for the sitter to notice how the sitter is. This morning, again, I noticed emotional feeling, energy being wasted on deep-rooted worries about this and that.

The first decision to be made in sitting-meditation is the decision not to act on the desire to do something to make the situation feel better. Not to react. Not to do.

My emotional feeling, my superfluous worrying, is my raw material, my starting point, the weedy patch of ground under my feet. This is how I am.

The first decision, in preparing for a somersault, is not to do but to be. To let the ground be under the feet. To let be.

HI-SHIRYO, Non-thinking (4): One last question

2007-02-12T12:46:00.000+01:00

Master Dogen asks: Just in the moment of sitting, what is the sitting itself? Is it a somersault? Is it a state of vigorous activity? Is it thinking? Is it beyond thinking? Is it effort? Is it effortlessness?

Gudo’s conclusion is that, Zazen being ineffable, the answer to all these questions is: No. And especially we should understand that the answer to the question "Is it thinking?" is most definitely, uniequivocally: NO!

I would like to ask Gudo whether he recognizes that, sitting-meditation being ineffable, the answer to all these questions might also be: Yes.

HI-SHIRYO, Non-thinking (3): Further questions

2007-02-11T13:07:00.000+01:00

Questions and answers on HI-SHIRYO, non-thinking, have not yet hit the target. So I would like to ask Gudo as follows:

When you make your effort for your spine to lengthen vertically, following the line of gravity of the earth, is that HI-SHIRYO?

Or when the spine lengthens vertically as if by itself, effortlessly, is that state of effortless ease HI-SHIRYO?

Which is one HI-SHIRYO? And which one is not HI-SHIRYO?

I would like to ask again, using a metaphor:

A concrete path leads to a river, on the other side of which is a grassy meadow. When I somersault across the river, on which side are my feet?

HI-SHIRYO, Non-thinking (2): Realistic consideration

2007-02-11T12:55:00.000+01:00

Dear Mr Mike Cross,

I have read your blog HI-SHIRYO, non-thinking, and I also felt that
your consideration was
a kind of very pure idealistic thoughts. Therefore I would like to
recommend you to have a
special training to think all kinds of philosophical problems on the
basis of consideration,
in which you will think about everything on the basis of completely
separated four philosophies.

For example when you will think about a flower, first you will think it
on the basis of idealism.
Therefore you will think a flower that it is a kind of plant, which is a
kind of romantic symbol
suggesting love, beauty, hope, yearn, and so forth.

And in the second phase you think a flower as a materialistic plant on
the scientific knowledge.
Then you will think a flower, which is an object of botanical
viewpoint, that it is a part of plant having
miscellaneous colors, petals, stamens, pistols, calyces, and so forth.

But as a real flowers, which exist in our private room, they are put in
beautiful glass pots sometimes,
and they are soothing our feeling actually at the present moment.

And in conclusion a flower is something real, which really exists in
this world actually.

I think that such a kind of our intentional mental and physical
training is very useful for us to accustomed
to realistic consideration.

Have a good luck!

With best wishes Gudo Wafu Nishijima

HI-SHIRYO, non-thinking

2007-02-09T07:01:00.000+01:00

There is emotional feeling, plus and minus, like and dislike. And there is sensory feedback, information integrated primarily by the vestibular system.

There is intellectual thinking, thinking about this and that, worrying. And there is conscious volition, being clear about one’s own intention during some activity.

There is the kind of doing that involves great muscular exertion. And there is action as a spontaneous process, which seems effortless.

In clarifying the fundamental meaning of feeling, thinking, and action in Master Dogen’s rules of sitting-meditation, the most vital question to ask might be in regard to the meaning of HI-SHIRYO, non-thinking.

Does HI-SHIRYO express the end -- action which is different from thinking, spontaneous action itself, just sitting itself?

Does HI-SHIRYO express the means whereby the end may be realized -- thinking which is different from thinking, the intention to allow?

Does HI-SHIRYO include both meanings -- both sitting and thinking, sitting/thinking, sitting-meditation, without separation of end and means into two parts?

Rules of Sitting-Meditation for Everybody

2007-02-08T17:50:00.000+01:00

The SHO-BO of SHOBOGENZO can be translated, for example, as “right Dharma,” “true law,” “true reality,” et cetera. Recently a translation I like is “straight truth.”

I hate Zen jargon. Following the mirror principle, I should reflect that the tendency to imbue oneself with spurious authority, through recourse to Japanese or other exotic terminology, whose meaning is understood only by those in the know, is a path I am afraid of going down all too easily myself.

A particular red flag to me is when practitioners of so-called Soto Zen use Japanese terms that Master Dogen never used at all. The so-called “sesshin”, i.e. short retreat, is a good example. Recently Jordan used a term “suizen.” I don’t know what the hell he is talking about. I somehow managed to get through the translation of Shobogenzo without ever having to deal with the word “suizen.” If Jordan knows what he means, then why the hell doesn’t he express it in English? Is the use of exotic Japanese terms conduct becoming a US marine? I don’t think so! Put that man on a charge at once!

To talk and write unthinkingly of “Zazen,” and to leave “Zazen” untranslated as such, may be a lesser sin, but recently I see even that as a mistake I have made. ZA means to sit. ZEN means dhyana. So Zazen means sitting-dhyana. But that still leaves the original Sanskrit word dhyana untranslated.

There is a strong argument for leaving Zazen at that: sitting-dhyana. This is the compromise which Gudo Nishijima has favoured. He doesn’t like the translation “sitting-meditation.” He much prefers sitting-dhyana.

But recently I am coming round to sitting-meditation.

Master Dogen says IWAYURU ZAZEN WA SHUZEN NIWA ARAZU. “What is called sitting-dhyana is not learning dhyana.”

Gudo emphasizes that Master Dogen emphasizes that sitting-dhyana is just action itself, just sitting itself, not the kind of meditation that is learned.

I agree that this point is very vital.

To clarify this point in my own words, I would like to say that when sitting-meditation truly becomes sitting-meditation, it is upright sitting as a spontaneous process, which is neither the kind of meditation that is learned, nor the kind of sitting that is done based on blind feeling (i.e. not the rigid holding of a posture that is felt to be right).

The words “Fukan-zazen-gi” trip very easily off my keyboard. I have been talking and writing for a long time about Fukan-zazen-gi. But from now on I am going to make a conscious effort to stop that habit. I think that if we really get the point of the rules of sitting-meditation which Master Dogen set down for everybody, we should be able to express that point in words that everybody can understand, without a Buddhist dictionary.

So, from now on, it is Rules of Sitting-Meditation for Everybody.

In his Rules of Sitting-Meditation for Everybody, Master Dogen wrote:

MASANI SHIRUBESHI, SHOBO ONOZUKARA GENZEN SHI, KONSAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O.

“Exactly we should know: The straight truth spontaneously emerges, and darkness and distractedness drop off at a stroke.”

ANY QUESTIONS?

2007-02-05T10:46:00.000+01:00

Gudo Nishijima never taught me to preach peace and compassion. Never. James Cohen is pursuing his own agenda.

Gudo Nishijima never taught me to preach peace and compassion. Never. He taught me to study the slaughterbench/twirling-flower of world history, and not to be idealistic.

Gudo Nishijima taught me, above all, to study what action is, in Zazen. He taught me, having studied what action is, to stop worrying and act.

In this blog I have been endeavoring to clarify for self and others the fundamental meaning of feeling, thinking, and action. Are there any questions?

Deciding to Breathe Out

2007-02-01T20:18:00.000+01:00

The first (possibly the only?) true decision I make every day is to breathe out.

The process of getting out of bed, drinking a glass of water, stumbling to the bathroom, putting on the robe, and sitting on the zafu, seems to operate more or less on automatic pilot.

At the beginning of my sitting on the zafu I am invariably worrying about some problem -- for example, some aspect of Buddhist philosophy, or money, or my relationship with Gudo Nishijima, or who the hell is getting the royalties from my Shobogenzo translation now that Gudo and and some of his students have made my translation available, independently of me, through a new publisher, not Windbell. (The worries in this particular set of worries are not entirely independent of each other.)

Worrying, it seems to me, is a combination of feeling and thinking -- in both cases, of the wrong kind. The feeling associated with worry is not unbiased sensory input but rather emotional like and dislike. The thinking associated with worry is not constructive conscious wishing but rather intellectual worrying, thinking about.

Notwithstanding the fact that worrying is such an evil habit, I am prone to devote long periods to it. Marjory Barlow once said to me: “Mike, you are an inveterate worrier, aren’t you?” Then she added: “I know, because I am too.”

The next stage in my sitting practice -- which in truth is not a clearly defined next stage but tends to alternate and intermingle with the worry mode -- is to be open to sensory feedback regarding how I am. How are the feet and legs in relation to the pelvis? How are the hands and arms? How is my sitting posture? How is the relation between my ears and shoulders, nose and navel? How is the tongue, including its deeper connections inside me, and its connection to my palate? How are the lips, teeth, and eyes? I observe the breath passing through the nostrils.

The great difficulty in this phase, the phase of conscious feeling or sensory awareness, is just to notice, just to pay attention, not to react to what is felt by doing something to try and change it directly. Because such trying is also a kind of worrying. As Alexander said, “When you think you’re feeling you’re doing.”

So I sit there noticing what a terrible mess I am in and resisting the temptation to do anything about it -- “non-interfering” if you like. The decision not to do, not to interfere, is a kind of decision. A negative decision.

Still, it is half past seven already, and I have not yet acted upon any positive decision.

In Fukan-zazen-gi Shinpitsu-bon, which he wrote in his twenties, Master Dogen instructs us, having regulated or stabilized the physical form, also to regulate the breathing. He doesn’t indicate how to regulate the breathing.

In Fukan-zazengi Rufu-bon, the edition which he revised later, and also in Shobogenzo chap. 48, Zazengi, which he wrote in 1243, aged 43, Master Dogen’s instruction is more specific, represented by four Chinese characters: KAN KI ICHI SOKU. KAN means lack. KI means breath or oxygen. ISSOKU (=ICHI + SOKU) means one breath. So literally “lack oxygen for one breath.” In other words, breathe out fully.

FM Alexander, in his early teaching career, was known as “the breathing man.” He was the bloke that actors and reciters went to see if they ran into difficulties with their breathing. Later FM came to regard respiration as a secondary matter -- secondary to the primary matter which he saw as the dynamic interrelation between the head and the rest of the body (his famous “primary control”). But Alexander did strongly advocate one particular procedure to re-train the breathing, which he called the whispered ah. Apparently he said that, if you do it well, there is nothing you can do that does you more good than a whispered ah.

