Over on the Dao Bums forum site, Tommy commented:
I live and breathe. Wake up in the morning, cook myself a meal, boil water for coffee. What life is, is in front of me. When I read the saying “before enlightenment, chop wood carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood carry water”, the question arises, what changed?
The saying Tommy quoted is probably derived from a saying in the Ch’an classics:
Miraculous power and marvelous activity
Drawing water and chopping wood.
(“The Recorded Sayings of Layman P’ang: A Ninth-Century Zen Classic”, Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Yoshitaka Iriya, Dana R. Fraser, p 46)
There’s a similar saying in “The Gospel According to Thomas”, a gnostic gospel:
Cleave a (piece of) wood, I am there;
lift up the stone and you will find Me there.
(“The Gospel According to Thomas”, log 77; coptic text established and translated by A. Guillaumont, H.-CH. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till and Yassah ‘Abd Al Masih, p 43)
Sometimes people hold their breath in cleaving wood, or in lifting a heavy bucket or stone. Moshe Feldenkrais observed that some people hold their breath when getting up out of a chair, and he put forward a way to avoid that:
…When the center of gravity has really moved forward over the feet a reflex movement will originate in the old nervous system and straighten the legs; this automatic movement will not be felt as an effort at all.
(“Awareness Through Movement”, Moshe Feldenkrais, p 78)
Feldenkrais stipulated that:
… there must be no muscular effort deriving from voluntary control, regardless of whether this effort is known and deliberate or concealed from the consciousness by habit.
(ibid, p 76)
The paired sayings highlight moments when the weight of the body combines with a singular location of consciousness to cause “reflex movement” in the action of the body.
“Reflex movement” can also be engaged to sit upright, as the weight of the body combines with a singular location of consciousness.
In Gautama’s teaching, a singularity in the location of consciousness follows “making self-surrender the object of thought”:
… the (noble) disciple, making self-surrender the object of (their) thought, lays hold of concentration, lays hold of one-pointedness.
(SN 48.10, tr. Pali Text Society vol V p 174; “noble” substituted for Ariyan)
In my experience:
…“one-pointedness” occurs when the movement of breath necessitates the placement of attention at a singular location in the body, and a person “lays hold of one-pointedness” when they remain awake as the singular location shifts.
Gautama declared that feelings of zest and ease accompany one-pointedness, at least initially. He prescribed the extension of such “zest and ease”:
… (a person) steeps, drenches, fills, and suffuses this body with zest and ease, born of solitude, so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this lone-born zest and ease.
(AN 5.28, tr. PTS vol. III pp 18-19, parentheticals paraphrase original)
As I wrote recently:
Words like “steeps” and “drenches” convey that the weight of the body accompanies the feelings of zest and ease.
The weight of the body sensed at a particular point in the body can shift the body’s center of gravity, and a shift in the body’s center of gravity can result in “reflex movement”.
“Drenching” the body “so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded” with zest and ease allows the weight of the body to effect such “reflex movement” wherever “one-pointedness” takes place.
In falling asleep, the mind can sometimes react to hypnagogic sleep paralysis with an attempt to reassert control over the muscles of the body, causing a “hypnic jerk”. The extension of a weighted zest and ease can pre-empt the tendency to reassert voluntary control in the induction of concentration, and make possible a conscious experience of “reflex movement” in inhalation and exhalation.
(Just to Sit, edited)
There can also come a moment when the feelings of zest and ease cease, yet “one-pointedness” and the conscious experience of “reflex movement” in inhalation and exhalation remain. At such a time, said Gautama:
… seated, (one) suffuses (one’s) body with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind.
(AN 5.28, tr. PTS vol. III pp 18-19, parentheticals paraphrase original)
The “pureness of mind” that Gautama referred to is the pureness of the mind without any will or intention to act in the body.
There is a feeling of freedom, when the activity of inhalation and exhalation is “reflex movement” regardless of where “one-pointedness” takes place.
Zen teachers demonstrate the relinquishment of “voluntary control” of the body in favor of the free location of “one-pointedness of mind”, and they do so constantly. Reb Anderson observed such demonstrations in the actions of Shunryu Suzuki:
… I remember (Suzuki’s) dharma talks and I remember him in the zendo—that was wonderful teaching. I remember him moving rocks—wonderful teaching. I remember seeing him eat—that was wonderful teaching. He was teaching all the time in every situation. But when he couldn’t sit anymore and couldn’t walk anymore, he still taught right from there.
(Reb Anderson, from a 1995 recording)
Shunryu Suzuki moved some heavy stones by himself at the Tassajara Monastery, in part I believe as a demonstration for his students:
Alan Marlowe is 6’4″ and he often used to work moving rocks with Suzuki Roshi. There was one large rock that Alan couldn’t move. Alan and Suzuki Roshi tried to move the rock together and they couldn’t. Alan said that what they needed was a block and tackle and more people. Suzuki Roshi told Alan to go away. “I want to work alone.” So Alan went to take a bath and when he returned the rock was moved and Alan found Suzuki Roshi asleep in his cabin. He also found vomit all over the floor. Suzuki Roshi slept for three days.
(David Chadwick links page, Cucumber Project on cuke.com)
The activity may have been the same for Suzuki before and after his “enlightenment”, but I would say his intention was different:
So, when you practice zazen, your mind should be concentrated in your breathing and this kind of activity is the fundamental activity of the universal being. If so, how you should use your mind is quite clear. Without this experience, or this practice, it is impossible to attain the absolute freedom.
(Breathing; Shunryu Suzuki; November 4th 1965, Los Altos; emphasis added)
What will be the difference? You have freedom, you know, from everything. That is, you know, the main point.
(Sesshin Lecture, Shunryu Suzuki; Day 5 Wednesday, June 9, 1971 San Francisco)
In Gautama’s parlance:
And what… is the ceasing of action? That ceasing of action by body, speech, and mind, by which one contacts freedom,–that is called ‘the ceasing of action’.
(SN 35.146, tr. Pali Text Society vol IV p 85)