sitting zazen, timeless time

[Aurkihnowe]

so i apologize for the weeklong absence, i have been frittering away my time in trivial pursuits, but have decided to come back, mostly for the illuminating conversation (there are literally NO buddhists where i live, at least not "out of the closet) ones..i am also looking forward to the ceremony on the 15th..here's my question...i have sat this morning, oh, around fifteen minutes and then my adhd got the best of me and i got up....now i've read a post by charlotte joko beck, that says, roughly, to sit on the cushion for even five minutes is a victory....this morning's zazen, while pleasant, was short (i dont get my concerta until 10 this morning)...so, does anyone have an idea of a rough scale regarding sitting, gradual working up of time sitting, etc? i know we can practice zazen even on a crowded bus, with people arguing, babies crying, the DING of the bus as someone pulls the lever to get off...but im thinking of at home zazen...should i start slow, 10 to fifteen minutes, and work my way up to half an hour, fourty-five minutes?

gassho all,

richard


s@2day

[Jundo]

so i apologize for the weeklong absence, i have been frittering away my time in trivial pursuits, but have decided to come back, mostly for the illuminating conversation (there are literally NO buddhists where i live, at least not "out of the closet) ones..i am also looking forward to the ceremony on the 15th..here's my question...i have sat this morning, oh, around fifteen minutes and then my adhd got the best of me and i got up....now i've read a post by charlotte joko beck, that says, roughly, to sit on the cushion for even five minutes is a victory....this morning's zazen, while pleasant, was short (i dont get my concerta until 10 this morning)...so, does anyone have an idea of a rough scale regarding sitting, gradual working up of time sitting, etc? i know we can practice zazen even on a crowded bus, with people arguing, babies crying, the DING of the bus as someone pulls the lever to get off...but im thinking of at home zazen...should i start slow, 10 to fifteen minutes, and work my way up to half an hour, fourty-five minutes?

gassho all,

richard


s@2day

15 minutes is the time we recommend in our "Always Beginner's Series." Real Zazen is not a matter of long or short.

However, if you wish to sit longer, then sit longer. Sometimes long is good, sometimes short is good.

However, best to sit 15 minutes or 15 years beyond all measure and time. Longless long and shortless short

Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (14)

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?14882-Sit-a-Long-with-Jundo-Zazen-for-Beginners-%2814%29

Gassho, Jundo

SatToday

PS - I found a picture of the Timeless Time clock by which to measure Zazen. It has no hands, and is right at the center of this spiral. The numbers are superfluous but a necessary evil.

[Enjaku]

Hi Richard. Interesting topic.

After being a bit sloppy over Christmas, I've resolved to sit every day with more discipline. 30 minutes is the golden number for me, just long enough usually. That said, I think I'll do whatever I can. I figure 5 minutes is better than nothing. Plus, from a behavioural perspective, the more often you have a positive experience on the cushion (even for a few minutes), the more easily it will become a habit. There's a therapist and researcher called Christine Padesky, who is fond of the "five minute rule" (for starting a new habit). Make an agreement to do something for a minimum of 5 minutes, then carry on as long as you like. Usually getting started is the hard bit. I think this approach is better than setting yourself too high a target initially.

Just my thoughts - also looking forward to Sunday, see you there!
Gassho,
Alex
Sat

[Jundo]

... Plus, from a behavioural perspective, the more often you have a positive experience on the cushion (even for a few minutes), the more easily it will become a habit. ...

So long as one knows that Shikantaza is actually not about having "positive experiences".

Or better said, it is about the Big "P" overriding Positive Experience of letting small life positives be positives, negatives be negatives ... all the while realizing that Poleless Pole that shoots right through all measure of "positive vs. neutral vs. negative."

Sometimes it takes 15 minutes to realize the Poleless Pole, sometimes 30 minutes or 30 days or years. Actually, it takes no time at all to jump of the Poleless Pole.

Gassho, J

SatToday

PS - I found a picture of the Poleless Pole that shoots right through "positive vs. neutral vs. nagative."

[Kokuu]

PS - I found a picture of the Poleless Pole that shoots right through "positive vs. neutral vs. nagative."

https://image-pd.s3.envato.com/files...ArrowSigns.jpg

Is the trick to stand right by the pole in the midst of all three?

We have a great roadsign near here based on the names of two real places!

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/01/98/31/1983152_0a7b3fd7.jpg

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

[Jishin]

sitting zazen, timeless time

IMG_0668.JPG

This is a wonderful picture.


