Custom practice

[Douglas]

Good morning, everyone! (Well, it's morning where I am, but good morning anyway!)

I remember asking about how meditation practices like loving-kindness fit into Soto Zen, even though we emphasize shikantaza. I do have a little twist on this: Is it wrong to create your own practice?

I know we are not supposed to invite our thoughts to tea, but I’ve found it helpful to meditate on a very basic question:

Where do your thoughts come from?

It seems this is a very important question.The more I dig into this question, the more I realize that my inability to come up with a satisfying answer is what’s important. It seems like any answer really isn't that important. When I meditate on it, I don't really "think" about it, but instead watch my thoughts as they try to circle around themselves. It almost feels like a mental koan. I’m not sure what to call this type of meditation. Maybe what I’m doing isn’t new?

Gassho,
SAT/LAH
Doug

[Jundo]

Hi Doug,

Well, there is ONLY Shikantaza, and nothing else to do or needed in life ... DURING the time of sitting Shikantaza. At other times in life, after the bell rings, we do other things in life.

So long as one is sitting Shikantaza when sitting Shikantaza each day, I see nothing wrong with your invented meditation and, in fact, it is very similar to many traditional forms of meditation. The Korean Zen (Son) folks sometimes sit Zazen on the Koan "Who are you." In some traditional Theravadan meditations, one can observe the thoughts as they arise, and some intense concentration meditations even claim to observe the arising in slow motion (like watching a dewdrop form on a leaf).

The one thing I caution is that one should not be like the person pealing and pealing the onion, looking for the source of the scent of the onion! Furthermore, the answer you seek might be just the same as that found in Shikantaza ... for, after all, this is just the same mind.

In some way, it is clear that the mind forms with the brain between your ears or, at least, something is localized there to create a sense of "small self" located in a particular place in time. However, Mahayana notions of "Mind" are vaster, borderless. The "world" is not just something "out there" while your "mind" is only that between the ears. In fact, the whole thing is the Mind. The stars that made the molecules that make the brain, the air breathed to support its (your) function, the tree outside you that you observe, the light that enters your eyes and travels to your brain to be assigned the name and concept "tree" ... the lives of people of the past, the events of the future ... nothing is left out. All is Mind.

That might sound like a kind of "panpsychism" ... and it could be. At minimum, there are similarities (although maybe some differences too). But, at least, it means that all concept of "inside you" vs. "outside" and "you vs. not you" is not the only way to think of "you" and "mind." When one sits Zazen, and the hard borders of self vs. not self soften, or fully drop away, one can have an experience of this.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Hokuu]

I'm sure our priests will answer your question. I just wanted to point out that the practice you mention seems not dissimilar to the Korean Zen practice of meditating on the 'What am I?' question.

Gassho
Hokuu
satlah

[Kokuu]

I know we are not supposed to invite our thoughts to tea, but I’ve found it helpful to meditate on a very basic question:

Where do your thoughts come from?

It seems this is a very important question.The more I dig into this question, the more I realize that my inability to come up with a satisfying answer is what’s important. It seems like any answer really isn't that important. When I meditate on it, I don't really "think" about it, but instead watch my thoughts as they try to circle around themselves. It almost feels like a mental koan. I’m not sure what to call this type of meditation. Maybe what I’m doing isn’t new?

Hi Douglas

You are correct that this isn't new or, at least it has a basis in currently existing practices.

One of those practices is in the Korean Zen of Master Kusan Sunim (1908-1983) who had his students (two of whom were Martine and Stephen Batchelor) sit with questions such as "What is this?" and "What is the sky?".

In Rinzai koan practice, for the first koan that is generally given from The Gateless Gate, Joshu's Dog, students are asked to meditate on 'What is mu?'.

From a different tradition, Tibetan Mahamudra uses similar questions as pointing out instructions, for example "What colour is mind?"

In the Theravadin tradition, there are meditations on the skandhas which essentially are asking the same thing in "What is form?", "What is feeling?", "What is perception?", "What is consciousness?" to point the student to whether they can find something solid.

As you point out, none of these questions have satisfying answers but focus the mind on what is here and now, and the nature of what we experience.

So, on the downside, you haven't invented a whole new style of practice but, on the upside, you are tapping into techniques which have, in some instances, long been used in Buddhism and Zen. They are not really Soto practice but, as Jundo says, neither are they a problem to do alongside daily Shikantaza.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-