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305. The Unpictured Body

In zazen we talk a great deal about the body but what do we mean by ‘body’?

If you ask someone in the West to point to their body, they’re very likely to point to their torso. They’re unlikely to point to their head. Which is unfortunate, because as soon as you state it, it’s obvious: our head is part of our body.

I find that the easiest way to start to enliven the body is through the sensory awareness that we have here: the feeling of our tongue in our mouth; the tension around our eyes; the weight of our jaw; the awareness of the air in our nostrils.

All of that is readily accessible to us in an immediate way that sensory information elsewhere in the body very often isn’t. So if we have a holistic sense of the body as including the head and all the sensory awareness there, then we can see how that sensory awareness can – as it were – gradually seep downwards. To our throat, our torso; all of us, animating and enlivening the whole body.

There’s an additional benefit. We habitually (in the West at least) identify the head with the mind and with the self, so the mind/body split has a physical counterpart and reinforcement  in the head/body split. Reintegrating the head with the rest of the body starts to undo that primary, unconscious split, relocating the mind within the body, and hence changing our sense of both.

And when we do this, our sense of both ‘mind’ and ‘body’ can change. Our mind is no longer necessarily just located within our head. Our body is no longer an object just located in space. And that starts to undo the self/world split which, in my view at least, is essential.

Turning to the breath, everyone is familiar with the instruction that when we feel distracted, we should give our attention to our breath. 

Why is the breath so fundamental to meditation? Perhaps because it is immediate and difficult to objectify, or straightforwardly conceptualise. We cannot help but notice that when our breath changes, our state changes.

We often talk about being aware of the breath as if the breath and the body are two separate facets of experience. But if we pay careful attention we’ll see that our experience of the breath and our experience of the movement within us (when we take an in-breath, for example) is the one movement. And we can focus on the breath or we can focus on the body which is moving, or alternate. But it’s essentially two aspects of the one experience. It is not like wind blowing through the stiff rock of a cave. It is like two beings dancing.

We are not picturing the body from an imaginary, external vantage point. We place our attention whenever we can immediately feel, and gradually widen and deepen that, from the ‘inside’. 

Additionally, if we can sit in the correct posture, our body is progressively enlivened without conscious effort. If our pelvis is in the right position, our weight dropping down through our sit bones, then we experience an uplift that often feels as if the back of our neck is being stretched and our head is moving upwards. I experience the uplift as originating somewhere in my upper thoracic spine, but you may experience it differently. The key is to experience it, not force it. 

That feeling of uplift is the source of a terrible instruction about tucking your chin in and stretching the back of the neck. It’s terrible because there’s an attempted duplication of something which needs to be non-forced and automatic. If you are sitting correctly, your chin will naturally be slightly tucked in, but you can’t will it, anymore than you can create a joke by forced laughter. 

Your sit bone isn’t a single point, it’s three dimensional, like – say – the elbow, and it’s helpful if you can experience that three dimensionality, that front and back, by touch and movement. And that illustrates a more general point about balance: it is an exquisite aliveness, not a forced absence of movement. We are subtly wobbling around the point of balance, like a tightrope walker.

When you’re sitting correctly – correctly for you – you’ll  also experience a relaxing and widening of the back of the head, specifically around the occipital point, what the Chinese call the Jade Pillow. 

Correct posture also manifests a dynamic relationship with the ground.

Your weight is dropping down into the ground and the ground is pushing up, like two hands pushing gently together. There is something similar, although more subtle, happening with the space around and above us.

When we sit, we are in a dynamic and connected relationship with the environment: through the ground; through the air; through the breath. All of this breaks down the self/world dualism for the benefit of both: the body is no longer spatially imprisoned and disconnected from the world, the world is no longer “out there”, waiting to be done-to, but immediate and alive.

Zazen is not the practice of the self. It is the effort of all beings expressed through this person.

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304. Buddhist Language

Master Mazu (Baso) famously said, “Mind is Buddha”. He also said, “Ordinary mind is the Way”. Yet on other occasions he said, “Neither mind nor Buddha”.