In order to do a whispered ah well (or not quite so badly as the last time you did it), a whole series of preparatory directions are necessary to wake up the respiratory organ. I won’t go into those directions here. Suffice to say two things:

(1) The respiratory organ, now when we investigate it, might include the whole of me and more besides.

(2) The essence of the procedure is to make a definite decision to perform a long, slow, controlled exhalation, and then, subsequently, having observed a time gap (i.e. of milli-seconds, seconds, or minutes) between stimulus and response... to allow the response and deliberately breathe out fully.

If you practice this every day you will find that, even before the long exhalation takes place, just the decision itself makes a difference to the breathing. The breathing is regulated not only by the action of breathing out fully, but also by the prior decision to breathe out fully.

What I am writing now is not, as Gudo seems to fear, “Alexander theory.” This is what I have observed, investigated and experienced in my own daily efforts to get to the bottom of Fukan-zazen-gi.

FM Alexander was never a theorist first; he was a practitioner first. When Gudo perceives a threat to Gautama Buddha's true teaching from so-called “Alexander theory,” I think that Gudo may just be looking into a mirror and manifesting Gudo’s own fear of an overly-theoretical tendency within Gudo himself.

FM Alexander understood 100 years ago, as Zen Master Dogen had understood 650 years before him, not a theory but a very salient and universal human fact: Breathing out is important. And the instruction to breathe out fully once, to make one full exhalation, gives us a concrete opportunity to practice making a decision.

Acting upon this decision, sometimes, seems to act as a bridge from reliance on feeling to reliance on what is different from feeling.

It seems to me that this decision to breathe out, followed by a considered, non-habitual response to this decision, followed by the action of breathing out, can sometimes help to initiate the act of just sitting as a spontaneous process -- like the priming of a pump initiating the flow of water as a spontaneous process, as described by the second law of thermodynamics.

This procedure, it seems to me, offers a concrete way, a compassionate means, whereby sitting-meditation may truly become sitting-meditation.

The wish for freedom in sitting, in this way, may become the act of sitting in freedom.

This kind of wishing is not something that has to be learned. The whole body is thoroughly familiar with it already, and has been so since ancient times. But if you want to study it, study it for example in a two-year old girl asking, from the core of her being, for apple juice.

Racism, Political Correctness, and Non-Racism

2007-01-30T18:59:00.000+01:00

Several close friends of mine are of Jewish descent. If any of them have been following this blog and have been offended by my racist insult of James Cohen, I offer my apologies to them, and to anybody else I have unintentionally offended. It was not my intention to offend anybody other than James Cohen.

For years in Japan I suffered from being seen through the prism of Japanese stereotypes. One or two individuals in particular seemed to see me as a representative of HAKUJIN NO BUNKA (“white-man’s civilization”) against which Japanese soldiers in WWII were told they were defending Asia. I found it very irritating and frustrating that some Japanese didn’t seem able to relate to me as an individual human being.

As a general rule, I subscribe to the view that racism is wrong. But my attitude to rules is often ambivalent. And I struggle to understand the principle that development often hinges on our preparedness to be wrong, to feel insecure, uncomfortable, unsure of our moral grounding. Marjory Barlow took pains to teach me: "We are all going around trying to be right. It is death and destruction. Being wrong is the best friend we have in this work."

I am not actually sure what my own racial heritage is -- although I am obviously not black, at least on the outside. Whatever half mine is, my sons have inherited my half, together with another half from their Japanese mother.

If one of my sons was subject to a racist insult along the lines of that which I directed at Cohen, i.e. “Fuck off, Jap,” how might I react or respond to that?

I think it would depend very much upon the context.

If my sons, who are enthusiastic members of the local cricket club, vehemently insisted not only (a) that they be allowed to bow to the batsman before bowling each delivery, (b) that the batsman must always bow back; in that case, a response like “Fuck off, Jap” might have meaning other than simply being a racist insult. It might represent a strong refusal to be coerced into conforming to the norms of somebody else’s culture.

The context in which I wrote to Cohen was, as I see it, as follows:

A few years ago, James Cohen began to make his presence known, imposingly, via the internet, to me and other of Gudo Nishijima Roshi’s Dharma-heirs. He has never met me in person. He was not involved in any way with the Shobogenzo translation and publication process -- although he became involved, as Gudo Nishijima’s legal representative, in Gudo Nishijima’s effort to reclaim sole control of the publication process from the original publishers, Windbell Publications. In the course of that process I heard that Cohen severely antagonized one or two people who had worked unselfishly for Windbell over the years.

In the course of this email correspondence between Cohen and other Dharma-heirs, Cohen assiduously ended every missive with some flowery expression of his desire for world peace, or other empty bullshit, interspersed with copious use of punctuation marks to show smiley faces; he then always ended with “Gassho.”

To British tastes, that kind of correspondence smacks of insincerity. It may be essentially just a cultural difference. Many Brits don’t like to hear waiters tell us “Enjoy!”; or to hear “Have a nice day!” parrotted at us as a polite formula -- especially if we sense that the person who says it doesn’t really mean it.

The problem was that, not content to recognize a cultural difference as such, Cohen began an email campaign to coerce other Dharma-heirs to conform to his criteria for politeness. If anybody is interested, I will post up one of Cohen’s emails as evidence.

My instinctive response to such pressure to conform, especially coming from somebody who is many years my junior in Gudo Nishijima’s order, has been to go out of my way not to conform -- for example, by being extremely rude.

This is the historical background going back a number of years.

The more recent background is a controversy in Britain surrounding a fly-on-the-wall TV show called “Big Brother.” It seems to me that millions of gullible Brits, guided dually by the media and their own herd instinct, have been falling over themselves in recent weeks to manifest their anti-racist credentials. We pride ourselves on being a society that respects individual rights -- but just look at us. What a bunch of mindless morons we are.

Where does the pressure to conform to the anti-racist viewpoint come from? It seems to me that it comes largely from the media. I really do not know whether it is fair to talk of “the Jewish media” or not. I have no real evidence to go on, inductively.

From a deductive viewpoint, however, the mirror principle would lead me to think that those who are most commited to the anti-racist viewpoint are like that because they are projecting onto others a tendency which they fear in themselves. And who could defend Old Testament Judaism against the accusation that it a seminal racist ideology.

What I actually wrote to Cohen was as follows:

“Further to my rude email earlier on, and having reflected on it, I have a question about politeness in Buddhism. As a rude non-Buddhist non-monk, I would like to ask my question to the polite very Buddhist monk Jundo James Cohen:

Venerable Master Cohen! In Buddhism, is to be polite a choice, or is it an obligation, like a commandment?

If you say that it is a choice, then I would like to say to you, Venerable Master Cohen: Fuck you, you poser.

If you say that it is a kind of commandment, then I would like to say to you simply: Fuck off, jewboy.

I feel extreme anger to you, Cohen, because of the mirror principle. You represent everything that is unnatural, pretentious, insincere about the human condition, about my condition.”

That was the context of my racist insult.

In the end, racism is a view, to which people conform en masse. Anti-racism, political correctness, is also a view, to which people conform en masse. But non-racism, as the abandonment of both those views, cannot be a mass movement. It is the effort of one individual, in one chunk of existence-time, to get the whole body free of views.

When I was working closely with Gudo Nishijima in the 1980s, he was of the view that world history was moving inexorably in the direction of Jewish hegemony, and that the realistic Buddhist attitude in these circumstances might be to seek peaceful accommodation.

I don’t know if his view has changed since then, but I suspect that what he wrote in his Dogen Sangha blog last year about the United States being the world’s policeman, may be understood in the above light.

If that is Buddhist realism, Gudo can keep it. If that is Buddhist realism, I’ll strive to follow a different way: the way of non-Buddhist, non-realism.

I bow not to the pressure to conform, but to one real individual.

[To the One] who, as the giving up of all views,
Taught the Straight Truth,
Using compassionate means:
I bow to him: Gautama

The Whiff of Untruth

2007-01-29T18:06:00.000+01:00

If everything in the Buddha’s teaching can be reduced to unconscious functioning of the autonomic nervous system, then there isn't necessarily any room in Zazen for conscious awareness (feeling) or for conscious volition (i.e. thinking).

But something about this reductionist proposition has the whiff of not being true.

The Mirror Principle (4): Question to Gudo

2007-01-28T11:02:00.000+01:00

Dear Being who is Before,

Last night a contributor to my blog compared his lazy original self with a dusty mirror. So this morning I would like to clarify the meaning of the 6th Patriarch's poem, as follows:

Bodhi, at root, is being without -- a tree.
The bright mirror, similarly, is being not -- a base.
From the beginning, being without -- a solitary thing, a unitary thing.
Where is there dust?

I had the idea to put at the end "translated by Gudo Nishijima and Chodo Cross," but if I follow your instruction I am not permitted to use your name. In that case, I wonder: the translator is who?

With best wishes,

Mike Cross
A non-Buddhist non-monk

Dear Mr Mike Cross,

Please don't put my name on such a kind of unreliable translation. My
Buddhist attitude is much more sincere.

Don't slander Gautama Buddha!

With best wishes

Gudo Wafu Nishijima

The Mirror Principle (3)

2007-01-25T19:58:00.000+01:00

A concrete example of man’s supreme inheritance might be Gautama Buddha just sitting in the full lotus posture, being totally without the Buddha-nature.

The great difficulty for a Zen bastard, a non-Buddhist non-monk, might be in the being totally without. Just because it is a Zen bastard’s original state does not make it easy for a Zen bastard to realize.

Gudo Nishijima calls being totally without “balance of the autonomic nervous system.”

Master Dogen called it, amongst other things, “body and mind spontaneously dropping off and our original face emerging” and “the samadhi of the ancestors.”

FM Alexander, having re-discovered it for the modern age, didn’t know what to call it. With the help of the philosopher John Dewey, he called it “freedom in thinking and in action.”

Mater Tendo Nyojo used the metaphor of a beggar boy breaking his begging bowl.

Master Kodo Sawaki used the metaphor of a burglar breaking into an empty house.

Ultimately for a Zen bastard who attaches to Fukan-zazen-gi it might be difficult to beat “the samadhi of the ancestors.” .

I heard it said that Master Kodo Sawaki was quite proud of the fact not only that he never managed a temple but also that he never wrote a book.

In the spring of 2005, however, I in my stupidity, embarked on the project of writing a book. Its provisional title was Zen Smoke & Nine Mirrors.

The Smoke & Mirrors part was an allusion to an increasing recognition of the tendency there is, in me primarily but in all of us, to lie to ourself, to engage in self-deceit while purporting to be pursuing the truth.

It is all very well to preach thinking in Zazen, but as FM Alexander said: “When you think you’re thinking you’re feeling.... None of you knows what thinking is.”

