{"id":2444,"date":"2025-07-24T17:12:20","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T00:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/?p=2444"},"modified":"2025-07-24T19:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T02:05:08","slug":"how-the-creeping-vines-come-to-be-cut-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/?p=2444","title":{"rendered":"“The Place Where You Stop and Rest”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Konocti<\/a>
\nIn one of his letters, twelfth-century Ch\u2019an teacher Yuanwu wrote:<\/p>\n

Actually practice at this level for twenty or thirty years and cut off all the verbal demonstrations and creeping vines and useless devices and states, until you are free from conditioned mind. Then this will be the place of peace and bliss where you stop and rest.<\/p>\n

Thus it is said: \u201cIf you are stopping now, then stop. If you seek a time when you finish, there will never be a time when you finish.\u201d<\/p>\n

(\u201cZen Letters:\u00a0 Teachings of Yuanwu\u201d, tr. Cleary & Cleary, Shambala p 99)<\/p>\n

In my teenage years, I became keenly aware of the \u201ccreeping vines\u201d of my mind. I read a lot of Alan Watts books on Zen, thinking that might help, but I soon found out that what he had to say did nothing to cut off the \u201ccreeping vines\u201d.<\/p>\n

I was looking for something Shunryu Suzuki described in one of his lectures, though I didn\u2019t know it at the time:<\/p>\n

So,\u00a0when you practice zazen, your mind should be concentrated\u00a0in\u00a0your breathing\u00a0and\u00a0this kind of activity is the fundamental activity of the universal being.\u00a0If so, how you should use your mind is quite clear.<\/u>\u00a0Without this experience, or\u00a0this practice, it is impossible to attain\u00a0the\u00a0absolute freedom.<\/p>\n

(Thursday Morning Lectures<\/a>, Shunryu Suzuki; November 4th 1965, Los Altos; emphasis added)<\/p>\n

I began to try to sit zazen, based on the illustrations in the back of \u201cThree Pillars of Zen\u201d, by Philip Kapleau.<\/p>\n

Zazen is almost always taught to beginners as sitting with a straight back and paying close attention to inhalation and exhalation. With regard to the straight back, Moshe Feldenkrais wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cSit straight!\u201d \u201cStand straight!\u201d This is often said by mothers, teachers, and others who give this directive in good faith and with the fullest confidence in what they are saying. If you were to ask them just how one does sit straight or stand straight, they would answer, \u201cWhat do you mean? Don\u2019t you know what straight means? Straight is straight!\u201d<\/p>\n

Some people do indeed stand and walk straight, with their backs erect and their heads held high. And of course there is an element of \u201cstanding straight in their posture.<\/p>\n

If you watch a child or an adult who has been told to sit or stand straight, it is evident that he agrees that there is something wrong with the way he is managing his body, and he will quickly try to straighten his back or raise his head. He will do this thinking that he has thereby achieved the proper posture; but he cannot maintain this \u201ccorrect\u201d position without continuous effort. As soon as his attention shifts to some activity that is either necessary, urgent, or interesting, he will slump back to his original position.<\/p>\n

(\u201cAwareness Through Movement\u201d, Moshe Feldenkrais, p 66)<\/p>\n

For many years, whenever I sat at a zendo with a teacher who walked the room during a sitting, the teacher would invariably stop behind me and correct my posture. I generally couldn\u2019t maintain their correction to the end of the sitting.<\/p>\n

With regard to close attention to inhalation and exhalation, Shunryu Suzuki described such attention as only a \u201cpreparatory practice\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u2026 usually in counting breathing or following breathing, you feel as if you are doing something, you know\u2013 you are following breathing, and you are counting breathing. This is, you know, why counting breathing or following breathing practice is, you know, for us it is some preparation\u2013 preparatory practice for shikantaza because for most people it is rather difficult to sit, you know, just to sit.<\/p>\n

(The Background of Shikantaza<\/a>, Shunryu Suzuki; San Francisco, February 22, 1970)<\/p>\n

Shikantaza, or \u201cjust sitting\u201d, is emphasized in the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, the school to which Shunryu Suzuki belonged.<\/p>\n

The Soto school was founded in the 13th<\/sup> century by Eihei Dogen. In one of Dogen\u2019s most famous essays, called \u201cGenjo Koan\u201d, he wrote:<\/p>\n