When challenged about this apparent inconsistency his successor Pai-chang said,

“All verbal teachings are just like cures for diseases. Because the disease is not the same, the medicines are also not the same. That is why it is said that there is Buddha and sometimes that there is no Buddha. True words cure sickness. If the cure manages to bring about healing then all are true words. If they cannot cure sickness they are false words. True words are false words insofar as they give rise to views. False words are true words insofar as they cut off delusion. Because the diseases are unreal there are only unreal medicines to cure them.”

There’s a lot buried within that text. The reference to views for example – giving rise to views –  clearly echoes Nagarjuna.

The metaphor of sickness and medicine is a direct reference to the final parable of the Lotus sutra, which describes the Buddha as like a wise physician.

 This idea of the Buddha as someone who cures sickness by expedient means, rather than someone who gives a correct view, is dominant within Chinese Buddhism.

When a person is sick that person is like a sleeping person – they’re entirely caught up in the sickness of the self. When a person is cured they are not released into any particular thing. They’re released into everything. They’re released into the world of all beings.

So language in Buddhism doesn’t have a truth function in the way that we would normally recognise it. Its function is to release us from clinging, grasping and attachment. It is to unclench us, to release us from grasping onto one thing and opening us to everything.

Because our inherent tendency to grasp and cling never goes away, we also require to be mindful about our desire to grasp wisdom. Or to grasp compassion. Or to grasp emptiness.

So the language will change in accordance with the situation of the person.

It’s not that as deluded beings we’re sick and then we come across Buddhism and we get well. No. This sickness and wellness is an intrinsic part of our nature as human beings. It does not change. It does not go away.

And so our language must always remain open.

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303. Pai-chang’s Three Levels of Zazen

Pai-chang, one of Master Mazu’s principal successors, said that there were three levels of zazen.

The first level, which he equated with Theravadan practice, is non-attachment. At this level, the familiar metaphor of clouds and sky is apposite. So we do not grasp or attach to our thoughts and feelings. And we allow them to come and go freely in this non-attachment.

And in terms of the metaphor, our mind and our awareness is like the broad sky. So this stage would correspond with emptiness. So: emptiness, non-attachment, non-grasping.

The second level, which Pai-chang calls the Trap of Bodhisattvas, is when we are no longer attached to non-attachment. So we, as it were, open our heart and are not separate or detached from all beings. This opens a compassionate space which we can equate with the Bodhisattva.

So in terms of the Lotus sutra, for example, the first stage corresponds with the vehicle of the Sravakas (the voice hearers) or the Pratyekabuddhas (the self-enlightening practitioners). And the second level corresponds with the Bodhisattva vehicle.

The “trap” of the second level is that there is still a self.

At his third level  that residual sense of self (compassionate self) is dropped off. And so there’s just simply what can be variously termed: ‘one piece Zen’; ‘suchness’; ‘the Buddha vehicle’ ( in Lotus sutra parlance); ‘one mind’ (to use Mazu’s term); and so on. So just simply this ‘is-ness’. Which includes these other vehicles, as nothing is left out.

And we might imagine that what we require to do as practitioners is to develop the first level as a foundation. And once we’ve done that then we move up the levels. And so we find our way to the third level and we stay there.

But it seems to me, whilst it’s true that we require to develop a foundation, that we experience all three levels freely within our actual sitting.

So it’s not like there are heightening rooms which we can progressively enter and remain in. Rather, it is like spaces within this vast single hall of practice where all beings can stand.

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302. Practice Realisation

One of the three meanings of satori is ‘practice realisation’. Practice realisation is an abbreviation of a longer phrase which is something like, “I hear the teachings of the Buddha (on matters like interdependence, impermanence, no-self, suffering and so on). I accept those teachings. Accordingly I practise zazen. And through practising zazen I have the realisation that those teachings are true.”

‘Realisation’ here has two meanings. Firstly that from my perspective, practice leads me to accept at a more fundamental level the truth of the Buddha’s teachings. Second, ‘realisation’ also means objectively that my practice actualises – makes real –  those teachings.

