Month: April 2013

I have finished at least a rough draft of Letting Go in Action: the Practice of Zazen. The draft never does explain why letting go in action should be considered the practice of zazen but does perhaps offer an explanation of what Gautama’s four trance states have to do with mindfulness of the body. I would welcome any comments.

Here is an excerpt:

In a poem from the fifth century C.E., the Buddhist monk Fuxi elaborated on how relaxed extension stretches the ligaments between the sacrum and the pelvis, and how gravity generates activity in the legs and in the pelvis that frees the experience of location and turns off volitive activity in the movement of breath:

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

(‘Zen’s Chinese Heritage’, Andy Ferguson, pg 2)

‘The ox crosses the wooden bridge’ describes an effect of the rhythm of stretch and activity as the weight of the entire body rests in the ligaments that connect the sacrum and pelvis: each step of an ox on a wooden bridge reverberates to the headtop and throughout the body of any rider, from the spine to the surface of the skin, and the same is true for the individual whose weight rests in three directions between the sacrum and pelvis.

The phrase ‘the bridge is flowing’ could be said to describe a moment before sleep when the location of awareness seems to shift in place in the body, while ‘the water is still’ could describe the cessation of volitive activity in the body at that same moment. For most people, the loss of volitive control in the activity of the body is associated with falling, and as a consequence many people experience a ‘hypnic jerk’ or sudden muscular contraction as they begin to fall asleep. Fuxi suggests that an awareness that shifts location freely in the body can come about as a matter of course, as the ability to feel informs the sense of location and the weight of the relaxed body generates stretch and activity in the movement of breath. He depicts a process of gradual stages whereby a muscular contraction is avoided, at the moment when a shift in the location of awareness with a cessation of volitive activity registers in the sub-consciousness.

Although Fuxi outlines the stages of a process, and the process may be said to be gradual, the transition from a waking state to a state between waking and sleeping must be said to be sudden, marked by a sense of location that can shift and a cessation of any voluntary activity in the body.

When formulating lay precepts based on his distinction between skillful and unskillful, the Buddha never made any allowances for ifs, ands, or buts. When you promise yourself to abstain from killing or stealing, the power of the promise lies in its universality. You won’t break your promise to yourself under any conditions at all.

(Thanissaro Bhikku, “Getting the Message”, accesstoinsight.org)

The difficulty in this point of view is that skillful means is not something that is acquired through willful action, whether that action is for good or not. Keeping the precepts willfully, in the belief that one is taking the high road and acquiring skill, will result in ill- there’s a passage in the Pali suttas where Gautama talks about “what we will, what we intend to do, or that wherewith we are occupied” and explicitly states that regardless of whether such action is for merit or demerit, ill will result. I would say that skill along the lines that Gautama spoke of is acquired through the experience of absorption in one’s own nature, not otherwise, and that this experience begins with the freedom of the sense of place and the contribution of an ability to feel “with no part left out” to the movement of breath. The disciples of Gautama were described as like wild beasts, and the person making the description considered that a good thing.

“(33) Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ (34) But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, (35) or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. (36) And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. (37) Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

(Matthew 5:33-37)

There are those who say the precepts are the gateway of Zen, and it’s true that Gautama said “making self-surrender the object of thought, one lays hold of concentration, one lays hold of single-pointedness of mind.” Self-surrender as the object of thought is a kind of precept, and the word Zen is derived from the Sanskrit word “dhyana”, which means concentration, so at least in this sense something like a precept may in fact be considered a gateway to concentration. Nevertheless, the induction of states characterized by “single-pointedness” of mind is like falling asleep- it’s not done through the exercise of will- and the benefit of such states, like the benefit of sleep, is in well-being, out of which sound action arises.