Tag: Sitting Instructions

Q: what part does concentration play in sitting?

A: Often an instruction is given that we should bring our attention back to our breath and body. But that instruction is given in a context, and that context is what to do if we notice the mind wandering off in thought.

It doesn’t mean that the breath or the body is the object of our concentration. Once we have brought our attention back, we don’t keep it on the breath and the body, we open out into a broad expansive awareness, which has no object. If we say “concentration”, that assumes both something that we concentrate on, and something that we can succeed or fail at, and both these assumptions are not helpful.

Obviously, we don’t wish our awareness to be dispersed, and so we sometimes say ‘concentrated’ or ‘focused’, but we should use these words with caution.

My first teacher said that we should have a long, deep, complete exhalation, pushing our belly out as we press down, and a short natural inhalation. I am sorry to say that I believe these instructions to be completely mistaken.

Dogen said hardly anything about the breath. He just said to let a short breath be short and a long breath be long. At first glance, these instructions aren’t exactly comprehensive, but I think the import is clear: we shouldn’t try to control our breath.

Sometimes this is rendered as an instruction to just breathe naturally. Note the word. Not breathe normally, as you would when slumped over your computer, or slouching in a chair, but naturally.

Naturally for the zazen posture. When we are balanced, it is as if there is a vast cavern of breath inside us. There is nowhere it doesn’t reach. Sometimes it is breathing the bones of our pelvis. Sometimes our belly. Sometimes our intercostal muscles. Sometimes our clavicle. Sometimes our head. This natural breath breathes us, and as long as it does so, the body is no longer ‘the body’. It is no longer an object in our consciousness. It – everything – is free.

If our intention is sincere, it doesn’t matter if our mind is busy or quiet. Nonetheless, if we are very distracted, it is often helpful to bring our attention back to our body and breath. But what does this mean?

For myself, I often find it’s helpful to focus initially on the head: the lips, the tongue, the musculature of the eyes, the pressure of the forehead, the muscles of the jaw, and so on. The attention then seems to flow quite naturally to the rest of the body. We use the unspoken equivalence of head/brain/mind/self to re-embody.

Likewise with the breath. We can start by feeling it in the nostrils, then the throat, then flowing down into the chest, the stomach, the pelvis, so that the whole body is breathing.

This feeling-being-body is the ground of practice.

There is a general instruction in many meditation schools that we should allow our thoughts to come and go freely, but what is meant by “thoughts”?

We are aware – all too aware – of what we might feel as the noise of our mind, but what we are less aware of is what lies behind this noise. If we reflect carefully, it appears that there is a ‘something’ which – as it were – endeavours to keep us in a familiar state, and usually a negative one : fear, dissatisfaction, boredom, dissociation, dullness.. the list is endless, and different for each of us, but it’s there. There, but difficult to see.

Rather than focus on purifying consciousness, what is essential for us is to be thoroughly grounded in the dynamic, living body, which means to be grounded in the breath, and to experience the breath as permeating the whole body. Everything moves with the breath: the bones of the pelvis, the bones of the head, the face, the legs. That movement from ‘mind’ to body loosens and liberates us, and is “beyond thinking”.

Practice instructions: The different aspects of practice are different facets of non duality.

When we sit, we are just sitting. The mind, body and universe are this single piece of just sitting.

We completely exert ourselves, moment to moment, to cease this mental fabrication. Exertion is illuminated. The ground is equanimity.

When we do kinhin, we completely experience ourselves. We feel our feet on the ground, the push of the earth travelling through us, our intimacy with all beings, our complex aliveness. Experience is illuminated. The ground is joy.

When we chant, together, we are completely focused on wholehearted expression. Everything is illuminated. The ground is redemption.

For a long time, I’ve given this instruction to people coming to Zen for the first time:

“When you sit just try your very best to maintain a present awareness. Your mind will wander. If it does, don’t be harsh on yourself. Just bring yourself back to this moment. Sometimes, it’s helpful to focus on the breath, or on the various aspects of your posture..”