When we travel with my kids and they ask "how much longer?" the answer they get from my wife and I is always "oh, about one hour." Thus the drive is not long nor short. It's always one hour. Time is meaningless. It never changes when we travel.

Travel well my friend. [emoji2]

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[JimH]

When I first started sitting, I set my timer for 5 minutes for the first week. The idea was to develop the habit, just to get used to getting out my cushions, sitting, and getting into the routine. After the first week, I went to 10 minutes for the next week, then 15 minutes the week after that. Now, it depends. If I'm using my timer, I go for 20-30 minutes. If I'm not using my timer, which I'm doing more of now, I just sit until I'm done. It almost always seems to be at least 15-20 minutes, but I've managed to hit 30-35 sometimes, too. Without a timer, it feels less like I'm trying to achieve something or meet a goal....I'm just sitting.

To Jishin's point, when I was in college and we would go on road trips, the joke was always: "How much further is it?" "Just over the next hill/just around the next bend." That answer never changed, whether the trip was 15 minutes or 4 hours.

Gassho--

--JimH (SatToday!)

[Jundo]

... it feels less like I'm trying to achieve something or meet a goal....I'm just sitting.

This is the most important phrase, whether 5 minutes or 5 hours or 5 lifetimes.

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Aurkihnowe]

No gaining wish, right?

Gassho Richard

S@2day

[Jundo]

By the way, if one would like much different approach to time and Sitting in Zen Buddhism, it has to be the Rinzai monks engaging in Koan Introspection Zazen in Korean monasteries.

But, no matter how much they sit in quantity and sheer super-human effort seeking their breakthrough, I hope that they are always sitting beyond time and goal.

Buddhism and Zen comes in many flavors ... all just the same, yet sometimes very different. Frequently quite different, yet always precisely the same.

The following is from a paper by Robert Buswell, a Zen historian and scholar who was himself a meditation monk in a large Korean monastery for many years. [Boldface by me]

http://www.persee.fr/doc/asie_0766-1177_1993_num_7_1_1069

Koreans prefer consistent meditation over longer periods (at least three months in
duration). ... During the [two annual 3 month retreats], strict decorum is maintained, and a rigorous practice
schedule is followed: in the winter, this will usually involve upwards of fourteen
hours of sitting daily (slightly less during the hot, humid summers), with between
four and six hours of sleep. ...

Typically meditation practice is divided into three- or four-hour blocks, such as 3-6
a.m., 8-11 a.m., 1-4 p.m., and 6-10 p.m. Each of these blocks is further subdivided
into fifty minutes of sitting meditation, punctuated by ten minutes of formal walking
meditation. Monks are not allowed to lie down except during the evening rest period
and a short break before breakfast at six. There is little work assigned to the
meditation monks. For many of the meditation monks, this might mean only
sweeping the monastery for about twenty to thirty minutes each morning before the
late-morning sitting period. ... The rest of their time is devoted exclusively to meditation.

For one week during the winter retreat season, the most rigorous event in the life
of the meditator occurs: yongmaeng chôngjin, meaning literally "ferocious effort."
This special meditation session is scheduled for the week preceding the Buddha's
enlightenment day (puch'ônim sôngdo-il), which in Korea is celebrated on the eighth
day of the twelfth lunar month (usually in early January). This session is intended to
be a kind of ritual reenactment of the fervent practice performed by the Buddha
before his enlightenment, when he vowed that he would remain sitting until he had
vanquished Mâra and all his minions, and achieved complete, perfect realization
(samyaksambodhi) .

During yongmaeng chôngjin, the monks in meditation hall do not sleep for seven
straight days, breaking from their practice only for meals. They even skip the
dinner ritual in the main Buddha hall so as to devote themselves completely to their
meditation. In this intensive period, the monks face one another in two separate
rows down the middle of the meditation hall, rather than facing away as they
usually do. ... Otherwise the meditation sessions take place pretty much as
always, with fifty-minute sitting periods followed by ten minutes of walking. But if
the succentor feels people are tiring, he might quicken the pace to twenty-five
minutes sitting followed by five minutes walking, walk for longer periods, or try
any number of other stratagems to keep his charges vibrant (or at least awake).
Other than its obvious interminableness, the major difference between
yongmaeng chôngjin and regular meditation periods is that the large warning stick
(changgun chukpi) is in use constantly throughout each sitting period....
If the drowsy monk does not react to the guard's presence, the guard taps
him on the shoulder with the stick and gives him one round of blows.

