Help! – How to bring zazen off the cushion?

[Zenkon]

Right before his world championship prize fight against Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson was asked how he planned to deal with Holyfield’s fight strategy. Tyson famously replied “Everyone has a strategy until they are punched in the face”. Similarly, we can sit zazen and calm our minds, stop chasing out thoughts/feelings and find Open Spacious Awareness. However, off the cushion, how do we maintain this calmness when the pressures of daily life, the deadlines, the anxiety, the stress “punch us in the face”? For you more experienced practitioners, how do you retain some of the calmness.

Gassho

Dick

sat/lah

[Prashanth]

Disclaimer: not an experienced practitioner.

I am trying to learn to accept whatever comes to me when off-the-cushion, just as we learn to accept the flow of thoughts when on the cushion.

its a difficult and continual lesson, but I need it.

Gassho.

Sat.



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[Tomás ESP]

I'll share a short write up that I shared about a year ago on reddit and that I have been using:

"Bodhidharma’s text states: I am reaping the fruit of my past actions. Neither gods nor people can foresee when the ripening of [karmic] fruit may occur. I accept this with an open heart and without ill will or complaint".

- Gu, Guo. The Essence of Chan (p. 77). The text by Bodhidharma is "The two entrances and four practices".

When a problem arises, we:

1. Face it
2. Accept it
3. Resolve or respond to it
4. Let it go

Gassho, Tomás
Sat&LaH
Sorry for going over 3 sentences

[Bion]

One of the aspects of zazen is that we sit without judgment of the present moment, so in zazen there is no discrimination and evaluation of things as good, bad, long, short, soon, late, like, dislike. We think, cause that’s inevitable, but we go beyond the quality of thinking, observing and accepting things for what they are, independent of our judgments of them. Like the non-thinking Dogen mentions. So we remain still and motionless regardless of conditions, perceptions, sensations, thoughts. Things don’t need our thinking to be what they are. I try to take that with me in my day to day life and look at things from beyond my “ideas” about them and act from that place which is beyond my impulses. When I do that, I find there’s little need to discriminate against things so no need to cause myself suffering over them. That means less anger, less sadness, less worrying, less disliking, less envy, also less clinging.

Sorry for the length of this

[emoji1374] SatToday

[Koushi]

This is just my experience, so please take it with a grain of salt.

As Bion said, while sitting, we try not to follow or attach to emotions, thoughts, physical sensations, and the like—rather, letting them rise and fall and come and go as they wish without judgement. Even on a cushion, this sometimes isn't particularly an easy thing to do! Yet we go back every day, and sit again.

Off the cushion is the same. My emotions, sensations, and feelings arise and fall, come and go, as they do, because they are somewhat involuntary. It's the reaction or judgement or added thoughts/worries that I add to them that make them into something they aren't.

So, over time, it has gotten easier to notice these things and situations, and allow them to pass on their own (they always do)—without adding extra to them. Sometimes, I add to them (like replying to something on social media I shouldn't, or beating myself up over something I've done) and I note that, and try to do better next time.

Yet, this also applies to the everyday things that aren't particularly anxiety inducing, or stressful: like washing the dishes, or chores, or just being. Everything is as it is, and if I don't add judgements or reactions to them, I'm better suited to approach things as they are—not as I judge them to be. But it takes time and practice, and that never really ends, either.

Sorry for running (very) long,

Gassho,
Koushi
STLaH

[Geika]

I like what Koushi said.

For me, it is about accepting that I will not always respond to life a calm way, no matter how many years I practice, and that is okay. The important thing for me is to recognize when I have moved out of that space and shift my thinking, much like straightening our back on the cushion when we notice we are slouching. Much of Zen practice is noticing when we have lost our-non-selves and coming back, over and over.

Gassho
Sat, lah

[houst0n]

I've simply found that, increasingly after more time on the cushion I simply started reacting less. Not to say, I don't feel rage, or stress, or hurt and so on -- we do not become robots -- but somehow, I don't immediately jump to previous extremes and they've been, kind of... turned down. I'd say don't worry about it -- it'll happen automatically as you sit more, and just take life as it comes instead of working yourself up introspecting everything.

If you're stressed, that's alright, be stressed.

Just make sure it's not *ALL* stress :}

(sorry for going long)

Gassho
./sat(but stuck in the house with home office, so no lah
Neil

[Jundo]

Right before his world championship prize fight against Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson was asked how he planned to deal with Holyfield’s fight strategy. Tyson famously replied “Everyone has a strategy until they are punched in the face”. Similarly, we can sit zazen and calm our minds, stop chasing out thoughts/feelings and find Open Spacious Awareness. However, off the cushion, how do we maintain this calmness when the pressures of daily life, the deadlines, the anxiety, the stress “punch us in the face”? For you more experienced practitioners, how do you retain some of the calmness.

Gassho

Dick

sat/lah

Oh, the real practice happens off the cushion as much or more than on it!

It is really not rocket science: Off the cushion, at various times of the day, reach in and summon that same "radical equanimity, nothing to gain, nothing to change, no place in need of going, just this" trust deep in the bones that one practices on the cushion. I talk about that here ...

Introducing Insta-Zazen!

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?14883-Sit-a-Long-with-Jundo-Zazen-for-Beginners-%2813%29

Now, the tricky part is the really hard parts in life, the "punch in the face" times ... these are the moments for the biggest lessons. The poem by Dogen that I posted now on loss of a child is the most direct ...


Viewed with dry eyes, the teardrops start to flow.
A good occasion has come to turn yourself around.

I have found this at funerals of family and friends, in hospital emergency rooms, in traffic accidents, in my cancer ward bed, many times. We find how to access ""radical equanimity, nothing to gain ... " on the cushion, then bring it into the moment. We still may cry and be sad, fearful, irritated ... and yet, and yet ... ... Then, all the broken and sharp pieces of the world, and the flowing and wholeness, are found to be not two.

Sorry to run long.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Rich]

Don’t pick and choose. Just be aware. And that punch in the face will increase your awareness by a hundredfold



Sat/lah


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[Shoki]

For me it's like doing physical exercise. If you get tired going up a flights of stairs, you start jogging or going on a treadmill. After a while, you don't get tired going up those stairs anymore. Regular practice of zazen somehow "leaks" the benefits into everyday life without me really making a conscious effort.

Gassho
ST-lah
Shoki