Instructions for Meditation Practice
Unpacking Bare Awareness Meditation (zazen), Being with Everything
Have you ever unpacked after you have moved? Or maybe, if you haven’t moved and unpacked, you have helped someone move and unpack. Were there instructions for this? Did you know how to do it?
I invite you to sit in a comfortable meditation posture, close your eyes as I guide you through a visualization
Recall a time when you “unpacked”, moved into a place...bring the images into your mind...maybe it was new place, maybe it was a bigger space or smaller space than you had before, recall the images of the space. And then recall the images of the the boxes you had to unpack. Were they heavy or were they light? Were they stuffed full, neatly wrapped, or were the contents thrown in the boxes? What was in the boxes? What boxes did you start unpacking first? Did you do it slowly, quickly, one by one, a few at a time? Did you take days to do this, or was it weeks? Maybe you were done in hours? Recall those items that you unpacked. Can you remember a few of the items? Maybe they are old items, handed down from your ancestors? Treasured items? As you continue unpacking in your mind, bring an open awareness to the thoughts of this “unpacking”. What arises? You are looking these items, you are seeing your new space, you are finding places for your items in your space. What do you notice in your body? What feelings are arising as you look at your things? What sensations? Is there tightness, constriction, flow, fluttering, cold, hot? As you continue to unpack...What is your breathing like; shallow, deep, quick, slow? Stay with the images, stay with the unpacking. Return to the body. Notice. Sit with this for awhile.
Open your eyes and sit naturally. “Unpacking zazen” can be a bit like unpacking boxes. What is? What’s arising? Watching the attachment, watching the grasping. It can also be a bit like PACKING boxes. Let me explain...
I remember packing up things to move to Oregon in 2015. I was divorced and raising a teenager by myself and we decided to move across the country. My mom and my middle sister helped me pack. My mom had a precise way of packing, wrapping things carefully, placing them gently in the boxes. My sister, at the time, was experiencing psychotic episodes and she was really struggling to be here. She was struggling to be present to my mom and I and this task of packing because during this time she was hearing voices AND struggling to be living with her current mental health that was causing her deep and extreme suffering. There were days she didn’t want to live. Giving her things to do, like packing, was helpful for all of us. My mom and I didn’t know how to cure her. We didn’t know what to do most of the time to alleviate her suffering. Yet, we could give her things to do and we could do activities with her, like walking, just walking- and packing, just packing. But, she couldn’t do it without specific instructions. This thing of taking an item and putting it into a box in some sort of order, like kitchen things go together and glass things need to be wrapped in bubble wrap and this is how you wrap them. I needed to be very specific. Every time I wasn’t very specific, I found a glass vase lying in a box half-wrapped or unwrapped on top of another glass item. I had to come up with some instructions for her, even visuals, and be specific.
Instructions are important. They come in handy. Some of us don’t know how to do this “thing” (insert whatever it is). I imagine that there are people out there that get paid big money to write instructions; for your washing machine and how to operate it and how to put together a model airplane. Instructions, guide us. Dogen (Zen Master Eihei Dogen 1200-1253) gave us very specific instructions for zazen.
These instructions have been translated by many. The translation I use here is from “Instructions for Zazen” by Koun Franz (Soto Zen priest, Zen Nova Scotia) and edited by Bussho Lahn (Soto Zen priest, Minnesota Zen Meditation Center).
It begins...“Choose this place. Let other’s sit with you.”
What an invitation! To me that says I can meditate anywhere, anytime, anyplace. THIS place. AND I get to invite people! We come here to this zoom place now. Others are there. I think it is so cool that we created a place, that SOMEONE created a place for people to be together from distant places and in this time of a world wide pandemic. We can invite others and sit together.
The next line says “Wear the Buddha’s robe...even if there is no robe, just wear it.”
You are already Buddha. We were born as human beings in this lifetime and that is a miracle. We of the higher realm. We are not worms or bark on a tree, we are asked to wear the robe. (More on this later).
“Do not put yourself into sitting. Come empty handed. Do not make zazen- let zazen reveal itself. Do not use zazen for this or that - sitting is neither means nor end.”
There was this guy - Sawaki Kodo Roshi. He said, “Zazen is good for nothing.” I watched a YouTube video of Shohaku Okumura talk about his teachers’ teacher, who was Sawaki Kodo Roshi. I investigated his background, his story. This is an excerpt from “Week 2, Daily Practice: How to Get on the Cushion Everyday” by Brad Warner (July 14, 2014).
