UnMind 83. Tetrad & Zen — Atlanta Soto Zen Center

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It’s not that simple.
But it helps to simplify —
at least in your mind.

Before leaving the discussion of systems and analysis modeling, and its application to daily life and Zen practice, it may be worthwhile to delve a bit more deeply into applying the tetrad to both. This exercise, which may feel a bit awkward in the beginning, may help you answer the question as to not what may be wrong with your approach — as we maintain, you cannot really do Zen wrong — but what may not be working as well as it could be, and where that lies within the components and connections of your personal practice. Take a look at the semantic model presented here. We have suggested that the four components of zazen as a method may be defined as posture, breath, attention, and thee. Using the analytical propensity of the intellect may help you clarify the connection between posture and breath as well as breath and attention, et cetera, fostering a more comprehensive grasp of zazen.

This entails eliminating the conceptual divide that we usually wedge between creativity and the discriminating mind. But thinking is not the enemy of creativity. Analysis can provide the prompts needed to consider alternative approaches and ways of thinking about zazen or anything else for that matter. The main attitude adjustment is that we drop the typical interpretation that there is a right way to meditate, or to raise children, or to wash the dishes, or make art or music, and that we must learn that way or we will never succeed. Again, reasonable parameters for practice in any field are reasonable, not right as opposed to wrong.

Stressing the senses is a common aspect of many of the Buddhist teachings, beginning with the “Heart of Great Wisdom” sutra, in which the Six Senses of ancient Buddhist physiology are listed right up front, following the Five Aggregates, in the context of the principle of emptiness (S. shunyatta):

Given emptiness [there is] no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind;
no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no thinking.

Note that the listing of the organs is followed by their experiential functions, indicating that both their physical and experiential manifestation are equally empty of substantial reality. That is, all such differentiated percepts, as well as their receptive mechanisms, are devoid of self-existence, as well as being impermanent and imperfect. But I digress.

This traditional sequence arranges the senses from higher to lower levels of the electromagnetic spectrum, but note that mind, the ostensibly highest faculty, comes last, as a kind of catch-all. As I speculate in The Original Frontier, this is probably owing to the fact that the degree of resistance to settling into stillness is at its highest in the monkey mind, followed closely by the body, whereas the other senses tend to be more accommodating to sensory adaptation, given the moderated level of stimulation in meditation.

Another pertinent reference to the senses is found in Sekito Kisen’s Ch’an poem “Harmony of Sameness and Difference” (J. Sandokai):

All the objects of the senses interact and yet do not
Interacting they are linked together
Not interacting each keeps its place
Sights vary in quality and form
Sounds differ as pleasing or harsh

And later a briefer reference to the connection between the sense organs and their objects:

Eye and sights, ear and sounds, nose and smells, tongue and tastes

Zen teaching often simply belabors the obvious. But we take for granted and overlook the wisdom that is inherent in the most seemingly mundane aspects of our experience, such as the six senses. When in actual fact, they are as miraculous as it gets. But again I digress. Getting back to the model, we can look more deeply into the connections between the four major sense realms under observation.

Consider the most common of these in the vernacular of philosophy and science, the so-called body-mind duality. In zazen, however, the connection of mind to body, #1–4 in our model, is not at all dualistic in nature. Body and mind are naturally complementary. Mind arises from body, the conventional precedent, which some adherents of spiritualist philosophy might dispute, claiming that the mind exists separately from the body as the ostensible true self, or soul, of theism. But in Zen, body also arises from mind. This assessment is validated by the holistic view of health, in which mental disorders can have a devastating impact on the body, and vice-versa. In this context, zazen appears therapeutic.

In zazen, we undergo a kind of sensory adaptation process, which becomes all-encompassing in the long run. But the different senses adapt at different rates, which is why I lump smell and taste, the functions of the nose and tongue, in with the tactile sensations of the body, in this model. Both smell and taste are engaged chemically with ingestion and digestion of food and drink, and the inspiration of breath and its accompanying odors and fragrances. This leaves a simpler model of four main senses as confronted in intensive meditation: feeling, hearing, seeing, and thinking. Remember that thinking, the function of the brain, is considered a sense-realm in Zen, largely automatic, like the others.

Thus the mind’s function of thinking is given the #1 position in this example, seeing as #2, hearing as #3, and feeling as #4. This sequence proceeds from the most complex but least tangible and most diaphanous realm of thought, through the next most complex, sight; then hearing, then the most tangible and gross level of sensation represented as touch, including the body, mouth and nose. This leads to examining the connections between the four creatively, suggesting implications in zazen:

1-2 Thinking that seeing is believing but also incomplete and ever-changing.
2-1 Examining vision and visualizing data through pattern recognition and grasping meaning.

1-3 Registering sound as “pleasing or harsh,” but also as threatening or comforting.
3-1 Surrounding sound fostering or interfering with concentration and assimilation.

1-4 Discriminating tactile feelings as pleasurable, painful, neutral or numb, or life-threatening.
4-1 Posture affecting alertness and acuity in discerning movement, proprioception, et cetera.

2-3 Seeing the image of sound — closing your eyes at the symphony.
3-2 Hearing the sounds of sight — watching 4th of July fireworks.

2-4 Seeing through touch — finding your keys in the dark.
4-2 Feeling with the eyes — sun blindness.

3-4 Hearing the sounds of the body — listening to your heartbeat.
4-3 Feeling the touch of sound — attending a rock concert.

I will leave you with another image to consider, using sight to channel data directly into the mind without passing Go, and not collecting $200. I call this the zazen scaffold, as it visualizes the biological matrix upon which our meditation depends. While zazen reduces action to its most immediate and simplest method — just sit still enough long enough — it does not ignore the context of, for example, karmic consequences over the Three Times; nor does it discount the complexity of what is actually happening all unknown to our consciousness. In the next section we will continue along these lines with yet another variation on the tetrad theme. Meanwhile please put your whole self into zazen. You will gain the power to put your whole self into everything that you do.