Zazen Notes

The sixth-century Buddhist monk Fuxi wrote:

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, trans. Andy Ferguson “Zen’s Chinese Heritage”)

The phenomena that Fuxi described in his poem are all phenomena of ...  read more

mf:

I get out of balance sometimes because something’s not quite comfortable in my posture and I’ve somehow become numb to it, and over the years I have formed a habit of checking where I left myself physically when things get weird.

That’s why I wrote:

My own practice in response to any “cutting off” ...  read more

A teacher of neigong said:

For the neigong we do, brain activity approaches zero and yes, we can do that almost instantly and I have proven this in a sleep lab, but natural awareness increases.

Milton Erickson also described an increase of awareness in trance:

I go into trances so that I will be more sensitive to the intonations ...  read more