It is all very well to preach action in Zazen. I thought I knew what action was already, but one day in the summer of 1998, having spent my life playing rugby, training in the martial arts, running, et cetera, and after I had known Gudo Nishijima for 16 years already, I was congratulated by the Master that on that day, for the first time in my life, I had acted. Probably he felt that it was the first time he had seen me genuinely do something for the sake of it, without any concern about what the consequences might be.

Feeling, thinking, and action: who am I to preach these things? Do I really know what they are? I don’t know.

What I do know, what I cannot doubt, is that along the way, even if I have totally failed to understand what feeling, thinking, and action are, I have at least been investigating feeling, thinking and action; and along the way I have met some real teachers from whom I have really received something. So I decided to try to record whatever it is that I have received.

The Nine Mirrors are nine teachers from whom I have received something. Or maybe what I have received from them, in the end, is a bit of nothing, a bit of encouragement to be, without. Those nine are:

(1) Bill Haworth, my mother’s grandfather and guardian, a labourer in a Blackburn paint factory.
(2) Eugene Cross, my father’s uncle, a steelworker from Ebbw Vale.
(3) Morio Higaonna, teacher of traditional karate-do.
(4) Gudo Nishijima, teacher of traditional Buddhism.
(5) Ray Evans, Alexander teacher and pioneer in the field of vestibular re-education.
(6) Ron Colyer, Alexander teacher.
(7) Paul Madaule, protoge of Alfred Tomatis
(8) Nelly Ben-Or, Alexander teacher.
(9) Marjory Barlow, Alexander teacher.

Having made a start on the nine chapters in the spring of summer of 2005, I got diverted along two side tracks.

Firstly, in September 2005, after getting back to England from France, I asked Nelly Ben-Or if I could transcribe some words of hers. My idea was to use this as material for my chapter on her. Nelly agreed, and the transcription turned into a project in itself. I began taping our lessons and, between September 2005 and July 2006, I transcribed hundreds of pages.

The central theme of Alexander’s teaching is the incredible power that a thought can have. I am easily prone to forget it. It is a fact so contrary to our habitual way of experiencing ourselves in the world. As I sit here in France, I remind myself of some of the almost incredible experiences I have had in those lessons with Nelly. It is those experiences which provide the fuel for me to continue to oppose Gudo Nishijima on the subject of thinking. What is meant by thinking in Alexander work is not what Gudo Nishijima understands by thinking. As Marjory Barlow suggests in her YouTube video clip (see internet links on my webpage at the-middle-way.org if interested), what Alexander discovered (or re-discovered) about thinking was of truly momentous import for mankind. It’s not something that can be understood by reading about it. But I hope that my writing about it might at least spark somebody’s interest.

In transcribing Nelly’s teaching I didn’t edit anything but transcribed her every cough and sneeze, verbatim. I tend to be quite good at plodding on stubbornly with that kind of mindless donkey work. What to do next with these transcriptions, however, remains undecided. That kind of judgement I am not so good at. We seem to have different agendae, Nelly and I. Nelly’s modest aim is simply to “bear witness.” Whereas I would like something of wider scope. I want to put the Alexander work, of finding out what thinking is, in a wider context -- in a Buddhist context. “He thinks I should save humanity!” Nelly protests, in her ringing concert-pianist’s voice.

Yes, Nelly, I do. By beginning to understand what Alexander meant by thinking, people can begin to understand the following:

Physical effort in Zazen based on feeling is not the same as mental effort based on thinking. Mental effort in Zazen based on thinking is not the same as physical effort based on feeling. And effortless action itself is not the same as physical effort or mental effort.

If people truly understood the above, those who felt the presence of God, and those who wished to entrust their lives to the service of God, might be able to put this feeling and this conscious wish into a philosophical context that freed them from the need to fight to protect their belief in God. Probably a long shot, but worth a try.

The second thing that happened was that, in November 2005, Gudo Nishijima started up Dogen Sangha blog, and in order to contribute to that blog, I started this one.

In a recent comment on this blog, Ordinary Bloke Pete used the phrase “middle-class intellectual.” If it is a label he would like to attach to me, I think it is a very crude approximation of the truth.

It is true that I went to an elitist secondary school, having passed its entrance exam when I was 10. But my family on both my mother and father’s side is as common as muck, and my parents had me when they were only 21 and didn’t have two pennies to rub together.

In response to OB Pete’s comment, it occured to me that I could post up my chapter on Bill Haworth. The chapter is basically my mother’s reminiscences of her fatherless childhood. Despite being as common as muck, she writes very elegantly.

If anybody would be interested to read the chapter, let me know and I will post it up.

Man's Supreme Inheritance

2007-01-22T16:53:00.000+01:00

What is it?

On his blog, Gudo Roshi calls it balance of the autonomic nervous system. Master Dogen called it the samadhi of the ancestors. Freedom in action -- a plane to be reached. Being one piece with Nature. Being at ease in the Truth. There is no set of words that can definitively hit the target for everybody.

I don’t consider myself to be any great marvel at swimming or flying in it -- in that matter I defer to Gudo; I defer to Tich Nhat Hahn, and the Dalai Lama, and Ajahn Sumedho, and other Buddhist masters whose practice I suppose is deeper, more balanced, better integrated than mine; and I defer to the fish and birds.

But, as the Japanese proverb says: BAKA NI MO ICHI GE, Even a fool has one virtue.

My particular thing is clarity in regard to Master Dogen’s revised written instructions for how to realize man’s supreme inheritance.

While falling into the trap of showing disrespect to people I perceive as having in some way slighted, insulted, or disrespected me, I have continued, with regard to one thing in this world, to show genuine respect -- in the original sense of re- (again) spectare (to look). There is one thing I have looked into again and again, not just taking it at face value, not just following the conventional wisdom on it, not being content to accept anybody’s interpretation of it, including my own. That one thing I have continued to respect is the original text of Fukan-zazen-gi Rufu-bon -- ever since I memorized it in Japanese over 20 years ago.
My desire to get to the bottom of Fukan-zazen-gi has brought me on a journey. Not an intellectual journey, but a real journey, involving thousands of miles and months and years of separation from loved ones, taking wrong turns and getting lost, long frustrating periods of fruitless waiting, et cetera. I certainly haven’t got anywhere at all by myself. I have been incredibly fortunate to be guided along the way by teachers who seemed to think that I was worth an investment of their precious time -- to some of those teachers I will pay homage in my next post.

What has thus been clarified for me, and what I am now seeking to clarify for others, is how in Fukan-zazen-gi rufu-bon Master Dogen guides us, step by step, somersault following somersault, through the phases of sensory awareness and conscious volition, and thence to the realization of man’s supreme inheritance.

Through the phases of feeling and thinking into action.

Through the phases of effort to sit bodily in the lotus posture, mental effort not to sit bodily in the lotus posture, and thence into the state of effortless sitting in lotus in which body and mind spontaneously drop off.

As Gudo’s words indicate, man’s supreme inheritance is a state, a real state. Clarity in regard to how to realize it is not it. Even the clearest treasure map is not the treasure itself. Except, in the case of Fukan-zazen-gi, the map itself might also be a very rare and precious treasure.

The Mirror Principle (2)

2007-01-17T08:23:00.001+01:00

A brown rat, to a homeowner, is a kind of pest. But to a bird of prey it is breakfast. And to a laboratory scientist it is a kind of miracle.

That I see Jewish lawyer James Cohen, who I have never actually met, as such an objectionable pest, says something about me. What does it say?

The aim of my life is, by getting the point of Zazen, to be like a dragon returning to water, or like a tiger before its mountain stronghold.

Master Dogen said: the laws of the Universe are manifesting themselves as reality and there is no room for any net or cage to restrict a dragon or tiger.

So what kind of problem is James Cohen to me? What does the pushy, disingenuous Jewish lawyer represent to me?

The simple answer might be that the Jewish lawyer represents the continuing insidious influence on me of Jewish law, of the ten commandments and the rest of it.

On this point, what is Master Dogen’s teaching?

According to Master Dogen’s teaching, as I understand it, the act of Zazen embraces the three worlds of feeling, thinking, and action -- other than which there is nothing.

So we need not worry about human rules, whether Buddhist precepts or semitic commandments. We need not revere them. We need not go out of our way to break them. Still less is it nessary for us to show any emotional reaction to them.

Master Dogen taught: “Cut them by sitting.”

I am afraid that I am not such a brilliant advert for Master Dogen’s teaching.

Confession

2007-01-16T08:52:00.000+01:00

In the field where I am now, there are three big cider apples trees. The apples are used to make Calvados, a kind of strong brandy. Last night I drank a couple of glasses in front of the fire, and then thought I would attend to my blog. That order of events wasn’t wise, wasn’t skillful, and wasn’t in accordance with my mission to be clear about feeling, thinking, and action.

GA SHAKU SHOZO SHOAKU GO
KAI YU MUSHI DON JIN CHI
JU SHIN KU I SHI SHO SHO
ISSAI GA KON KAI SANGE
The bad actions I did before
All stemmed begininglessly from end-gaining, anger, and worry
They were done with body mouth and intention
I now confess them all

And so to work. Last week I had 13 tonnes of gravel delivered. Fortunately there is still some left to be shovelled.

The Mirror Principle

2007-01-15T11:18:00.000+01:00

Working class hero, middle class intellectual, upper class twit -- those kind of classifications are a peculiarly British pre-occupation. During 13 tough years in Japan I was subject to a much simpler form of discrimination: foreigner, one who doesn’t belong here. I was supposed to carry at all times an “alien registration card.” Even after marrying my Japanese wife, I still had to go once a year to stand in a long line of fellow aliens, to be treated like scum by Japanese immigration officials.

Over the past couple of years one of the things that has become increasingly clear to me is what I have referred to in these blogs as “the mirror principle.”

The spark for this insight came from noticing people’s response to a recent Dharma-heir of Gudo Nishijima’s called James Cohen -- a New York lawyer called Cohen... the mind already begins to put him in a certain class, to reach for the filing cabinet and pull out a stereotype marked “New York Jewish lawyer.”

What I noticed in myself was a hatred of his insincerity, his pushing himself forward as a Zen master when he evidently is nothing of the kind. Where does this hatred arise, for a person who I have never even met? It comes from my own fear. What is my deepest fear? That I am not the real deal, not the genuine article. That not only am I fraud who knows he is a fraud but also that, in all kinds of ways, I am a fraud who does not know he is a fraud -- just like Cohen.

