UnMind 79. Methods & Routines — Atlanta Soto Zen Center

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Method and routine
may be hard to separate —
Work it out in time

In the last episode of our series on Design thinking and Zen, considering methods and materials, tools and techniques associated with Zen practice — as well as their place in the process of Design and problem-solving in general — it occurred to me that zazen is not the solution itself, but a recommended method for arriving at an ongoing solution to the problems life presents. This may be belaboring the obvious, but Bodhidharma is credited with saying something to the effect that it is not really necessary to do zazen, but only to “grasp the Vital Principle.” I capitalize V and P, as is the custom to highlight terms pointing to ineffable reality, such as “Emptiness,” or the “Uncreate,” from Muso Soseki’s letters to his students, two brothers who were shoguns of Japan at that time, titled Dream Conversations.

I feel I am in good company when I assert that zazen, or any method for that matter, cannot magically turn the trick for whatever you may expect from it. No method can work itself; you have to work the method. As to grasping the vital principle of existence, how could that be limited to sitting versus lying down, standing, or walking? Or running, swimming, sky-diving or bungee-jumping, for that matter? Not to confuse being “in the flow,” and its accompanying adrenaline rush, with the effects of zazen. That we sit stock still in zazen makes it an even more extreme action, triggering a consciousness of the relative flux and flow of time. Counterintuitively, stillness elevates awareness of subliminal movement.

We also promised that this episode will take a different tack in defining the problem of existence, and Zen’s unique approach to penetrating — as opposed to solving — it. While the Zen problem constitutes our fundamental koan, a gordian knot of universal proportions, it is no more subject to intellectual solution than the illogical riddles of Rinzai Zen tradition, which nonetheless are all pointing to it. While we may have to give up our usual strategies for problem-solving, we should not give up on the whole endeavor. Our ancestors claim to have come to resolution and peace on this issue. And so we should not despair, however frustrating a slog the journey becomes. Zen is not the problem. Our approach to the method has to be where the difficulty lies.

Taking Bodhidharma’s claim that penetrating to the essence of the Great Matter, the mystery of life, is not, indeed cannot be, actually dependent upon zazen puts any discussion of the details of the method into perspective. If the very practice of zazen is not absolutely imperative, how important is obsessing over the subroutines? One answer is that you might want to familiarize yourself with these techniques before you decide to not follow them, rather than decide not to follow them without being familiar with them. After all, the masters who refined Zen’s method over millennia past were quite accomplished in other dimensions of life. Anyone capable of copying monastery plans on sojourn in China with brush and paper, bringing them back to Japan, and building a copy, would likely be at least as competent in analyzing and codifying the method of meditation that inspired their demanding design-build endeavors.

If we understand that the investment of time and effort necessary for zazen to work its magic has nothing to do with the efficacy of the method, but everything to do with our stubborn nature and its accumulation of ignorant and self-serving ideas about reality, we can embrace the recommendations of the ancestors wholeheartedly. It is entirely our fault that the method of Zen does not deliver results to our expectations, let alone on our unreasonable timetable. This is the attitude adjustment dimension demanded of us by any worthwhile endeavor. If we persist in our resistance, we are not really applying the method. So just give up, and give in. Surrender is a vital part of the Zen method. Zazen posture is one of surrender: the fight or flight syndrome is impossible to act upon sitting cross-legged, at least in the physical sense. But the monkey can still mount a vigorous array of mental evasive maneuvers.

One example of such a maneuver involves counting breaths. While we may regard this recommended subroutine as a provisional aspect of the overall method of zazen, the monkey may seize upon it as something — better than nothing — to preoccupy itself. Are we counting correctly, in the most efficacious way? From one to ten? One to four and start over? Counting down from ten to zero? How many breaths per minute? Can we measure time counting the breath? How long can we keep up the counting without missing a beat? Et cetera ad infinitum.

I once had a visitor come in for the one-on-one interview (J. dokusan) that we sometimes offer as part of regular meditation sessions or retreats. After bowing respectfully and announcing his name, he declared that his practice was counting the breath. I asked how long he had been counting his breath. He said about three years. I suggested he may want to stop counting his breath for a while.

If and when a suggested or recommended technique goes from being an ancillary routine intended to help focus the attention, as the breath-counting is usually regarded — to an essential piece of the method, the instructions have gone from being a map of the territory to an imposed stricture. We cannot explore the territory if we have to stick to trails already blazed by those who have gone before. When the instructions so carefully considered and tailored by the ancestors are regarded as more like a jazz chart, on which we are to improvise — than the painstakingly detailed notation of a classical concert piece that we are to replicate as closely as possible to the original performance — we are less inhibited in our real-time experience of the music itself. Eventually we can throw away the written record entirely.