As grueling as yongmaeng chôngjin might seem to the uninitiated, its purpose is
not to torture the monks. Rather it provides an incredibly intense, but still carefully
controlled, environment in which to meditate. The hope is that several days of
sleeplessness will apply enough pressure on the meditators that they will be able to
have a genuine breakthrough into their meditation topics, or hwadu ("critical
phrase" [of a Koan, such as "MU"]). Just before yongmaeng chôngjin begins, the Son master tries to impress
upon the meditators that the only way they will be able to survive the week is to
remain concentrated at all times on their hwadu and to arouse the sensation of
doubt. From my own experience, the sheer enormity of the task of remaining
awake for seven straight days was enough to frighten me into focussing on the
hwadu, as if I were clinging to it for dear life. The instant the mind wavers, you are
bludgeoned by bone-numbing fatigue, so the only hope you have of getting through
the week is to maintain your concentration.

-----

A disciplined life offers a monk the potential
for mental control, which may eventually mature into a thoroughgoing
concentration on his topic of meditation, or hwadu. The Koreans (and the Chinese
and Indian Buddhists before them) created such structured regimens for their
monasteries because they recognized that few meditators would have much chance
of progressing in their practice without them. ... The technique of kanhwa Son [Koan Introsprection Zen],
virtually the only type of meditation used in contemporary Korean monasteries, is
even termed a "short-cut" (kyôngjôl; Ch. ching-chieh) to enlightenment because of its
emphasis on generating an instantaneous awakening instead of developing a
sequential series of practices. But when Korean meditation monks who are training in
the kanhwa technique routinely admit that they expect it will take upwards of twenty
years of full-time practice to make substantive progress in their practice, there seem
to be valid grounds for questioning how subitist in practice the Son tradition really is.

[T]he realities of modern Son training in Korea testify that it is
only within the specialized praxis institution of the meditation hall that anyone has
much of a chance to succeed at kanhwa practice. Even monks in the support
division of the Korean monastery are presumed to be so busy with their sundry
duties that they are not meditating. But if the demands of meditation practice are
considered to be beyond the ability of even the support monks to fulfill, what
reasonable hope would there be for laypeople? The protestations of past masters to
the contrary, Son monastic life suggests that the technique of kanhwa Son was
never seriously intended for the laity, but targeted those few monks with the
fortitude to endure many years of ascetic training in the meditation hall.

Now, Master Dogen also believed in a strict monastic lifestyle, but with a difference. For Dogen, every action during the day can be encountered as "Zazen" ... as sacred doing just done, without goal yet done sincerely to get it accomplished ... whether cooking or cleaning toilets and floors or holding a ceremony or pulling weeds in the garden. We drop all judgments in one view of such things as "good and bad, clean and dirty" ... yet simultaneously seek to cook good food and get the dirty floors clean (seeing both ways at once as one). Some monks in the monastery needed to keep accounts, do inventory, restock the pantry, greet guests and deal with workers ... all reality, all sacred doing. Daily seated Zazen is indispensable, and is to be sat, the only act in that moment ... yet all our daily actions are "Zazen" in wider meaning too, each and all the "only act in that moment." Daily seated Zazen was sat for a certain period of time various times during the day, but no matter how long, was always sat beyond measure of time.

It is my believe (and Master Dogen sometimes said this about lay folks) that all this is open to lay folks too ... with wisdom and diligence. All one's daily acts can be one's "monastery", every mundane task a sacred doing just done, without goal yet done sincerely to get it accomplished. Cooking in the monastery kitchen or in your own kitchen, cleaning your own bath, doing accounts or inventory or dealing with staff in your office ... changing a baby diaper as beautiful a sacred ritual as changing incense and candles on an altar ... all Zazen in its wider meaning.

Seated Zazen is everything, indispensable each day, the only thing to be done in the whole universe in that moment of sitting.

But length is not so important when time is forgotten. Also, lenth of sitting is not so important when we remember to take this practice "off the cushion" into so many mundane daily activities, all Zazen in their wider meaning.

I hope that makes sense to you.

Gassho, J

SatToday

PS - ** The part about no sleep for a week is questionable to me for several reasons. However, the world record for going without sleep appears to be 11 days, and no serious physiological effects were reported ...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-can-humans-stay/

[Aurkihnowe]

if i may, since i started this thread, share some thoughts i had while doing another task...this "opening the hand of thought", this ability to sit with pain, fear, annoyances, joy, boredom, etc. (all the spectrum of emotions) is nothing short of the great leap towards, call it what you will, "sacred" or "secular", satori, nirvana, bodhi, flow(from Mihály Csíkszentmihályi check him out his books are excellent from the little ive read), complete mindfulness, etc. Not just to sit and be aware, without judging, without grasping (opening the hand) without fear (that's probably the most resilient of mara's armies), but to move, to breathe, to walk, to play, to make love, to sing, to wash the dishes for washing the dishes sake (a la thich nhat hahn) is this not bodhi? when i struggle against boredom and get up halfway through zazen, am i not struggling against the forces of distraction and dissolution? when i force myself to sit when i don't want to, isn't it a little counterproductive? after all, zazen is learning to be with what is, not what we want or what we dont want it to be....