Why did Adolf Hitler manifest such overt hatred for Jews? The answer was provided, to my satisfaction anyway, by a reader of this blog who pointed me to the work of Alice Miller. According to Ms Miller, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that Adolf’s father was the illegitimate son of a Jewish merchant, that Adolf’s mother was the Jewish merchant’s housemaid. Thus, the mirror principle may have been working again: what Hitler feared within himself -- his being a dirty Jew -- he saw reflected outside himself, and hated it.

What did Master Dogen fear in himself? He tells us in Shobogenzo that what he feared most was losing the will to the truth. And for whom does Master Dogen reserve his most venemous criticism? For monks who pervert the Buddha’s true teaching in order to get their own fame and profit -- he calls those monks dogs who want to eat and drink the shit and piss of lay people.

What does Gudo Nishijima fear might be wrong in himself? I think he fears his own intellectual tendency, his own idealistic tendency, his own bookish tendency, his own tendency to think too much. Herein lies the cause of his big mistake.

When I began to understand, from 1994 onwards, the key role that thinking plays in Zazen, and began to advocate thinking in Zazen, Gudo reacted to me as if I were his enemy, and the enemy of Buddhism.

Shortly, however, I think that Gudo will recognize his mistake, and declare so publicly. Instead of opposing, he will begin to support my mission to clarify the fundamental meaning in Zazen of feeling, thinking, and action. That will be a big change, with which I will have to cope. There is always something in us, isn’t there?, that doesn’t like change.

The 3rd and 4th Noble Truths: A Non-Buddhist Discourse

2007-01-14T20:23:00.000+01:00

If you want to understand the 3rd noble truth, dukha-nirodha-satya, the truth of stopping suffering, simply understand the 4th noble truth, marga-satya, the truth of the pathway.

When I was in Japan, Gudo Nishijima taught me the philosophy of action. That is why I persist as I do in my present task to clarify the fundamental meaning of thinking, as opposed to feeling.

I didn’t get Gudo’s philosophy of action only from reading what he wrote; I got it from joining forces with him in the Shobogenzo translation. I got it from the inside.

For a concrete example of the philosophy of action, I remember Gudo saying, in a lecture to company employees, words to the effect of: “Your house burns down --> Build a new one.”

For another example: Your Zen master declares you to be a non-Buddhist --> Carry on your Zen practice as a non-Buddhist.

My Alexander teacher here in England taught me “Direction is the truest form of inhibition.”

That’s why I say: If you want to understand the 3rd noble truth, simply understand the 4th noble truth.

When you make a clear decision and form a clear and decisive intention, certain pathways are energized. The longer you wait, and renew your decision, the more those pathways are energized. The more resistance you meet, the more those passways are energized. The more those pathways are energized, the less energy is available to be dispersed on non-essential pathways.

For a more concrete illustration: If I’m £10 million in debt, the problem is too great for me to solve. When I think about it, I am inevitably discouraged. In that situation, to get a job for £5 an hour is one way. It is a way leading in the right direction. And in sincerely following that way.... at least lunch will taste good.

In that spirit, I offer the following teaching, to self and others:

As, when you wish to hear you listen and when you wish to see you look, when you wish to enter and experience samadhi, sit.

Really sit. Don’t just read about and think about and talk about sitting. Really sit -- sitting bones on a cushion, legs crossed.

And really think. Don’t just read about and think about and talk about thinking. Really think. Like wishing for something you really want, but cannot arrange.

When the sitting and the thinking become one, you have the 4th noble truth right there, in which case the 3rd noble truth is legs on a snake.

In a recent email Gudo wrote to me that Zazen is just the method to stop discussions.

Maybe that is true for a devout Buddhist. But as a non-Buddhist, I don’t worry about that. I say that Zazen is the beginning of all non-Buddhist discussion.

I love Zazen, and Iove non-Buddhist discussion. I liked the last comment of Ordinary Bloke Pete. Polite Buddhist discussion? You can keep it. It’s not for me. But if you want to step into the ring with me for a spot of Dharma combat, by all means have a go. You are sure to lose, but you may gain a bit of my respect in the process.

Fearless Back in France.

2007-01-02T20:28:00.001+01:00

dadback
Originally uploaded by Mike Cross.

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.

Naturally Becoming One Piece

2007-01-02T20:10:00.001+01:00

dadside
Originally uploaded by Mike Cross.

"JI-JO-IPPEN means the state of Zazen, when we concentrate our efforts to keep our posture into the perfectly regular posture, and so we can feel our consciousness as if our posture had become only one piece." Gudo Wafu Nishijima

Non-Thinking Non-Monk

2007-01-01T16:42:00.001+01:00

dscf0009_0
Originally uploaded by Mike Cross.

An Example of Antagonistic Thinking

2006-12-31T18:41:00.000+01:00

What I mean by antagonistic thinking is thinking that runs counter to what I feel I ought to do. The feeling of what I ought to do is based upon my body’s memory of what I habitually do. But through Alexander work I have been led, in fits and starts, to discover a kind of thinking that does not enslave me to what I feel I ought to do, but which rather is a liberating tendency.

In her book An Examined Life the master Alexander teacher Marjory Barlow gives an example of such liberation, through the process which she calls “ordering.”

Ordering means thinking the Alexander orders: e.g. to let the neck be free, to let the head go forward and up, to let the spine lengthen and the back widen.

Marjory relates:

I used to get this terrible pain under my right shoulder blade if I’d been overworked. It used to come on in the night and I always did something to get away from it. One night I sort of woke up in the real sense and thought: “You’re crazy! You teach people if they’ve got a pain to stay with it and not do anything, and here you are running away!”

So I just lay there ordering and it became more and more acute until I could hardly bear it and it went away and I’ve never had it since.

* * *

Without a lot of experience in Alexander work, Marjory’s story won’t mean anything to you, and neither should it. But it just might sow a seed of doubt in your mind that the point I have been vainly making to Gudo all these years about thinking, is not empty, but real.

Gudo asks me on his blog, rhetorically, what this kind of thinking has got to do with Zazen. Ryunin asks me on this blog the same question, possibly with more doubt in his mind. Possibly, that is, with a more open mind.

I tried to answer Ryunin’s question in an article I wrote in 2001 titled “Practising Detachment: A Brief Introduction to the FM Alexander Technique for Buddhist Practitioners.” You can read it if you like on my webpage at the-middle-way.org.

If I try again to answer now: What Marjory is describing, first of all, is the experience of feeling acute pain and not doing anything about it. Pain receptors were sending messages to her brain, stimulating her to do something. But she inhibited the desire to act on these sensory messages.

Isn’t this essentially how we are called on to respond as beginners, or during an intensive period of sitting, when our legs are on fire? We inhibit the desire to act on sensory messages, and instead just sit there, persevering in our practice. This is called, in Alexander jargon, “non-doing.” Non-doing in this gross sense simply means not doing, physically refraining from doing, what our feeling is telling us to do.

Marjory says that she just lay there, ordering. The principle of non-doing is implicit not only in the physical action of just laying there, but also in the mental action of ordering. Non-doing on this level means not doing the orders.

The orders are verbal representations of an intention, a wish, a thought. Not a feeling, a thought. Not what people generally understand as a thought, but nevertheless a thought, a wish, a clear intention. And only that -- not a feeling.

In Alexander terms the intention is verbalized for example as: I wish to allow the neck to be free, to allow the head to be released out of the body, to allow the back to lengthen and widen, sending the knees away from the hips.

But remember Alexander’s caution: “When you think you’re thinking, you’re feeling.”

In Zazen, then, what is the thought, the intention, the wish? Gudo might say that the wish is for the autonomic nervous system to come into balance. Or one could say that the wish is for the Buddha’s enlightenment to be reawakened here and now. Or that the wish is for a condition of effortless ease in upright sitting. However the wish is verbalized, the vital principle that Alexander has to offer us is this: Don’t try to realise it by doing what you feel you need to do to realise it. Just think it. Just wish it.

This is the vital principle not only of Alexander work but also, I submit, of Master Dogen’s Zazen.

If anybody has got a better explanation of why Master Dogen instructed us “Think that state beyond thinking,” I have yet to hear it.

People today pass over Master Dogen’s instruction because they don’t clearly understand the intention behind it.

Sit-Thinking is NOT seated thinking

2006-12-30T16:07:00.001+01:00

On James Cohen's blog there is a section called "Zen Teacher Nishijima's introduction to seated meditation."

These words “seated meditation” are a very misleading translation of the word ZAZEN. The words betray a lack of clarity of understanding of Master Dogen’s fundamental teaching.

Master Dogen stressed that what he called ZAZEN is not SHU-ZEN. Sitting-meditation is not meditation that is learned.

In other words:

Sitting-Meditation is NOT seated meditation
Sitting-Dhyana is NOT seated dhyana
Sit-Thinking is NOT seated thinking

ZA means sitting and ZEN means dhyana, meditation, thinking.

We should not say, as Gudo has said on his blog, that dhyana means sitting. Dhyana means meditation.

But we should never says, as Cohen says, that sitting-meditation is seated meditation.

In Master Dogen’s teaching, the sitting is the meditation, and the meditation is the sitting.

Gudo clearly understands and loudly proclaims that Zazen, sitting-meditation, is action.

But Gudo, in my view, has failed to clarify the exact relationship between feeling in Zazen, thinking in Zazen, and Zazen as action.

Yes, Zazen is action. But the practical problem remains of how to realize it.

FM Alexander clearly understood that, given the universal defect of unreliable feeling, the realization of freedom in action depends on our ability to discover what thinking is.

FM Alexander re-discovered for our time the secret of Zen -- what true dhyana is, what true meditation is, what true thinking is.

In response to me stating my understanding that dhyana means thinking (but not what we generally understand thinking to be), Gudo wrote:

“I can never agree with such an idea. After my more than 60 years of study, I would like to insist clearly that the original meaning of dhyana is just the balance of the autonomic nervous system.”

I responded to this by arguing that dhyana is a conscious effort of practice, not a state of balance.

Then Gudo wrote, on his blog: “I think that dhyana is the name of practice, and so it is different from the state of practice.”

That suggests that when Gudo said “dhyana is just the balance of the autonomic nervous system” he was using the word balance to express not a noun/state but to express a verb/process.

In that case, if Gudo wants to connect his teaching to Master Dogen’s instruction, “Think that state beyond thinking,” one way may be for him to say that balancing by the autonomic nervous system = thinking by the autonomic nervous system.

In other words, he should say that dhyana means not only thinking by the brain in the head, but also thinking by the brain in the autonomic nervous system. And going further still, he should say that dhyana means thinking by the brain in the heart, and thinking by the brain in the spine, and thinking by the brain in every cell in the body.

This, as I understand it, is what FM Alexander meant by “thinking -- but not what people understand by thinking.” And this, as I understand it, might be what Master Dogen meant by HISHIRYO, “non-thinking.”