When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.<\/p>\n

(\u201cGenjo Koan [Actualizing the Fundamental Point]\u201d, tr. Kazuaki Tanahashi)<\/p>\n

Dogen said nothing here about sitting up straight or paying close attention to the breath. Instead, he asserted that \u201cpractice occurs\u201d as a natural consequence of finding \u201cyour place where you are\u201d. Dogen went on to say that the activity effected by practice is precisely \u201cactualizing the fundamental point\u201d, even though he never explained what the \u201cfundamental point\u201d was.<\/p>\n

Neuroscientists describe \u201cyour place where you are\u201d as your \u201cembodied self-location\u201d:<\/p>\n

A key aspect of the bodily self is self-location, the experience that the self is localized at a specific position in space within one\u2019s bodily borders (embodied self-location).<\/p>\n

(Journal of Neuroscience 26 May 2010, 30 (21) 7202-7214)<\/p>\n

Dogen\u2019s \u201cGenjo Koan\u201d can be paraphrased in terms of \u201cself-location\u201d:<\/p>\n

When you find the \u201cspecific position in space\u201d where you feel your bodily self to be, activity in the body begins to coordinate by virtue of that place.\u00a0 A relationship between the place of \u201cembodied self-location\u201d and activity in the body comes forward, and as that relationship comes forward, practice occurs.\u00a0 Through such practice, the point that is the \u201cspecific position in space\u201d of embodied self-location is manifested in activity.<\/p>\n

Most of us are unaware of our breathing most of the time. Moshe Feldenkrais wrote of how people can be unaware that they hold their breath in getting up from a chair. He explained why the breath is held:<\/p>\n

The tendency to hold one\u2019s breath is instinctive, part of an attempt to prevent the establishment of shearing stresses or forces likely to shift the vertebrae horizontally, out of the vertical alignment of the spinal column that they constitute.<\/p>\n

(\u201cAwareness Through Movement\u201d, Moshe Feldenkrais, p 83)<\/p>\n

Holding the breath creates pressure in the abdomen, pressure that allows the \u201cfluid ball\u201d of the abdomen to bear load and thereby relieves shearing stress on the spine (D. L. Bartilink, J Bone Joint Surg Br. 1957 Nov; 39-B[4]:718-25). There is in addition an apparent mechanism of support for the spine from the fascial tissue that runs behind the sacrum and spine, a mechanism that relies on the lever arm of the abdominals to work against the extensor muscles of the spine to align the vertebrae of the spine, and thereby allow pressure in the \u201cfluid ball\u201d of the abdomen to effect a load-bearing displacement of fascia.<\/p>\n

I delve into the science of spinal kinesiology in my last post, although the primary benefit of the science for me has been to free my mind from various common misapprehensions about posture.<\/p>\n

Feldenkrais described an effortless way to overcome the tendency to hold the breath in standing:<\/p>\n

\u2026When 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.<\/p>\n

(ibid, p 78)<\/p>\n

Feldenkrais stipulated, there must be \u201cno muscular effort deriving from voluntary control\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u2026 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.<\/p>\n

(ibid, p 76)<\/p>\n

Feldenkrais suggested shifting the center of gravity over the feet. In Omori Sogen\u2019s \u201cIntroduction to Zen Training\u201d, Hida Haramitsu advised shifting the center of the body\u2019s weight over \u201cthe triangular base of the seated body\u201d in seated meditation:<\/p>\n

We should balance the power of the hara (area below the navel) and the koshi (area at the rear of the pelvis) and maintain equilibrium of the seated body by bringing the center of the body\u2019s weight in line with the center of the triangular base of the seated body.<\/p>\n

(\u201cAn Introduction to Zen Training:\u00a0 A Translation of Sanzen Nyumon\u201d, Omori Sogen, tr. Dogen Hosokawa and Roy Yoshimoto, Tuttle Publishing, p 59; parentheticals added)<\/p>\n

Haramitsu\u2019s advice is similar to Feldenkrais\u2019s, in that a shift in the center of gravity (\u201cthe center of the body\u2019s weight\u201d) is expected to generate the necessary activity without recourse to \u201cmuscular effort deriving from voluntary control\u201d.<\/p>\n