But in the meantime we may want to take to heart the encouragement of Tozan Ryokai, founder of Soto Zen in China, from his teaching poem Hokyo Zammai: Precious Mirror Samadhi:

Penetrate the source and travel the pathways
Embrace the territory and treasure the roads

Prioritizing penetrating the source does not mean that we can disregard traveling the pathways followed by our predecessors. The territory now is the same as it was for them, though our experience of it is necessarily unique, differing in time and space, as well as in person. We are not them and they are not us, but we should treasure the roads they have paved for this Great Vehicle, to stretch the analogy. However confounding the message handed down to us, rendered in translation from culture to culture and language to language, the Great Way that it is pointing to is right in front of our face, and directly beneath our feet. The teachings are like so many Burma Shave signs, alerting us to what lies ahead.

Like advertising, Zen teachings change over time, with developments in media and technology, but the basic message stays the same, like the annual Super Bowl commercials. The different approaches to selling the same old beer and vehicles each year illustrate the creativity of the writers and producers. We need to be equally or at least similarly creative in our approach to Zen. When we hear instructions for how to do zazen, we should take them as an approximation of what the actual method should be, rather than hard and fast rules. Even sitting still should be understood as relative, not absolute. Only by attempting to sit more and more still, for longer and longer periods of time, can we learn what is the point of not moving. But only by moving can we appreciate what is sitting still. If sitting still were somehow magically the trigger of insight, what would be the point of walking meditation (J. kinhin)? By witnessing the relative stillness of zazen, compared to the relative motion of kinhin, we begin to grasp the harmony of sameness and difference (shout out to Sekito Kisen) implicit in the contrast. Finally we come to embrace the principle of motion in stillness, and stillness in motion (Sino-J. mokurai).

Our approach to the entire complex of form surrounding the practice of meditation: the environmental conditions of ambient light, temperature and sound; the clothing and the equipment; and finally the method itself: posture, breath and attention; is informed by this middle way of finding balance between extremes. Those niggling differences that at one time may have caused distraction and irritation begin to fade into irrelevance, with repetition. Eventually we can sit through a thunderstorm, as Sensei said.

If identifying clothing as part of the method seems to be a bridge too far, consider sitting stark naked. Where would you sit, and on what kind of surface? Now expand the range of costume to include work clothes, party dress, military uniform, a medieval suit of armor, deep water diving gear, et cetera. It will become clear that appropriate clothing will support the method, while inappropriate garb will not. Even skinny jeans, the fashion choice of the hip, may cause bunching around the knees, inhibiting circulation and causing discomfort. Whereas spandex may support the necessary flexing of the muscular and skeletal system. In this context it is easy to get a perspective on why the ancient monks preferred to wear robes over the few other choices available to them. But it does not follow that robes are necessarily the best choice for sitting in meditation today.

Take one more simple example. When in zazen, we recommend a specific hand posture (S. mudra). That we refer to it as a mudra does not imbue it with any magical associations. Any hand posture is a mudra, though in Buddha’s India apparently a kind of gestural or sign language, having symbolic significance in iconography, the painted images and statues of various Buddhist figures of bodhisattvas and buddhas. But that is neither here nor there, one of my favorite English expressions. The hand position in zazen may be interpreted as rife with mystical meaning, but I want to consider it as a physical experience instead.

We are encouraged to place the hands palm up, one on top of the other, thumbs lightly touched forming a symmetrical, jewel-like ellipse. The wrists are rested on the thighs with the hands against the lower abdomen, and no stress or strain on the arms, so we do shoulder rolls and flap the elbows out like a chicken flapping its wings, to relax the arms.

Next time you try this, I suggest a kind of mini-koan that you may present to yourself. In principle, the hands and arms should come into balance with gravity, like the rest of the body in zazen. The effort required to sit upright in zazen segues from fidgeting and resistance in the beginning to a kind of equilibrium, or equipoise, or physical samadhi. So the question naturally arises, are my hands already in samadhi, complete balance with gravity, or not? In other words, how heavy are they, actually?

The same query made be made of your head, as you rest it on your pillow at night to sleep. The only way to come to some resolution of this question is to experiment. Try pushing your hands (or your head) down as hard as you can, pressing into the flesh of your thighs (or your pillow). Then lift your hands gently to see where you can definitely tell that you are holding them up, ever so slightly, with muscular support from your forearms. Do this again and again until you can find the midpoint at which you are definitely not holding them up, but also not pushing them down, either. Extend to the rest of your body.

While this may seem another monkey-mind distraction from just sitting, it illustrates the principle, again, that we may think we are sitting still, in perfect balance, when all unbeknownst to us (another favorite), we are actually tensed up, here and there in the posture. This was illustrated dramatically one day at the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, in the 1960s when I had started my tutelage under Matsuoka Roshi. One day in zazen he was doing his rounds checking our postures, when he placed his forefinger, I assume, just under the bump at the back bottom of my skull — called an inion for anyone who cares — and lifted slightly. It was very subtle, but exactly what was needed, what was missing in my posture. He would often say that you “have to work your way through every bone in your body.” And of course, there are a lot of bones in the human body, at last count 206. So get to work.