In Gudo’s mind, HISHIRYO expresses action itself, which is dimensionally different from thinking, and so anybody who even suggests that HISHIRYO might express a kind of thinking, must be a non-Buddhist. This is why Gudo, in all sincerity, sees it as his Buddhist duty as a monk to criticize my opinion.

But it may be that Gudo’s perception of the real situation is wrong, that Gudo hasn’t understood Master Dogen’s intention clearly and hasn’t understood my intention clearly. In that case, it might be my Buddhist duty as a non-monk to continue my efforts to criticize Gudo’s opinion.

Thinking with the Heart?

2006-12-29T13:19:00.000+01:00

I was reflecting yesterday on my recent increasing dissatisfaction with what I perceive to be the one-sidedness of the approaches of teachers who have influenced me deeply: Gudo Nishijima, who I perceive to be prejudiced against the whole idea of thinking in Zazen; and Alexander teachers who do not generally recognize the value of attaching to a physical sitting posture which is rigidly fixed by tradition -- that is, the full lotus posture. (If they recognize it, then why don’t they do it?)

Following the mirror principle, I mused, my dissatisfaction (or, to be more honest, frustration/anger), doubtless means that I am becoming aware on some level of one-sidedness in my own practice.

Then this morning I recalled that a Christmas card from an old Zazen friend in Japan had contained this brief pointer: “Found interesting books by Joseph Chilton Pearce and Alice Miller... Also impacting my thinking on Zen...”

Some kind soul on this blog pointed me in the direction of Alice Miller several months ago, and I found her views very enlightening.

I vaguely remembered the name Chilton Pearce from reading about the cerebellum and reticular activating system while training years ago as a neuro-developmental therapist. Anyway, I looked him up on the internet and my attention was particularly taken by this opening sentence of an interview at www.appliedmeditation.org:

“The idea that we can think with our hearts is no longer just a metaphor, but is, in fact, a very real phenomenon.”

Anyone for Non-Thinking?

2006-12-28T16:38:00.000+01:00

In the effort to clarify what the words HISHIRYO, “non-thinking,” might mean, I am going to relate an episode that probably won’t mean anything to you, but it continues to mean a lot to me.

In the summer holidays of 1997, fully two years into my Alexander teacher training, I went for a lesson with FM Alexander’s niece Marjory Barlow. By then, at the age of 82, Marjory had been devoting herself to her uncle’s work for 65 years.

In the car on the way down to London, I had been listening to a recording of a lecture by Marjory. It was a lecture I had attended, the first time I saw Majory in person, in my home town of Birmingham in July 1995. Thirty years previously, in 1965, Marjory had delivered another FM Alexander Memorial Lecture -- the one that is reproduced in full on my Alexander blog and web-page (www.the-middle-way.org). This lecture in 1995 was more informal; it’s theme was: Thinking.

I parked my car outside Marjory’s flat in Hampstead, rang the buzzer and walked up the three flights of stairs to her teaching room. On the way up, I passed a large framed photograph, taken by Linda McCartney, of Marjory sitting very upright in a chair.

On entering Marjory’s teaching room I stood in preparation for the usual starting activity of an Alexander lesson -- “chair work.” This involves a pupil being guided by a teacher to lengthen in stature while bending the knees. The pupil thus ends up being seated in a chair, without the pupil having had to think of sitting down as an end to be gained.

After an opening pleasantry or two, with me remaining standing, Marjory began the process which she called “ordering.”

With one hand on the back of my neck and the other in front, Marjory feistily intoned: “Free your neck; head forward and up....” And then, to my surprise: “No, no. You’re doing it.”

Not aware that I was doing anything, I tried again, going back to the process of thinking as I understood it.

“Again, let the neck be free, to let the head go.... No, no. You’re doing it.”

And so we carried on. After several minutes standing like this, I was literally sweating with anxiety. It seemed to me that Marjory was not being at all helpful, just repeatedly giving me the same stimulus and letting me know that my response was wrong. I might have been inclined to think that there was something wrong with her teaching method -- except that I knew she was the most senior Alexander teacher on the face of the planet. I was in a proper pickle.

In the 1995 lecture which I had listened to in the car, one of the things Marjory had said about Thinking was this:

“We’re bringing the brain and the nervous system into communication with the rest of the body through a conscious process. We’re doing it deliberately. We’re choosing to do it. FM used to say that it’s very like wishing or wanting something. If you’re going on a picnic you say you hope it’ll be fine tomorrow. Well, there ain’t a darn thing you can do to make it be fine. But that is what this process of ordering is. It’s wanting. Wanting something.”

Like a drowning man clutching for a straw, I remembered this part of Majory’s lecture. OK, I reasoned, nothing else is working. I will try thinking in the manner of a child wishing for nice weather to go on a picnic (as opposed to my usual habit of feeling myself to be a kind of heroic macho explorer, defying all adversity). I’m sure as hell that this isn’t going to work. But I will give it a try.

“YES!” Marjory cried. “That’s it!”

This may have been the beginning of the beginning of me suspecting what “non-thinking” might really mean.

What I had thought of as thinking, until then, was not what Alexander meant by thinking but was a subtle variety of what I had been relying on my whole life up to then -- i.e. feeling. Two years training as an Alexander teacher had greatly increased my subtlety. In fact, I had become quite an expert at deceiving myself and others that I knew what Alexander thinking was. (I am still rather good at this form of deception.) But I didn’t fool Marjory, not for a second. Marjory knew. From the moment I walked through her door, Marjory had me sussed.

Following this episode, I had a long series of forty or so lessons with Marjory, until she left her flat in Hampstead to go and live with her son in Dulwich.

An essential part of those lessons was always the same: Marjory would present to me, though not always using the same words, the stimulus of the Alexander orders. For example:

“We want every joint in the body to open up.”

“Neck free. Head forward and up. Spine to lengthen. Back to widen. Widen across the upper part of the arms as you widen the back. Send the knees away from the hips.”

And my main job, in response to the stimulus of those orders, was NOT TO DO them.

Think them, yes, by all means. But do not do them. And remember what FM used to say: “When you think you’re thinking you’re feeling, when you think you’re feeling you’re doing.”

Even after two years of full-time Alexander training, with one-to-one hands-on guidance most days, I still hadn’t begun to understand, before this lesson with Marjory, what Alexander might have meant by “thinking.” Do I expect other Zazen practitioners to begin to understand, just by reading what I write? No, I don’t. But in the minds of maybe one or two people reading this, a tiny seed of great doubt may be sown. And that tiny seed might cause somebody, following in my footsteps, to become a total loser. I’m not talking about losing £12,000 or so. I’m talking about something that costs much more than that.

But, let me tell you: it’s worth it. Oh yes.

My situation might not look so favourable, and much of the time it doesn’t feel so favourable. But I wouldn’t swap it for anything in the world.

Yesterday I visited a good friend, who told me that, to him, I appeared not to be happy, to be troubled, in my Zazen practice. It was the honest feedback of a true friend. At the same time, my friend’s observation, and my initial worried response to it, might have been just another case of doubting the real dragon.

Today I have sat for an hour, half an hour, and another half an hour, with effort, feeling and thinking, without truly being caught by the still state. But next week I am going to France, where I will be.

Antagonistic Action (4): Feeling vs Thinking

2006-12-27T11:13:00.000+01:00

What is Zazen?

Realized in unity, it is a whole which is greater than the sum of two parts -- two parts which are in antagonistic opposition to each other.

The ZA part expresses the physical act of sitting, requiring a physical effort guided by the faculty of feeling.

The ZEN part expresses the mental act of meditating/thinking, requring an effort based on a faculty which is not a slave to feeling.

When ZA and ZEN truly become ZAZEN, it is not a physical or mental effort, but a Dharma-gate of effortless ease.

Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen wrote an excellent book called Sensing, Feeling & Action. If I intended to write a book, which for the present I don’t, I might call it Feeling, Thinking & Action. For Master Dogen’s purposes, I think the latter title would be more to the point.

Gudo Nishijima’s Zazen teaching, in a nutshell, is: not the parasympathetic-nervous-system-dominated state of feeling, not the sympathetic-nervous-system-dominated state of thinking, but just the balanced state of action. In short: Not Feeling, Not Thinking, Just Action.

This is Gudo’s Buddhist thesis.

My anti-thesis is simply this: Feeling and Thinking and Action.

My Buddhist master’s understanding is based on nearly 70 years of sitting in lotus. My understanding is based on only 25 years of sitting in lotus. But my understanding is also based on 12 years in the Alexander work, whose true value is very difficult to suppose, for a person who has not experienced it deeply in practice.

People who think that Alexander work is a kind of bodywork, are wrong.

Alexander work begins with the recognition of what FM Alexander observed to be a universal defect: “unreliable sensory appreciation.” First he discovered it in himself; then he noticed that he wasn’t the only damn fool who felt himself to be right when the mirror showed him to be wrong. In civilized society, we are almost all like that -- misguided by unreliable body-feeling. Ray Evans, my Alexander head of training, was ahead of the game in seeing the connection with immature primitive reflexes.

Clearly understanding that body-feeling is unreliable, Alexander got himself going in the right direction by trusting something other than his feeling. What was it? Some kind of intuition? In his first book he called it “Man’s Supreme Inheritance.”

The full title was Man’s Supreme Inheritance -- Conscious Guidance and Control in Relation to Human Evolution in Civlization.

People are prone to think about Alexander work as all about posture -- which in a secondary sense it is. But for FM Alexander himself, the work was primarily about consciousness and thinking and rationality. He described his work as an exercise is finding out what thinking is.

Thus, in writing of psychophysical unity, in other words, unity of mind and body, Alexander put mind first.

Master Dogen, conversely, wrote of unity of body and mind, and dropping off of body and mind. Following the example of Master Tendo Nyojo, he always put body before mind. This is vital to understanding Master Dogen’s teaching, which is always rooted in regular physical practice of Zazen, with the body seated in the traditional full lotus posture.

Although body-feeling is an unreliable guide, I rely on it, as a starting point. As a seeker of Gautama Buddha’s truth, irrespective of whether my feeling is right or wrong, primarily I put my trust in this physical sitting posture.

But because body-feeling is an unreliable guide, I also put my trust in another faculty, which -- even if it is not human reason per se -- is at least informed by rationality. Two and two, for all practical purposes, is always four. Reason is reliable. But on its own reason is powerless. Therefore in Zazen practice I put my trust not only in the physical posture, but also in rational intention, volition, thinking.

Originally dhyana just means thinking.

