UnMind 15. Zazen Quartet 3: Touching Base

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Doesn’t take much time
to hit that sweet spot again —
Life depends on it.

The most common excuse for not doing meditation that people give — to themselves and to others — is that they don’t have the time. This is because they have not sat still enough for long enough to realize that zazen does not take time, it gives it back, and in spades. After some time of relatively frequent practice — and there is no cookie-cutter that fits everyone, so don’t ask — a cumulative effect sets in. But there is also a whole host of substitution effects that can also take place.

Even for myself, if I am preoccupied, or what restaurant workers call “slammed,” with a deluge of deadlines, especially if they center around support activities for Zen, or the Zen community, serving members of the sangha, I can go for days or even weeks without sitting in zazen myself. That is, I can let my private, personal practice slide. The other activities are also my practice, so you can see how this substitution effect can become insidious. It would be analogous to a personal trainer becoming morbidly obese and dying of a heart attack while training others to avoid the same fate.

Not that we develop an addiction, or even a dependency, upon zazen. That is probably the most unlikely outcome of all, as zazen is so difficult on so many levels, and so easy on so many other levels. If you try to use it to avoid facing reality, you will quickly find out how poorly suited it is for that. If you try to use zazen for anything — other than thoroughly examining the Great Matter, or waking up completely — it may help, but you may miss the boat, in terms of its deeper application. There is only so much time in your day, and not enough to waste.

At my age, if and when I go for some time without sitting, I notice that my heart rate increases, for example in the morning when I first wake up. If you listen before you rise, you can usually hear your heartbeat, whereas in the course of the day, the mind adapts, and shuts that level of awareness down. The brain seems to operate on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t constantly need to know your heart is beating, unless it begins to stop. “All things are like this,” to borrow a phrase from Master Dogen.

So “In the morning, when you rise,” to borrow another phrase from Crosby, Stills and Nash, don’t. Don’t get out of bed just yet. Listen to your heart a while, and compare it to the rhythm of your breath, another bit of information you do not need until you do. When you begin suffocating, for example. You may be “waking from a bad dream,” and “sometimes think[ing] it’s real,” to borrow yet another phrase from Charlie Chaplin’s hit song, “Smile.”

For whatever reason, our heart is palpitating at an unhealthy rate. And we suspect that the number of heartbeats we have left is finite. We want to burn them at as slow a rate as possible. I simply begin breathing more intentionally, taking deeper inhalations, and holding my breath, both when the lungs are full and when they are empty. You may notice, as I do, that your heart starts slowing down. It seems that by listening to both the beat and the breath simultaneously, we can begin to synchronize the two. By slowing down the breath, and taking in more oxygen (the way a doper holds in the toke of smoke for a beat or two), the heart begins to slow, which means it begins to relax. Ask your doctor if this is inadvisable for you.

When we first wake up, we are not yet fully awake. We can tell when we pour the coffee grinds directly into the cup, instead of the coffee maker. According to Buddhism, we are always in this kind of sleepwalking state. It is relatively awake, but not fully so. Buddha’s top honorific, one of 10 used to refer to him during his lifetime, is, well, “buddha,” which means the “fully awakened one.” He was the first “woke” person in recorded history.

If you keep your meditation cushion near your bed, you can sit up on it for a while before getting out of bed. Assuming the posture — I usually face the headboard, equivalent to the wall in the zendo — and perching atop the zafu, you will find it a little less stable than sitting on the floor. But the mattress is a bit more accommodating than the zabuton, the flat mat that goes under the zafu. This lack of stability is actually an aid to finding the sweet spot, that stable axis dead center in your body. It roughly approximates the location of your spine, but we conceive of it as a straight line from the crown of your head, directly to the center of the earth. It is like a metal fragment lining up with the lines of magnetism on a magnet, only it is a much greater line of gravity, instead. You can rock back and forth, side to side, as usual, carefully, adapting to the posture, and the firmness of your mattress. You may need an extra pillow under the zafu or a folded blanket to get the necessary height, so that your hips are above your knees. Being half-awake is an aid to overcoming the usual resistance of the body, as well as the recalcitrance of the monkey mind. When we are half-asleep, we are closer to the Original Mind.

Find that pressure point at the base of the spine that I call “Hakuin’s gas pedal,” after his instructions to press it forward and down, with enough effort to cause some strain or even a bit of pain. Then do the same at the base of the neck, stretching it upwards by tilting the chin down a bit. These two pressure-points will kick in instantly, and your body will remember the rest. The breath will slow, along with the heart and accompanying nervous system. If you tend to wake in a panic, owing to the pressures under which we all live, it will subside instantly.

If you sit up before you get up, in the early predawn hours, you may find that each day you tend to sit a little longer. You may even witness the soft, gradual brightening of your space that we call “sunrise,” as we observe on retreat. Actually, the sun does not rise, of course, nor does it set. What you are witnessing is the rotation of the earth toward the sun, from your vantage point on the globe, wherever that may be. It is moving to the east at roughly 1,000 miles per hour. Slowing down, or speeding up, to this apperception entering your perception, you begin to transcend the personal and social spheres of your reality, leaping over the natural sphere, directly to the universal. This lends perspective to the rest of your day.

Then, when you finally arise, these two pressure points will go with you into your day. If nothing else, this will improve your posture. But since body and mind cannot separate, it will have a halo effect on the rest of your daily activities. Let your body do the breathing, the sitting, and the remembering part of mindfulness. It has a simpler, more dependable memory than your conscious mind. It only requires a quick touch-base, and it’s got it.

Then, when you retire for the night, same thing. If you have insomnia, zazen is better than taking a pill. There is only one letter difference between “medication” and “meditation.” But that one letter makes all the difference. If you wake up in the middle of the night, same thing. Sleeping and waking is the boundary zone of Zen. It is well worth your investigating it “thoroughly in practice,” to borrow yet another memorable line from phrase-maker Master Dogen.