And that brings into view a wider issue: the relationship between the teachings and Zazen, which can be problematic for some Zen practitioners, who have an unfortunate tendency to be proudly ignorant  through misunderstanding Bodhidharma’s poem that Zen is “A special transmission outside the scriptures, No reliance on words or letters”.

The relationship between the teachings and practice is a symbiotic spiral. It’s not simply that I do zazen, realise that the teachings are true and then put the teachings away and never attend to them again. No. The teachings enable the landscape of zazen to be opened out, illuminated. And vice versa. My experience of zazen enables me to engage with the teachings in a deeper and more personal way.

We can see the teachings throughout buddhist history not as a progression where deficiencies are identified then dealt with by a subsequent development. But rather that all the teachings map on, in some sense, to our experience in zazen. Not like a shadow, but like a partner.

So for instance, we have the original teachings which focus very much on allowing our experience to come and go freely, not getting attached to thoughts and so on. We have the later teachings on emptiness. And then we have teachings, particularly the Chinese tradition from the Tang Dynasty onward, which focus on suchness.

It’s not that these different teachings represent some kind of progression toward perfection,  but rather they’re locations in a gradually elaborated landscape where we can come and go freely, like a little bird. The landscape elaborates itself because of love.

If our life is very stormy then we may want to shelter in the cave of the original teachings, where we’re just simply very attentive to our inchoate experience coming and going freely, like a storm blowing somewhere else.

And other times we might want to be freely flying in this vast space of empty awareness.

And other times we might be within this one-piece compassionate sitting where the heart is everywhere.

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301. The Buddha’s Enlightenment

The story of the Buddha’s enlightenment, like the Nativity story, developed over time. In the best known version, the Buddha sits down under the Bodhi tree, vowing not to get up until he attains enlightenment.

As he’s sitting through the night  Mara appears, and attempts to unsettle him with apparitions to create fear and sexual desire. Yet whether he is unsettled or not, the Buddha continues to sit.  As dawn approaches, the Buddha touches the ground with his hand, and Mara and his forces disappear. As dawn breaks, he looks up to the sky and sees the morning star, Venus. And at that point he attains awakening.

The earliest versions of the Buddhist enlightenment contain hardly any of these ingredients. We’re simply told that he attained Nirvana. Not that he attained enlightenment. And it’s clear from the context that Nirvana is not a unique quality or faculty which only the Buddha had, but is something readily available to other people, once the nature of our existence is understood.

So when the Buddha starts teaching, others will frequently attain Nirvana too.

Elaborating the  story to make it about the Buddha’s enlightenment carries the risk of removing him from the whole messy mass of humanity. Changing him from being a very unusual person to a unique person.

Yet there’s also a way of looking at the enlightenment story which is a simple description of our experience in zazen. The tree – the Bodhi tree – under which the Buddha is sheltering-  is hollow, empty. It has no self essence, only location and connection. Its branches extend everywhere into space. Its roots extend everywhere in time. It’s a clear symbol of interdependence.

The ground which the Buddha touches is the ground of your practice body. And Mara, I would have thought, is clearly indicative of intruding and habitual patterns of thought and feeling. The space, which is actualised by the Buddha looking up and seeing the morning star through and within this vast space, is the space of awareness in zazen.

What’s the function of the morning star? The word that is rendered as enlightenment,yet ‘Bodhi’ doesn’t have any connotations of light, or of illumination. It simply means ‘awakened’. Yet it’s said (in the story) that at the moment of his enlightenment the Buddha said, “Now I and all other beings are enlightened.”

If you think about light, then the light – space, illuminated –  must permeate everywhere. If it didn’t then he could neither see the morning star, or anything else. But at the same time the morning star is particular. So it is both particular and universal. As are we.  

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300. Faith

Master Hongzhi’s Practice instructions.  Number 9: The Misunderstanding of Many Lifetimes

‘Emptiness is without characteristics. Illumination has no emotional afflictions.