In a recent email to me, Gudo wrote as follows:

You wrote that "The original meaning of dhyana, as I understand it, is just ‘thinking.’” But I can never agree with such an idea. After my more than 60 years of study, I would like to insist clearly that "The original meaning of dhyana is just the balance of the autonomic nervous system."

* * *

My reply to Gudo was as follows:

You describe that, when you notice that you are thinking something in Zazen, you bring your consciousness back to the state that you call balance of the autonomic nervous system. You identify dhyana with the original state to which you wish to come back -- i.e. in your words, balance of the autonomic nervous system. But the true meaning of dhyana, within your own description, if we follow the literal meaning of the word as per the Monier Williams Sanskrit dictionary (dhyana = meditation/thought), is not our original state. Dhyana is rather the effort to "bring consciousness back," i.e. the effort to re-direct consciousness. This effort also is a kind of thinking. Therefore Master Dogen instructed us: Think that state beyond thinking.

* * *

The great value of Alexander work, to me at least, has been to clarify what kind of thinking dhyana is.

Although the aim of Zazen, Sitting-Dhyana, is a state of effortless ease which is beyond thinking, I pursue this state through physical and mental effort. I make my one-sided effort on the unreliable basis of body-feeling, and make my opposite-sided effort on the impossible basis of mind-thinking.

In Fukan-zazen-gi Master Dogen instructs us:

Having regulated the physical posture, breathe out, sway left and right, and then, sitting still, think the state beyond thinking. How can the state beyond thinking be thought? Non-thinking. This is the vital art of sitting-dhyana. What is called sitting-dhyana is not a kind of dhyana to be learned. It is the Dharma-gate of peace and ease. It is the practice and experience that perfectly realizes the Buddha’s enlightenment. The laws of the Universe are realized, there being nothing with which a dragon or a tiger might be caught or caged.

So what is Master Dogen saying about thinking? I understand that Master Dogen is saying, with Alexander, that, yes, because body-feeling is unreliable, we should rely in Zazen on the faculty that is opposed to body-feeling, that is, the mental effort of thinking. So he says: “THINK that state beyond thinking.”

This understanding that I am saying now is totally different from what Gudo Nishijima has taught me. In my view, his teaching on this point is not accurate and not reliable. He is prejudiced against thinking.

Master Dogen instructs us: “Think that state beyond thinking. How? Non-thinking.”

With regard to HISHIRYO, “non-thinking,” Gudo Nishijima is adamant that this expresses action itself, sitting itself, which is different from thinking. But I am not convinced by that argument either.

I may be wrong on this, but my understanding now is that Master Dogen not only exhorts us to make a mental effort with the imperative “Think that state beyond thinking,” but also points us in the same direction with the words “Non-thinking.”

My anti-thesis to Gudo’s thesis is this: HISHIRYO, “non-thinking,” expresses not action itself, but rather thinking itself, the mental effort which is antagonistically opposed to bodily effort based on feeling.

In Shobogenzo Master Dogen discusses the term HIBUTSU, “non-buddha.” Non-buddha means a true buddha, a real buddha, a buddha whose reality is contrary to habitual conceptions of buddha, a buddha whose reality is contrary to what people are prone to feel and think buddha is.

Similarly, I suggest, HISHIRYO means thinking, real thinking, real intention, real volition -- thinking whose reality is contrary to our habitual conceptions of thinking.

This real thinking is thinking of the kind Alexander described -- “Thinking, but not what you understand by thinking.”

Master Dogen goes on to stress that:
IWAYURU ZAZEN WA SHUZEN NI WA ARAZU.
What is called ZAZEN “Sitting-dhyana” is not SHU-ZEN “learning-dhyana.”

What is Master Dogen denying? I think that Master Dogen is stressing that the ZEN part of ZAZEN, the thinking part, the mental part, is not something that we have to learn. It is something that, in Zazen, we have the opportunity to re-discover.

This tallies with Master Dogen’s main message in Fukan-zazen-gi: Zazen is not an effort to bring enlightenment into being, not an effort to learn how to become Buddha; it is rather an effort to be taken over by the all-pervading enlightenment that already exists within us and around us, an effort to stop not being Buddha. The point is not to learn something new. It is to discover our original inheritance, to let open the treasure-storehouse which is our birthright.

Master Dogen’s intention, as I understand it now, is that the kind of thinking he is exhorting us to practice is not sophisticated, not intellectual, not pretentious, not insincere, not unreal. It is not a faculty that we have to learn. It is a faculty we have had since our first voluntary movements and non-movements in our earliest infancy.

My original state is one of peace and ease, and I wish to come back to it. Just that. What should this wish be called? Volition? Clarity of intention? Thinking? Non-thinking?

Alexander used to say: “This work is an exercise in finding out what thinking is.” This is subtly different from saying “This work is learning thinking” or “learning how to think.”

The great difficulty that I encounter in hands-on Alexander teaching work is not that I haven’t learned how to think: I already know perfectly well how to think. I have known since I was a baby. The difficulty is that in my practice here and now, I do not trust the incredible tangible power that a thought has. Without the assurance of feeling something that feels right, I don’t feel secure, and so my hands are taken over by a grabbing response.

When my Alexander teacher, after her 45 years in the work, puts her hands on me, I experience without any doubt the power of a thought. Her hands do absolutely nothing; they are just there. And yet something flows through her hands and seems to dig my head out from the depths of me, from the very soles of my feet. She calls this something “a thought.”

“It is a kind of wish, isn’t it?” I asked her once. “Yes,” she replied, “but it is a wish that won’t take No for an answer.”

In other words: “It is a wish, but not what you understand by a wish.” It is stronger and more real than that. Non-wishing.

When I myself am in the teaching role, at the critical moment when I wish to cause the pupil to rise from the chair, I am prone to feel that I have to do something with my hands and so I do something with my hands -- instead of just leaving them open and allowing them to transmit a thought. When, with the teacher’s help, I am able to inhibit this doing/feeling response, then something truly magical happens.

The miraculous power of a thought. A wish that won’t take No for an answer. Whatever we call it, it is a kind of mental effort that goes against the body’s habitual stream of activity which is pulled along by unreliable feeling.

Finally, I come back to my favourite three sentences from Shobogenzo chapter 72, Zanmai-o-zanmai:

Practice bodily sitting in the full lotus posture.
Practice mentally sitting in the full lotus posture.
Practice body and mind dropping off sitting in the full lotus posture.

It is like the Earth’s gravity pulling at a green leaf, which a tree won’t drop. The leaf turns golden and the tree pushes it out, but still the leaf won’t drop. When the wind blows, and the leaf floats free, we should not say that it wasn’t gravity, and should not say that it wasn’t the will of the tree. We should not say that it was only the wind. It was gravity and the tree and the wind, altogether and one after another.

Antagonistic Action (3): Ears vs Shoulders; Nose vs Navel

2006-12-24T18:04:00.000+01:00

In his instructions for Zazen, in the part about regulating the physical form (before he gets to the section about thinking), Master Dogen writes:

MIMI TO KATA TO TAI SHI, HANA TO HESO TO TAI SESHIMEN KOTO O YOSU.

MIMI means ears.
...TO ...TO are particles meaning both... and....
KATA means shoulders.
TAI SHI is an inflected form of TAI SURU, which means to oppose.
HANA means nose.
...TO ...TO is as above.
HESO means navel
TAI SESHIMEN is the causitive of TAI SURU: to cause to oppose
KOTO makes the preceding into the object clause
O is the object particle
YOSU means is vital.

Literally: “It is vital to cause the ears and shoulders, the nose and the navel, to oppose each other.”

English translations of Fukan-zazen-gi are prone to veer away from the literal translation, reflecting the translator’s endeavor to make sense of what he doesn’t necessarily understand.

The original rendering into English of Fukan-zazen-gi in the first edition of To Meet the Real Dragon (1984), by Gudo Nishijima with Jeffrey Bailey, has:

“Hold your head straight so that your ears are equidistant from your shoulders and your nose is in line with your naval.”

For the second edition of To Meet the Read Dragon (1992), I revised it as follows, in line with my intention to go for the translation that mirrored the original as closely as possible:

“The ears must be aligned with the shoulders, and the nose aligned with the navel.”

This is closer, but I think it still misses the target. The primary meaning of TAI SURU, if you look it up in the dictionary, is not to do with alignment; it is to do with opposition, antagonistic opposition. But in 1992, before I stumbled on Alexander’s teaching, I was more interested in alignment than in opposition, and so my translation reflected my own bias.

For TAISURU, the Kenkyusha dictionary gives: face, confront, be opposite to... oppose.

For the original Chinese character that Master Dogen used, TAI, the Nelson character dictionary gives: the opposite; antonym; even, equal; versus; counter-, anti-, versus.

Thus, a case can be made that Master Dogen used the character TAI to express equality, equidistance, symmetry, alignment.

But that argument, even if it comes from my own Buddhist teacher, doesn’t convince me.

The interpretation of TAI that hits the target, I think, is that TAI expresses the principle of allowing muscular release. In other words, TAI expresses the principle that when a bunch of muscle releases, the two things at either end of the bunch of muscle are released in opposite directions from each other -- irrespective of so-called good alignment, true symmetry, good or bad posture, et cetera.

This week I led a one-day workshop for Alexander teachers. The title was “immature primitive reflexes and faulty sensory appreciation.” In outlining how the reflexes develop, I highlighted the theme of antagonistic action -- how, for example, the Moro reflex opposes the fear paralysis response, how the two parts of the Moro reflex oppose each other, how the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex opposes the symmetrical pattern of the Moro reflex; how the strong tendency which the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex has to divide the baby into two sides, left and right, is opposed by postural reflexes such as the amphibian reflex and segmental rolling reflexes, and then by cross-pattern movements such as crawling on the belly and crawling hands on knees.

During the workshop I quoted to the other Alexander teachers Master Dogen’s instruction for the ears and shoulders, and nose and navel in Zazen. I just quoted it literally: “It is vital to cause the ears vis-a-vis the shoulders, and the nose vis-a-vis the navel, to oppose each other.”

The reaction I got was not: “That sounds strange” or “That sounds like Japanese English” or “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

No, the reaction I got was simply: “What wonderful directions!”

The Alexander teachers present understood the literal translation of Master Dogen’s words, because “ears being allowed to oppose the shoulders” is just another way of saying the Alexander direction “neck being allowed to release” and “nose being allowed to oppose the navel” is just another way of saying the Alexander direction “allowing oneself to lengthen in stature.”

Antagonistic Action (2): Related Quotes

2006-12-22T10:22:00.000+01:00

“You are all quite perfect, apart from what you are doing.”
Marjory Barlow

* * * * *

“The second law of thermodynamics says that energy of all kinds in our material world disperses or spreads out if it is not hindered from doing so.”

