Someone asked on facebook this question:
Is there a qualitative difference between concentrating on the hara [in Zazen, the place a few inches below the navel said to be the center of gravity and "ki" in traditional Chinese belief] and concentrating as a surgeon doing a procedure [cutting the belly].
As someone who had big innards surgery just one year ago on my belly, I wrote this ...
Gassho, J
SatTodayLah
PS - I recently gave a rather similar response to someone who asked how sitting this Zazen is different from sitting down to watch TV or at work. Also, is Shikantaza not just sitting around, twiddling one's thumbs, a waste of precious time?
I got up from in front of the TV long enough to write ...
Is there a qualitative difference between concentrating on the hara [in Zazen, the place a few inches below the navel said to be the center of gravity and "ki" in traditional Chinese belief] and concentrating as a surgeon doing a procedure [cutting the belly].
As someone who had big innards surgery just one year ago on my belly, I wrote this ...
I would say that we do not "concentrate on the Hara" in Shikantaza (not to say that some [probably Rinzai Zen influenced] teachers somewhere don't tell people to do so). One lightly, without clutchng, may place the centerpoint of attention on the posture, on "open awareness" of everything and nothing in particular, on (as Dogen's teacher Rujing once advised) the palm if the hand in the Zazen Mudra, on breath entering and exiting at the nose or the breath feeling as if it reaches and arises from the hara, This is just a center point as the whole world spins round and round.
Now, I imagine that a surgeon must have a constant plan about where and how to cut, make endless judgments about what is tumor to remove and what is healthy organ, how much blood is draining away and needs to be added. He must worry how much time has passed since he began the operation. Somewhere in all that, hopefully he finds his "zone" and just cuts away. In Shikantaza, we do not plan, judge (tumor is just tumor, organ just organ, and each the same and each just the other, shining in its way) and have nothing to add or cut away. We are in the Zoneless Zone from the startless start to the endless end, each moment of this Shikantaza "non-operation" beyond and containing all time. Something like that. The patient can't die on the table because we do not quite believe in birth and death.
Thus, the patient is cured.
Now, I imagine that a surgeon must have a constant plan about where and how to cut, make endless judgments about what is tumor to remove and what is healthy organ, how much blood is draining away and needs to be added. He must worry how much time has passed since he began the operation. Somewhere in all that, hopefully he finds his "zone" and just cuts away. In Shikantaza, we do not plan, judge (tumor is just tumor, organ just organ, and each the same and each just the other, shining in its way) and have nothing to add or cut away. We are in the Zoneless Zone from the startless start to the endless end, each moment of this Shikantaza "non-operation" beyond and containing all time. Something like that. The patient can't die on the table because we do not quite believe in birth and death.
Thus, the patient is cured.
SatTodayLah
PS - I recently gave a rather similar response to someone who asked how sitting this Zazen is different from sitting down to watch TV or at work. Also, is Shikantaza not just sitting around, twiddling one's thumbs, a waste of precious time?
I got up from in front of the TV long enough to write ...
It is a question which makes it easy to explain the preciousness of Shikantaza in comparison to other kinds of Zazen and meditation. Sitting at a desk at work, there are projects to do, In watching television, we wish to be entertained or watch the news with judgments about the events of the world. Unfortunately, people also try to turn their meditation into one more avenue for getting projects done and goals attained, or into just spiritual entertainment and judgments. In Shikantaza Zazen, there is no work undone, no projects outstanding, no gap to fill. There is instead a certain Good that holds all the good and bad, happiness and sadness, life and death of the world, no doer nor done, no watcher and no watched. One then comes to see this world, in all its complexity, beauty and ugliness, birth and death, simultaneously knowing the illumination which shines through and as all that. One realizes that there was never a second of time that could be wasted from the start of time until the very end.
Then getting up from the cushion and back to work and all the news of the world, the things that make us smile and the things that make us cry, we realize this too as just Zazen in motion. The light shines through all the things to do and craziness.
Thus Zazen is the sitting which is precisely the same, yet totally different, from any other sitting in the world.
Then getting up from the cushion and back to work and all the news of the world, the things that make us smile and the things that make us cry, we realize this too as just Zazen in motion. The light shines through all the things to do and craziness.
Thus Zazen is the sitting which is precisely the same, yet totally different, from any other sitting in the world.
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