With piercing, quietly profound radiance, it mysteriously eliminates all scars. Thus, one can know one; thus the self is completed. We all have the clear, wondrously bright field from the beginning. Many lifetimes of misunderstanding come only from distrust, hindrance and screens of confusion that we create in a scenario of isolation. With boundless wisdom journey beyond this, forgetting accomplishments. Straightforwardly abandon stratagems and take on responsibility. Having turned yourself around, accepting your situation, if you set foot on the path, spiritual energy will marvellously transport you. Contact phenomena will total sincerity. Not a single atom of dust is outside yourself.’

For practice the most important thing is faith. Not belief, faith.

Specifically, faith in two things.

Firstly that when we read descriptions of practice such as this, no matter how apparently fantastical they first appear, we should understand them as a sincere attempt by a practitioner, a practitioner like ourselves, to express their actual experience.

Second, that the actual experience that this practitioner has had is experience which is also available to us. What we should not do is make the language of description literal. We should not for instance, think that we must experience the bright field that Master Hongzhi talks about and if we can’t experience that, our practice is worth nothing.

We need to understand that the experience that Master Hongzhi and other practitioners write about in their own way is available to everyone, but the experience of each person will be different, and hence the expression. Master Hongzhi  experienced a bright field. Other  people might experience a profound connectedness, or a great, luminous silence, or a sense of a dynamic interconnected body. If you wait impatiently for the bright field to appear, you will remain in darkness forever.

We are always striving to express our experience in language, but we must understand that our language and the language of all our teachers is descriptive language, and hence, to a greater or lesser extent, unique. It is not telling us what we should experience. Each experience is another brushstroke in creation.

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299. The Eyes of Practice

When we see the world through the eyes of the self, we grasp things with our certainty. So we say, “Oh that’s a wall”; “There’s the sky out there”; Time is passing”; “My zazen isn’t very good today.” And so on.

Sometimes it feels as if our experience has a slightly weird, apparitional quality about it. As if in a dream. Neither existence nor non-existence. Ungrounded, because seeing in this way – through the eyes of the self, through the eyes of certainty – the world exists within our mind. And, as it were, we exist within our mind too.

Seeing through the eyes of practice is entirely different. We do our best not to grasp our moment-to-moment experience with our certainty, yet sometimes we can’t help ourselves. And when we do, we just learn to release that grip of certainty. And the feeling tone when we see in this way is entirely different. It’s as if we become soft and open and connected. At daybreak, the ghosts vanish.

We can understand conceptually the difference between these ways of seeing. But inside that understanding there’s a trap. Which is that we think that we have to overcome our mind. But we can’t overcome the mind with the mind – it’s not possible.

But what we can do is to have faith. Not in the sense of a belief in something. But we can accept the sincerity of other practitioners who tell us their experience, seeing through the eyes of practice. And we can have faith in believing that that is not an experience simply given to them because they’re special beings. But that it’s an experience which is an intrinsic part of us being human. And is what makes us human beings, not ghosts. Have faith in that.

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298.The Ghost Cave

The Buddha said that our state of perception when we meditate is not ordinary perception, neither is it a special kind of perception, neither is it disordered perception, neither is it no perception.

So what is it?

The suggestion is that it is a state which is always available to us but which somehow we overlook. That state is where we are not attempting to grasp our experience with our certainty. We are not making a picture of the world. It cannot be pictured, because it is inherently whole, alive and changing.

 It’s within this context we need to understand the familiar metaphor of our state in Zazen being like clouds in an empty sky. It’s not that there is a person down on the ground looking upwards, seeing the empty sky and clouds. It’s just simply clouds and empty sky. In the context of that metaphor the clouds are our changeable, dynamic, unconceivable experience and the sky is our breath. Not just our breath, the vast space of our awareness too, but our breath, certainly.

The Greek word for soul, psyche also means to breathe. The Greek word for body is soma. When we allow our breath to be unhindered, then our breath and our awareness, together, can go to  every part of our body, re-embodying this person, and breaking the spell of there being a little person inside this person who is directing everything.

 It is ominously significant for us now that when we think of the word soul – if we think of it at all – we don’t think of it in terms of the dynamic, aware body, we think of it as a kind of ghost. Something both here and not here. But here’s the thing: if we exist within the ghost of the self, then our life now is insubstantial, like a ghost. We don’t need to die to experience living in the ghost cave, because that is where we are. Practice means to get free of this ghost cave, and to live.