“All spontaneous happenings in the material world (those that continue without outside help, except perhaps for an initial start) are examples of the second law because they involve energy dispersing.”
Prof. Frank Lambert, http://www.entropysimple.com

"Chemical kinetics firmly restrains time's arrow in the taut bow of thermodynamics for milliseconds or millennia."
Prof. Frank Lambert, http://www.shakespeare2ndlaw.com

* * * * *

“In a future work I hope to deal more fully with the scientific aspect of practical respiratory re-education. At present I simply state the great principle to be antagonistic action.”
FM Alexander,
Intro to a New Method of Respiratory Vocal Re-education, 1906

“One pyscho-physical factor provides a position of rigidity... [and] constitutes a steady and firm condition which enables the Directive Agent of the sphere of consciousness to discriminate the action of the kinaesthetic and motion agents....
The whole condition which thus obtains is herein termed antagonistic action.”
FM Alexander, MSI (1910 edition)

* * * * *

Practice bodily sitting in the full lotus posture.
Practice mentally sitting in the full lotus posture.
Practice body and mind dropping off sitting in the full lotus posture.
Zen Master Dogen, Shobogenzo Zanmai-o-zanmai

Antagonistic Action (1)

2006-12-17T12:32:00.000+01:00

I would like to say something about the principle of antagonistic action. There are many aspects of this great principle, and I would love to write a lot about several of them. But right now I am in the early stages of a cold, and so for the time being I am going to hang fire and, as far as possible, just bear witness to whatever is going on between the cold virus and my immune system.

Hard Work, Finding Ease

2006-12-14T10:39:00.000+01:00

Marjory wrote: “The wrong inner patterns are the doing which has to be stopped.”

To stop doing, in sitting upright in the full lotus posture, is to find true ease.

But this is very hard work.

Physically, to sit upright in the full lotus posture requires an effort. Even a Zen master has to make an effort to get himself up out of bed in the morning and go to his sitting place. A beginner has to make even more of a physical effort, day by day, in order eventually to become free from pain when sitting with the legs crossed in lotus.

Mentally, an even greater effort is required in order to stop the wrong inner patterns that Marjory talked about. She described, more eloquently than I ever will, the kind of effort that is required, in her beautifully elegant Alexander Memorial Lecture given in November 1965 -- reproduced in full on my sister blog “It is not that.”

Whatever mental effort I make, it always turns out to be another case of “No. It is not that.” That is why, I suppose, Marjory used to say that if you really do this work, it keeps you humble. My mental efforts invariably miss the target. The problem is that my mental efforts, though totally necessary, are included in the wrong inner patterns which are the doing which has to be stopped.

What is the connection between the Alexander recognition “It is not that,” and the key phrase in Fukan-zazen-gi HISHIRYO, “non-thinking”? For me, the connection is very strong.

Everybody has to find that connection for himself or herself. I cannot force you to sit in the full lotus posture, learn Fukan-zazen-gi off by heart, and then get inside your brain and make the connection for you. I wish I could. But I can’t do the work for you. The best I can do is to do the work for myself.

I make a physical effort to sit in the full lotus posture every day. In general, I sit in four sessions per day, early morning, late morning, afternoon, and evening.

I make a mental effort to stop doing, to find ease.

As a result of these efforts, especially when I am practicing alone by the forest in France, sometimes ease finds me.

Then I understand what Marjory endeavored to teach me. Then I understand why Master Dogen said HISHIRYO, non-thinking, was the essential art of Zazen, which is not a kind of training but is rather a kind of gate to reality -- ANRAKU no HOMON. HOMON means Dharma-gate. ANRAKU means ease.

Zazen is not easy, but it’s criterion is ease.

I am sorry, Marjory. I am not worthy.

Thinking

2006-12-12T13:51:00.000+01:00

The late Marjory Barlow, an eternal Buddha, often said to me, “FM used to say that this work is an exercise in finding out what thinking is.”

“FM” was Marjory’s uncle, Frederick Matthias Alexander, founder of the body of work that endures the label of “the Alexander Technique.” But FM himself, Marjory told me, never used to call it “the Technique.” To him it was always just the Work.

When Marjory said “this work” I understood her to mean the work that she and I were doing together -- pursuing the truth. Sometimes after she gave me a lesson on the table in her flat in Hampstead we would sit together in Zazen in her teaching room. It was a natural progression into silence.

During a lesson, after some minutes of working on the table, Marjory would sometimes say something along the lines of “That’s it. That’s what we want. THE WHOLE BODY INFORMED WITH THOUGHT.”

The whole body informed with thought.

What Marjory, and what FM before her, called "thinking" does not mean thinking about, does not mean intellectual thinking. Thinking the neck to be free does not mean thinking about the neck being free. It means thinking the neck free. It is the kind of thinking a footballer does with his feet or a martial artist following the path of sincerity does with his fists.

In Fukan-zazen-gi Rufu-bon, Master Dogen writes: KONO FUSHIRYO TEI O SHIRYO SEYO. FUSHIRYOTEI IKAN GA SHIRYO SEN? HISHIRYO. KORE SUNAWACHI ZAZEN NO YOJUTSU NARI.

“Think that state beyond thinking. How can the state beyond thinking be thought? Non-thinking. This is just the essential art of Zazen.”

Think that which cannot be thought -- freedom, spontaneity, oneness with all things, complete ease in sitting. How can freedom, spontaneity, oneness, ease... be thought? It is a target that thinking cannot hit. But we can aim ourselves in the direction of that target, with thinking that includes ever-deepening understanding of its own inability to hit the target -- non-thinking.

Thus, through the physical effort of sitting upright, and the mental effort of non-thinking the unthinkable, we allow a possibility of the target hitting us, of body and mind spontaneously dropping off.

In a recent email, Gudo wrote to me:

Not to do but to think is the typical Western thought... Your teaching, that Master Dogen instructs us to think in Zazen, is completely wrong.

But Master Dogen’s instruction is very clear:

Think that state beyond thinking.

It is not Mike Cross’s teaching. It is just Master Dogen’s instruction.

I think that Gudo’s words are, at root, the expression of his prejudice against HAKUJIN NO BUNKA, the white man’s [intellectual] culture, against which Gudo fought in WWII. He is prejudiced against thinking. Knowing that the enlightenment of Gautama Buddha cannot be grasped by intellectual thinking, because enlightenment it is a real integral state of awakening that includes the whole self and the whole of nature (or “the balanced state of the autonomic nervous system”), Gudo is not only wary of intellectual thinking but he is also prejudiced against thinking in general. He tars all varieties of thinking with the same brush.

Gudo himself has a very active intellect which he knows from experience has been prone in the past to lead him into delusion. So his antipathy towards “typical Western thought” might be just another case of the old mirror principle.

The reason I have spent the last 12 years in England, not in Japan, is that FM’s teaching and Marjory’s teaching on how to think in Zazen is just true. Gudo’s prejudice against thinking in Zazen is just false.

There is no room for compromise on this one, no middle way. Gudo’s teaching is part of a Japanese confusion that needs to be cut at its roots.

Marjory’s principle of thinking is true. It is just Master Dogen’s principle for Zazen.

I shall endeavor to do my bit to see that Marjory’s principle does not get lost.

Full Moon over Champsecret

2006-12-07T10:41:00.000+01:00

Not a mirror of anyone’s mind:

Round moon and two great circles of light

Like halos, you said? No, fuck off.

A target waiting to hit a buddha.

Accomplishing the Truth

2006-12-07T00:41:00.000+01:00

Master Dogen wrote that accomplishment of the truth is like the moon being reflected in water.

He did not state that accomplishment of the truth is some particular property of the water.

If some stupid person stated that accomplishment of the truth was, for example, just the stillness of water, would that be an expression of true accomplishment of the truth?

Or might it be only the inaccurate thought and unreliable feeling of a stupid person? Might it be that the stupid person has been expending much valuable energy got from meals in vain? Might that person be guilty of having emptily recited, like a frog in a spring paddy field, the words “JODO NO TAME NO YUE NI” without ever having truly verified, in his own experience, the meaning of JODO? And might the cause of the stupid person’s failure be his arrogance to think that his own inaccurate thought and unreliable feeling had hit the target that can never be hit by thought and feeling, the target which is hit by the moon itself?

Might that stupid person be a very conspicuous example of the second part of Fukan-zazen-gi, beginning with the caution: “If, however, there is the slightest gap....”? And if that stupid person devoted his life to criticizing the intellectual basis of Western civilization, might all that criticism be understood, in the end, as a very clear example of the mirrror principle?

Because of my own enormous arrogance, I sought out as a true mirror the most arrogant Buddhist teacher in the world -- Gudo Nishijima, who thinks he has hit the target with his theory of balance of the autonomic nervous system.

So now, because the mirror principle never fails, I am continuing, for a while, to express my fury with myself. Gudo Mike Cross: You stupid, blind, arrogant bastard.

Even a person like this can accomplish the truth. Such is the all-encompassing virtue of the moon.

Not Five Reflections

2006-12-05T11:47:00.000+01:00

If people truly wish to accomplish the truth, that is, to realize not only balance of the autonomic nervous system but the supreme integral awakening of Gautama Buddha under the bodhi tree, what is really important?

According to Master Dogen’s fundamental teaching, what is really important is not to recite the five reflections of go-kan-no-ge, but to practice Zazen, dropping off body and mind.

When I was in Japan Gudo always recommended me not to think but just to do. But from Alexander work in England I understood that whatever I do, I do on the basis of my unreliable feeling.

So from Alexander work I learned the opposite principle: not to do but to think.

Then finally I could understand Master Dogen’s teaching to sit in the full lotus posture bodily, mentally, and as body and mind dropping off.

Therefore my understanding of Fukan-zazen-gi is that Master Dogen first instructs us to do something -- to sit upright in the full lotus posture in the traditional manner. Then, once the physical act of sitting upright has been regulated, and the body has been deprived of oxygen once and swayed left and right, Master Dogen instructs us to think.

Not to think about, not an an intellectual reflection, as in go-kan-no-ge. But to think. To think the target. In other words, to make in Zazen a mental effort, going against the stream of habitual thought, to think the target that inaccurate thinking and unreliable feeling cannot hit.

Thus, physically sitting in the full lotus posture and thinking the target that we cannot hit, we open ourselves to the possibility of the target hitting us, which Master Dogen called body and mind dropping off.

I think that the new rule of Gudo’s blog is no long comments but just short questions. Knowingly to break the rule might be too arrogant, so I will post this on my own blog.

