Month: January 2012

It is possible to act without intent, and to do so in the course of daily life; this is wu wei to me. As soon as there’s intent, there’s discrimination of good and bad, and there’s nothing natural about that.

I think the best is to accept falling asleep with waking up, and waking up with falling asleep; too much emphasis on waking up, and we can’t sleep. Too much emphasis on falling asleep, and we can’t wake up.

The empty hand grasps the hoe handle
Walking along I ride the ox
The ox crosses the wooden bridge
The bridge is flowing, the water is still

(Fuxi, around 5th century C.E.)

The place associated with the occurrence of consciousness flows waking up and falling asleep, the impact of place generates an ability to feel, the feeling informs the occurrence of consciousness; the habitual activity of perception and sensation ceases.

Really, there’s nothing I can do to wake up or fall asleep, and that leaves me right where I am.

I continue to work with the description in “The Mudra of Zen”, and in “Translations of Motion in the Lotus”. This morning I was able to correlate a feeling for the ilio-lumbars with relaxation in the extensors, and a certain uprightness in the area of the low back. Interesting, for me, as I have never followed the advice to “keep your back straight”, in part because I don’t seem to have the feeling to make that possible (yet). My take is that activity in the sartorius and gluts (caused by stretch in the ilio-tibial tract and sacro-spinous/sacro-tuberous ligaments) and similar involuntary activity in the psoas and extensors acts up the spine as the ilio-lumbars engage in inhalation and exhalation. Sitting today I recalled the Gautamid’s description of the feeling of the first meditative state, like a bowl with a dusting of soap powder that is gathered, rolled and kneaded until it no longer oozes- !- my consciousness occurring in the area of the pelvis, letting the painful and pleasant feelings in and mindful of the sleepy wakefulness.

I, too, feel a deep sense of gratitude to the Zen teachers who came to this country, and to some of the teachers who became authorized to teach here and have kept the practice going for anyone who is interested. The real question is how do we inspire ourselves to sit the cross-legged pose for thirty minutes or forty, once or twice or several times a day? I guess one way that it’s been done in the past, intentionally or not, is with the promise of the respect and authority of the title of lineage holder, and unless you can communicate very clearly why anybody would want to practice, this will be your problem.

On the other hand, if you can communicate very clearly, maybe nobody would listen unless you had the title and authority. But then, if you were really trying mostly to communicate to yourself, it probably wouldn’t matter.