I’m not sure if these instructions, although they might appear helpful, actually are. They might suit someone who is prone to distraction or dissociation, but are less useful for someone prone to strong feelings or sensations. But more generally, I think the instructions match up with a ‘mindfulness’ perspective, giving great weight to ‘presence’ and ‘awareness’, setting that up as a kind of standard [against which practitioners will tend to judge themselves, and judge badly] but without really encapsulating what buddhism is about.

So I now prefer to say something like:

When you sit, just allow your experience to completely be. Don’t judge it. Don’t interpret it, Don’t make a story of it, just allow it to be. You’ll notice that your mind always wants to do something with this moment to moment experience. It wants to define it [‘now I’m feeling sad’]. It wants to locate it [‘I’m doing zazen looking at a wall’]. It wants to interpret it [‘I’m feeling sad because..’]. It wants to judge it [‘I’m very distracted’]. Your experience does not come to you packaged as thoughts and emotions. This is construction too.

This endless activity of the mind is what buddhists call samskara, which is often -and clumsily- translated as ‘mental fabrication’. Nirvana is, moment to moment, ceasing to do that, allowing something other than the constructed world and self to swing open and shut

Since the online publication of Issho Fujita’s marvellous collection of essays, ‘Polishing A Tile’, it seems impertinent for others to give instructions about sitting posture except in one respect, the breath, which Fujita doesn’t seem, to refer to in detail.

Breathing is quite problematic as a topic. We don’t want to get into a mentality of trying to build up power in the dan tien in order to achieve something. So instead, we tend not to talk about it at all, saying only that we should breathe naturally, and that our breath will naturally settle down if we take up the correct posture. However, there’s a difference between awareness and intention. Between awareness and technique.

When we try to breathe abdominally, there’s a tendency to use muscular effort to push our belly out, but not notice that we do. Just as people who try to stretch the back of their neck by tucking their chin in, rather than allowing the natural uncompressing of the spine when the weight is dropping correctly through the sit bones, willing our posture to be a particular way is liable to create tension, tension we’re unlikely to notice.

I think also, if we imagine our breath coming in through our nose, going down through our chest and into our belly, there’s a tendency too to inhibit movement in our chest and back.

For me, it’s very helpful to be able to feel the whole pelvic area, not, as it were, as an object, but from the inside. If we can,we’ll notice the willed-ness of our abdominal breathing, but we’ll also notice what doesn’t move. Our lower back. Our pelvic floor. And once we get that awareness, there’s a number of things we can do. We can, for example, picture a golden ball at the centre of our pelvis. When we breathe in, the ball gets bigger, pushing the belly forward, pushing back against the bones of the spine and pelvis, pushing down to the pelvic floor. When our body moves in accordance with this, it’s different from willed movement. Once you regain your sense of movement, you won’t need the image any more.

An alternative, and one which I prefer, is to breathe from the perineum. This is the first chakra and where our weight drops down, between the genitalia and the anus. That is, you feel the in breathe coming in through your perineum, filling your pelvic bowl, pushing the belly gently forward, the lower back gently back, animating and enlivening the whole area, then passing upwards to the chest, the upper back, the neck, the head and all the while, no tension.

It is of paramount importance for our pelvis to be in the correct position, our weight bearing down on our sit bones.

Posturally, this means that our trunk and head can be balanced, light, activated, vibrant and free of tension.

Energetically, the spine can uncompress itself, there can be a clear connection between the base chakra and the crown chakra.

Breathing wise, it is as if the upper body is directly sitting on our abdominal/pelvic breathing. The in breath isn’t pushing the lower belly out. There is no intentional pushing. It is as if there is an energetic ball at the centre of the pelvis. When we breathe in, the ball expands. The lower belly is pushed out. The area around the sacrum is pushed back. The pelvic floor pushes down.