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297. Beginningless and Endless

Zen often has formulations about beginningless or endless practice and enlightenment. 

One of the gradually evolved features of Chinese Buddhism was the idea that enlightenment/Buddha Nature is already present, and has always been present.

It was this doctrine of Original Enlightenment that led to Dogen’s first question: “If that is so, why do we need to practice?” 

Chinese culture is unusual for us in that it doesn’t have a creation myth of the sort that we are familiar with. There’s no divinity or god who brings the universe into existence.

Chinese creation myths tell us that the universe was originally in one form, chaotic perhaps, and then it changed into the form we see today, and that change is an inherent quality of the universe. There wasn’t a starting point.

In this self declared post religious age, why is this important?

Because it has significant consequences for how we structure the world and how we think about it, how we think of ourselves, and how we think of the relationship between the two. 

If we think that the world has been brought into existence by something or someone else then it is something that has been brought about, or done to. It’s secondary. It is a lump of dough shaped and baked by other hands.

Additionally, if we conceive of the world as having a creation point then that fundamentally affects our idea of time. We are liable to see it as an arrow. The precarious present is like a person running across a collapsing bridge into deep fog.

If we don’t have a creation myth in the normal form, we lose these assumptions. There is no illuminating and darkening arrow. The world isn’t something that’s done to. All that we think of as acting upon the world become qualities of the world which is very relevant as far as our own ‘creation myth’ is concerned. How so?

Having those assumptions, I might imagine that I think something and then I say it. Or I picture something in my mind and then I bring it about in the world: the world, my life, my body  is lying there -passive and dough like –  as something for my will, my creativity, my intelligence to act upon.

But in this Chinese perspective my will, my consciousness, my language, my creativity – my ‘my-ness’ – are all qualities of the world itself. The primary dualism isn’t there. And that changes everything.

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296. Everyday Life

At the end of chapter 16 of the MMK, where Nagarjuna is talking about nirvana, he writes the following:

“People who say that they want to stop grasping and get the state of nirvana are really grasping for something. In the state where nirvana is not something to be attained and everyday life is not something to be abandoned, what is everyday life? How shall we conceive of nirvana?”

The miraculous ordinariness of everyday life is very popular in zen. You tend to get rather formulaic expressions about carrying water and chopping firewood, or eating rice and drinking tea, things like that, even if we no longer do those apparently mundane things.

There’s a danger however that we imagine that what is being said in these statements is that when I am doing something mundane, like washing the dishes for example, I am washing the dishes mindfully. Or when I am washing the dishes I am completely present. Or some unselfconsciously self aggrandising formulation like that.

The point of everyday life in Nagarjuna’s sense is that the self is not something fixed, even something fixed negatively, but rather is radically indeterminate, porous, changeable, interconnected, going in and out of focus and suchlike.

When we are doing something ordinary,  like washing the dishes, sometimes it’s very much as if the self in the normal sense is there. Other times we feel very embodied. We’re very aware of our senses: of the play of water in our hands, the  feel of the air.

Other times we’re very aware of our physicality, our balance, our fleshiness. Sometimes it’s as if everything is just this one piece. Sometimes it’s as if the self is like a ghost, coming in and out of presence. We just stop grasping: for a something, for a nothing.

We just need to pay attention, and just see what we see, without preconception.

When we talk of everyday life in the context of self, what we’re moving away from is an idea of self in the fixed, unreflexive and dualistic that people will often think of it: there’s a little me inside this body, experiencing things and directing this body. That’s the important shift. We emphasise the apparently mundane because the miraculous indeterminacy of this life happens everywhere.

Yet we don’t substitute that unreflexive idea with a ‘Buddhist’ idea of  no self, where somehow the space of this person is rubbed out. So, as it were, there remains a person shaped space moving around the room. Because there’s still something fixed, just nobler, as if the self has become the Holy Ghost. 

That kind of spiritual grasping is still within the dream of the self.