forgive the rambling nature of this post, im trying to articulate a flash of insight i had, and am having trouble it seems...do you guys and gals know what i mean?

gassho, all

richard

s@2day, and will again 2nite

[Zenmei]

PS - ** The part about no sleep for a week is questionable to me for several reasons. However, the world record for going without sleep appears to be 11 days, and no serious physiological effects were reported ...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-can-humans-stay/

I've stayed awake for 7 days. Once. And 3-4 days several times. I never want to do that again. I've talked to some other insomniacs who have had similar experiences. Even without drugs, by the third day you start to hallucinate. By day 6 you no longer know the difference between awake and asleep. Your brain dreams while your body walks around. You're living a nightmare.

There's a reason sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture.

Going days without sleep produces some intense mental states. I'd be skeptical of any spiritual breakthroughs I had in those states.

Gassho, Dudley
#sat

[Jundo]

if i may, since i started this thread, share some thoughts i had while doing another task...this "opening the hand of thought", this ability to sit with pain, fear, annoyances, joy, boredom, etc. (all the spectrum of emotions) is nothing short of the great leap towards, call it what you will, "sacred" or "secular", satori, nirvana, bodhi, flow(from Mihály Csíkszentmihályi check him out his books are excellent from the little ive read), complete mindfulness, etc. Not just to sit and be aware, without judging, without grasping (opening the hand) without fear (that's probably the most resilient of mara's armies), but to move, to breathe, to walk, to play, to make love, to sing, to wash the dishes for washing the dishes sake (a la thich nhat hahn) is this not bodhi?

Yeah, yeah. Sounds nice. Now, just put down all that fancy language, and trying to do something fantastic all the time, and get on with life. Sometimes changing a diaper is a sacred ritual in which all the angels sing and rainbows appear, time and space stops, and poop is like treasured diamonds (we cherish such moments) ... sometimes it is just something to do in a rush in a K-Mart rest room, cleaning poop on a crying baby because one has a dentist appointment in 10 minutes.

In other words, don't try to be so fantastic 24/7. That is a stereotype that one is supposed to be on, and stay on, all the time.

I sometimes write this caution to folks who get the idea that this Practice means being "mindful all the time".

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?7910-Being-mindful-of-mindful

when i struggle against boredom and get up halfway through zazen, am i not struggling against the forces of distraction and dissolution? when i force myself to sit when i don't want to, isn't it a little counterproductive? after all, zazen is learning to be with what is, not what we want or what we dont want it to be....

Hmmm. Sometimes we sit when we want to. Sometimes we sit although we don't want to. The most important point is to sit each day, and to do so right through "wants" and "don't wants".

Equanimty, at the pivot point and recognizing all we want and all we don't.



Gassho, J

SatToday (didn't really want to today)

[Jishin]

Hi,

Humans needs 4 cycle of REM (mind) and deep sleep (body) to function at 100% of capacity. These cycles occur every 90 minutes with the first occurring 90 minutes after sleep begins. Thus, 7:30-9:00 hours is the appropriate amount of sleep for most people.

Body and mind break down if the above are not followed (for the majority of people).

Examples include psychosis from mental illness and drug induced states. A much quicker way to enlightenment is to do methamphetamines, cocaine, hallucinogens or some other drugs to achieve "wow, I am one with the cosmos. Peace bro."

Going without asleep for so long on purpose is foolish and dangerous.

My well rested 2 cents.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[JimH]

On the lack of sleep: Over the last five years, I have had a routine where I basically only allowed myself about 4-5 hours of sleep a day. I had convinced myself that I had so much to do that I needed to stay up late to get it all done, and my body woke me up early for the same purpose. I can honestly attest that this is not healthy, and I made a lot of "bad" decisions (including responses to people, choices for work, grumpy comments, etc.) due to lack of sleep. On the occasions that I stayed up for 24+ hours, I didn't have hallucinations, but I can very honestly say that I wouldn't trust anything that I thought or said during those times. Too much mental mud.

I could see trying to be mindful all the time....but sometimes, I agree that being mindful is being mindful of that fact that you are sick and tired of being mindful.

Gassho--

--JimH (SatToday!)