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I would say the history of meditation manuals goes way back, in India, China, and Japan.\u00a0 By meditation manual, I mean the attempt to provide practical instructions in meditation, as opposed to metaphysical instructions.\u00a0 Here\u2019s an excerpt from \u201cTwo Shores of Zen\u201d\u00a0by Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler, that illustrates the conflict between the two:<\/p>\n
\u201cShikantaza not here,\u201d he insisted in elementary English, pointing to his head. \u201cNot here,\u201d he continued, pointing to his heart. \u201cOnly point here!\u201d He drove his fist into his lower belly, the energy center that the Japanese call hara.<\/p>\n
I have spent the last several years in an American Zen temple that by our standards is strict and intense, but my training, I am finding, seems moot here. I have labored for years to open out my meditation\u2014which is, after all \u201cjust sitting\u201d\u2014away from reliance on heavy-handed internal or external concentration objects, and toward a more subtle, broad, open awareness. Roshi-sama is said to be a master of this wide practice of shikantaza, the objectless meditation characteristic of the Soto school. But he insists, again and again, weeping at my deafness, shouting at my stubbornness, that hara focus is precisely shikantaza. That it makes no sense makes it no less inspiring; it is his presence, not his words, that I believe.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo grasping\u2014only point here.\u201d He rested his fist on his belly. I had nothing to say. My posture is quite good; I\u2019ve been told so by peers and teachers alike in the U.S\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In my own practice,\u00a0 I focus on the mind that moves (Waking Up and Falling Asleep<\/a>), something like:<\/p>\n Let the mind be present without an abode.<\/p>\n (Diamond Sutra, translation Venerable Master Hsing Yun, from \u201cThe Rabbit\u2019s Horn: A Commentary on the Platform Sutra\u201d, Buddha\u2019s Light Publishing pg. 60)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The location of that mind is often in the “hara”, but the aim is to allow for experience like that Gautama described for the fourth of the initial states of concentration:<\/p>\n Again, a (person), putting away ease\u2026 enters and abides in the fourth musing; seated, (one) suffuses (one\u2019s) body with purity by the pureness of (one\u2019s) mind so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded with purity by the pureness of (one\u2019s) mind. \u2026 just as a (person) might sit with (their) head swathed in a clean cloth; even so (one) sits suffusing (their) body with purity\u2026<\/p>\n (AN III 25-28, Pali Text Society Vol. III pg 18-19)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gautama emphasized \u201cone-pointedness of mind\u201d as a characteristic of concentration, and what I experience is a complete freedom of the singular location of self-awareness to move in space, with the coordination of the body following autonomically from the location of \u201cmind\u201d.\u00a0 Gautama identified the fourth concentration with the cessation of action of the body based on \u201cdeterminate thought\u201d, and I believe the experience was a regular part of the mindfulness he described as his way of life.<\/p>\n Over the last fifty years, I have written a meditation manual for myself.*\u00a0 The most frequent failing in the meditation manuals that are out there is a failure to address the cessation of action out of \u201cdeterminate thought\u201d, the cessation of willful or volitive action of speech, body, and mind (action of \u201cperceiving and feeling\u201d).\u00a0 Cessation is the goal of meditation, according to Gautama, and the correct way to proceed, again according to Gautama, is through \u201clack of desire\u201d.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t say that it\u2019s easy to experience a “pureness of (one\u2019s) mind” such that \u201csometimes zazen gets up and walks around\u201d, as Kobun Chino Otogawa described it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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\n\u2026 \u201cHere,\u201d he said, pointing to his chin and thrusting it out to show me that doing so made his back slump in bad Zen posture. He looked up at me with wide, soft brown eyes, and a kind smile that exposed his crooked teeth. In a warm, encouraging voice, like a boy addressing his puppy, he pointed to his back and said, \u201cLike this no good. Keep try!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n