Correction

2006-10-29T13:02:00.000+01:00

MASANI SHIRUBESHI, SHOBO ONOZUKARA GENZEN SHITE, KON SAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O.

“We should know, exactly, that the true law is naturally manifesting itself; and darkness and dissipation, from the beginning, are struck down to the ground.”

Originally Master Dogen wrote the above using only 12 Chinese characters.

The 12 Chinese characters are read in Japanese with the addition of Japanese grammatical constructions (inflections and particles) so that the sentence makes sense in Japanese.

If I put the inflections and particles in brackets, the sentence is:

MASA [NI] SHI [RU BESHI] SHO BO ONO [ZUKARA] GEN ZEN [SHI TE], KON SAN MA [ZU] BOKU RAKU [SURU KOTO O].

The 12 Chinese characters, one by one, mean:

MASA exactly
SHI know
SHO true
BO (=HO) law
ONO self --> by itself, naturally, spontaneously.
GEN manifest, appear
ZEN before, in front
KON darkness
SAN dissipate, scatter
MA first of all, in the first place, to begin with, originally
BOKU strike,
RAKU fall, drop down

Thus, the original 12 Chinese characters tend to translate themselves quite straightforwardly into English:

“Exactly know: the true law is naturally manifesting itself before us; darkness and dissipation from the beginning, at a stroke, drop down.”

In my attempt to interepret this sentence in a previous post (BOOM BANG tumble tumble tumble THUMP), I strayed pathetically into error.

In particular, what I wrote about KOTO O was sheer nonsense. O is simply the object particle. It has no special function to mark the end of a sentence, as I wrongly described.

I had remembered that the elements of the motto of my old karate dojo all ended in KOTO O, but that also was wrong. Actually they ended just in KOTO, without the final O. For example, MAKOTO NO SEISHIN O YASHINAU KOTO “to cultivate a spirit of sincerity.”

On reading what I wrote, Gudo corrected me as follows:

In the sentence of KON SAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O, it is
completely impossible for us to think the meaning of the last word O as
you interpreted. Because in Japanese grammar the word O does never have
a function of ending a sentence. O is a particle, which indicate that
the former noun of O is the object of a transitive verb. Therefore the
O in the sentence is related with the top words MASA NI SHIRU BESHI.
Master Dogen wanted to emphasize MASA NI SHIRU BESHI, and so he moved
the words to the top of the sentence. So we should understand the
meaning of the sentence that KON SAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O MASA NI
SHIRU BESHI, as "we should know the fact that the strong tension and
the strong dullness will drop off
from the body and mind first."

What I wrote was totally wrong, and Gudo’s correction is totally right -- except Gudo got the order of KON and SAN the wrong way round.

Gudo’s total rightness has been to recognize in the words KON and SAN the expression of two antagonistic tendencies, free of which we can sit upright in Zazen with the appropriate degree of muscle tone, not too flaccid, and not too tense. Gudo has also been totally right to look for an exact scientific explanation of these two opposing tendencies.

He has proposed that KON represents the function of the sympathetic nervous system, and SAN the opposite function of the parasympathetic nervous system.

KON appears in the compound KONSUI, “dark sleep” i.e. coma. I think that Master Dogen chose the word KON being aware of the function of the fear paralysis response (FPR), whose early function in embryonic development is related with training of the parasympathetic nervous system, and which causes loss of postural muscle tone.

SAN, dissipation, is an exact description of the energy-dissipating function of the Moro reflex, whose early function is related with training of the sympathetic nervous system, and which tends to raises the level of postural muscle tone.

In human development, the FPR precedes the Moro reflex. FPR paralysis is a more primitive fear response than Moro panic. I think that Master Dogen understood that order, and so he wrote KON SAN. Not SAN KON. KON SAN.

MASANI SHIRUBESHI, SHOBO ONOZUKARA GENZEN SHITE, KON SAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O.

Master Dogen exhorted us to know what he was saying, exactly, with scientific precision. We should know EXACTLY.

For example:

We should know, exactly, that before us the 2nd law of thermodynamics is naturally manifesting itself; and within us the FPR tendency towards paralytic conservation of energy and the Moro reflex tendency towards hyper-active dissipation of energy, in the very moment of true action, are already struck down to the ground.

Does this interpretation hit the target exactly? If it does, Gudo will decide it.

Expansion on the upward tendency

2006-10-19T04:16:00.000+01:00

Without water grass cannot grow. Under water grass does not grow. Our physical body is like a blade of grass holding up a dew-drop, for a little while.

Fukan-zazen-gi says SORO no GOTOKU. SO means grass. RO means dew. GOTOKU means like.

The Buddha’s teaching is SHOYOKU CHISOKU, having small wants, know satisfaction.

A person might be mistaken who was so hungry for the truth of Zazen that he neglected his own thirst. Without a moderate amount of water, nothing grows.

Again, Fukan-zazen-gi says ONJIKI SETSU ARI. ON means drink. JIKI means food. SETSU means economy. ARI means there is. There is economy in drink and food -- food and drink are taken in moderation.

Knowing Not Knowing

2006-10-16T19:46:00.000+01:00

SAIYU YOSHIN means sway the body left and right. SAI means left. YU means right. YO means sway. SHIN means body.

When I am way over to the left, I know I am to the left. On that level my feeling is reliable. Same on the right: the more off centre I become, the more definitely I know it. But if I very slowly approach the middle and ask myself whether I am left or right, I don’t know. The middle is a way of not knowing.

As a Buddhist student one cannot be the one who knows.

Maybe a Buddhist teacher is one who knows that the student cannot be the one who knows.

Pierre Turlur recently wrote me that he refused to lick my arse and kiss my feet. But I never asked him to do those things, of course. I asked him to produce a draft translation of Fukan-zazen-gi into French, which I would like to study and check.

We are in a process, a way, a way of not knowing.

BOOM BANG tumble tumble tumble THUMP

2006-10-15T03:19:00.000+01:00

KON SAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O. KON means dark or dull. SAN means scattered, dissipated. MAZU means from the beginning. BOKURAKU SURU means to be struck and to fall, to be knocked down. KOTO means thing but KOTO O is a phrase that marks the end of a sentence.

In the dojo where I practiced karate-do in Japan, after training we would recite the dojo moto, in which each separate precept ended with the words KOTO O. KOTO O is like a bullet point, but at the end of the sentence.

SHOBO ONOZUKARA GENZEN SHI TE, KON SAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O. Literally: “The true Dharma naturally manifests itself, and dullness and dissipation from the beginning are knocked down.”

The interpretation of KON and SAN is vitally important in Gudo’s teaching. Gudo teaches that KON and SAN represents opposite states of the autonomic nervous system. For Gudo, KON or darkness, is a kind of gloom which is characterestic, say, of the spirituality of the dark ages. It corresponds to the function of the sympathetic nervous system. SAN is a kind of sensual gaiety which is characteristic, say, of modern materialistic life. It corresponds to the function of the parasympathetic nervous system.

My response, on one level, to Gudo’s teaching, has been to investigate the importance of primitive reflexes in early training of the autonomic nervous system. The fear paralysis response (FPR) is related especially with the parasympathetic nervous system. Its effect is seen in the animal world when e.g. a frog or a rabbit plays dead. True, the FPR is associated with heightened mental alertness, but also with physical shutting down and conservation of energy, including withdrawal of blood supply from external muscles. So for me KON, dullness, is related with the FPR. The Moro reflex is the baby’s panic mechanism, which breaks and opposes the more primitive FPR. The Moro reflex is associated with the fight or flight response of the sympathetic nervous system, which mobilizes muscular energy for rapid dissipation. A characteristic of school children in whom the Moro reflex is retained in immature form is hyperactivity, or so-called ADHD, “attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.” The energy of these children tends to rapidly dissipated here and there, and so they cannot concentrate well in the classrooom. So I think SAN, dissipation, is related with the Moro reflex.

Setting aside this problem of interpretation, KON SAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O, when I recite Fukan-zazen-gi out loud, speaks to me on another level. I heard on BBC Radio 4 (which I listen to a lot when I am in France) that TS Elliot said that great poetry communicates something to us before we understand it. So it is with Fukan-zazen-gi.

KON SAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O has a very definite rhythm to it. It sounds like two massive obstacles each receiving a decisive blow, and then shattering and tumbling down after each other in rapid succession, before landing on the ground with great finality...

Boom Bang tumble tumble tumble thump.

KON SAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O marks the end of the first half of Fukan-zazen-gi. After this point, Master Dogen tells of getting up slowly and manifesting the virtue of Zazen in a Zazen life. So in context also, there is a decisive, conclusive sense to the words:

KON SAN MAZU BOKURAKU SURU KOTO O

Yin Yang; struck down, fall down, drop down on the ground.

This that; knocked down, fall down, drop down on the ground.

Do you see what I am getting at? No translation I can come up with can do Fukan-zazen-gi justice. That is why I would like to encourage everybody to study it in the original Japanese, and think about its meaning deeply for themselves. Don’t take Gudo’s word for it. And don’t take mine.

Twenty years ago, when I started looking at Master Dogen’s original words in Japanese, it was like taking off a veil. I realized I couldn’t just rely on Gudo’s English translation--just as people today shouldn’t rely on what I am writing. Contrary to what I had thought previously, Gudo’s word was not infallible. No, even a Buddhist patriarch is a human being like the rest of us, with unreliable feelings and thoughts. That will be the subject of my next post.

Our true nature expresses itself

2006-10-14T06:33:00.000+01:00

HONRAI NO MENMOKU GENZEN SEN. Our original face manifests itself. Naturally, spontaneously. The secret is to allow it.

What does it mean to allow it?

For our purposes, as devotees of Fukan-zazen-gi, it means to find some space and time to be set aside for the physical/temporal act of sitting in lotus.

Then it means to make an effort to kick-start the natural, spontaneous process, without the grasping which will sabotage that very process.

To understand what kind of effort this is, the work of FM Alexander has been, in the Zazen practice and experience of me for one, absolutely invaluable.

FM Alexander, while well aware of how misleading words can be, called it “thinking.” In Fukan-zazen-gi also, Master Dogen exhorts us to think. But it is not thinking as we generally understand thinking. It is certainly not speculative, intellectual thinking. It is a kind of clarity of intention. It is the intention to allow something that happens spontaneously.

How can a spontaneous process be intended?

How can the state of not thinking be thought?

Non-intentionality. Non-thinking. Non-allowing.

Non-allowing means allowing that gets rid of itself.

In other words, allowing the neck to be free, to allow the head to release out from the body (“forward and up”), to allow the spine to release in a lengthening direction and the back to release in a widening direction -- altogether, as one integral act of allowing.

One integral act of allowing that spontaneously turns into one integral act.

Just sitting.