‘Sawaki Kodo was a Zen teacher, Japanese teacher, who traveled around Japan. He was orphaned when he was quite young and sent to live with a variety of rather horrible relatives, who didn’t really want to be burdened with a kid. This set him on a unique path in life. After years of being beaten and abused, literally chained to a stake in the yard like an animal, he got away and left his uncle’s home. He was a teenager. He left and he walked all the way across Japan! That would be like walking across California (horizontally, the width of California)! It was a long way to walk. When he reached this temple called Eihei-ji, he became a monk. There, he became very convinced that one of the biggest problems in Japanese Zen was that the teachers and the monks and priests were not very concerned with zazen practice (bare awareness). He believed that zazen was the essential thing that they were supposed to be doing but they weren’t doing it anymore. So, he would lead retreats that were only zazen retreats. They didn’t have any chanting or any other aspects of Zen practice, just “just sitting”.’
He is famous for this saying, “Zazen is good for nothing.”
“Sitting is neither means nor end”, to me, equates with “zazen is good for nothing.” If there is no means nor end or good for nothing, that means, in Warner’s words, “that (zazen) is not good for establishing something, for reaching enlightenment, for making you a better person, or for having a better experience. It is for getting into your TRUE experience, it is for learning how to not be chasing after something other than where you are right now.”
If you are chasing, achieving, realizing, these are all things that are not happening now. They are not what is actually going on in your exact experience as it is unfolding.
“Making the center of your seat with the base of your spine. Always place the knees below the hips, the pelvis tilted forward, the lower back slightly curved. Establish a posture that need not fight gravity.” Dogen gives practical advice for our bodies. What I find amazing about this instruction is that is it OLD! Zen Master Eihei Dogen lived for 53 years from 1200-1253. A long, long time ago! Over 700 hundred years ago, Dogen was talking about THIS body. This body that is like yours and mine. It has knees, hips, a spine and it’s low back can have a curve that will support you. People (mind you, mostly men for many decades), were taking this posture to sit for extended periods of time in meditation and now maybe you are trying it too. Can you feel the ancestors sitting with you? Can you bring into your awareness the generations of people that sat for the benefit of all beings?
“Sit upright in this immovable spot, the still point of the turning world. This is called Sitting in Practice and Sitting in Verification. Remember that this body is the Buddha’s body. Do not harm it. Also, do not underestimate it.”
We do need to practice, we need to create a habit of sitting, of coming to our meditation cushion or chair and sit upright, which is supportive to our bodies. Upright means sitting with the back straight, tall. Upright also means honorable, just, conscientious, morally sound and honest. We are called to live our lives “upright” and not just on your cushion but off your cushion. Sitting in verification; truth, accuracy in connection with others.
The instructions then remind you that your body is Buddha’s body. “Do NOT harm it. Do NOT underestimate it.” This ancient practice of sitting and being with all that is, just as it is, is even older than these instructions. Buddha was a man who walked this earth as Siddhartha Gautama who was born in 623 BC. This man is a part of us. His transformation into Buddha is a transformation that available to us all. Buddha is everything and everything is Buddha.
Suzuki Roshi, teacher of Katagiri Roshi (founder of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center) said, “When you become one with Buddha, one with everything that exists, you find the true meaning of being. When you forget all your dualistic ideas, everything becomes your teacher…” He goes onto say in Zen Mind, Beginners Mind …”In your big mind, everything has the same value. Everything is Buddha himself. You see something or hear a sound, and there you have everything just as it is. In your practice you should accept everything as it is, giving to each thing the same respect given to a Buddha. Here there is Buddhahood. Then Buddha bows to Buddha, and you bow to yourself. This is the true bow.”
As I wrap it up here, this is only about a quarter of the instructions for zazen.
The instructions go on to instruct us to just breathe, let go of time and relax into the now. To just hear, hear all sounds from your “heart beating to the continents shifting”.
To just smell, smell all smells from the “stench to the perfume of the world”.
To just taste, taste it all and let your tongue lay flat to receive it.
There will be many temptations that visit you as you sit, most of them will come and go and the most powerful of them all is the “weight of the eyelids who will bear the soft seduction of sleep.”
So...
Be illumination itself.
Let the magnetic pull of the earth be embodied in your sitz bones on your cushion.
Let your roots weave and wander to the far corners of the earth.
Feel the heat in the belly and it’s undulating tides.
Let the coolness of the ocean waves wash over you.
Breathe a dandelion fluff into a wispy cloud as it disappears from sight.
When I unpack my stuff and look at it all, just as it is, just as it is showing up now, I am better able to show compassion when other people’s “stuff” shows up on my doorstep. When I follow the instructions, let them guide me and be the foundation of my practice, I more stable, rooted, and I can live my life more upright. When I recognize BIG mind and see that we are all Buddha, I can bow to myself, care for myself and show up for others, on their doorstep with just a smile and without all the boxes that I haven’t already unpacked.