Gautama made reference to the sense of gravity in some of his descriptions of concentration, although the reference was indirect. Here\u2019s Gautama\u2019s description of the initial concentration:<\/p>\n

Herein\u2026 the (noble) disciple, making self-surrender the object of (their) thought, lays hold of concentration, lays hold of one-pointedness.\u00a0 (The disciple), aloof from sensuality, aloof from evil conditions, enters on the first trance, which is accompanied by thought directed and sustained, which is born of solitude, easeful and zestful, and abides therein.<\/p>\n

(SN 48.10, tr. Pali Text Society vol V p 174; parentheticals paraphrase original)<\/p>\n

The feelings of \u201czest\u201d and \u201cease\u201d are to be extended as a part of that concentration:<\/p>\n

\u2026 (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.<\/p>\n

(AN 5.28, tr. Pali Text Society vol. III pp 18-19)<\/p>\n

Words like \u201csteeps\u201d and \u201cdrenches\u201d convey that a sense of gravity accompanies the feelings of zest and ease as they are suffused throughout the body.<\/p>\n

In Gautama\u2019s description of the first concentration, concentration begins when a person lays hold of \u201cone-pointedness\u201d, something Gautama also referred to as \u201cone-pointedness of mind\u201d. Translated into the language of the neurobiologists, concentration begins when consciousness is retained at the \u201cspecific position in space\u201d of \u201cembodied self-location\u201d.<\/p>\n

The zest and ease of the initial concentration are a result of the effortlessness of the automatic activity initiated by gravity where one-pointedness of mind takes place. To drench the entire body with the feelings of zest and ease such that \u201cthere is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded\u201d ensures that the consciousness retained with \u201cembodied self-location\u201d can remain \u201cone-pointed\u201d, even as the \u201cspecific position\u201d of “embodied self-location” shifts and moves.<\/p>\n

There can come a moment when the experience of consciousness retained with \u201cembodied self-location\u201d becomes the experience of \u201cembodied self-location\u201d retained with consciousness. Dogen continued his \u201cGenjo Koan\u201d:<\/p>\n

When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point\u2026<\/p>\n

(\u201cGenjo Koan [Actualizing the Fundamental Point]\u201d, tr. Kazuaki Tanahashi)<\/p>\n

To paraphrase:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you find your way at this moment\u201d, a relationship between the freedom of consciousness and the automatic activity of the body comes forward, and as that relationship comes forward, practice occurs. Through such practice, the place of occurrence of consciousness in the moment is manifested as the activity of the body.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you find your way at this moment\u201d, the activity of the body in posture and in the movement of breath becomes solely<\/em> by virtue of the singular location of consciousness.<\/p>\n

At such a time, said Gautama:<\/p>\n

\u2026 (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.<\/p>\n

(AN 5.28, tr. Pali Text Society Vol. III p 19)<\/p>\n

The \u201cpurity\u201d that suffuses the body is the pureness of the mind without any will or intention with regard to the body.<\/p>\n

I believe that activity of the body solely<\/em> by virtue of the location of consciousness is what Shunryu Suzuki referred to as \u201cjust sitting\u201d. \u201cDoing something\u201d with regard to the body or the breath, whether \u201cknown and deliberate\u201d or \u201cconcealed from the consciousness by habit\u201d, has ceased.<\/p>\n

Suzuki cautioned:<\/p>\n

Sometimes when you think that you are doing zazen with an imperturbable mind, you ignore the body, but it is also necessary to have the opposite understanding at the same time. Your body is practicing zazen in imperturbability while your mind is moving.<\/p>\n

(Whole-Body Zazen<\/a>, Shunryu Suzuki; Tassajara, June 28, 1970 [edited by Bill Redican])<\/p>\n

The freedom of \u201cyour way at this moment\u201d is touched on in daily living through \u201cyour place where you are\u201d. That\u2019s Yuanwu\u2019s \u201cplace of peace and bliss where you stop and rest\u201d.<\/p>\n

When the body rests from volition, so does the mind, even in the midst of activity. In my experience, that is how the \u201ccreeping vines\u201d of the mind come to be cut off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In one of his letters, twelfth-century Ch\u2019an teacher Yuanwu wrote: Actually practice at this level for twenty or thirty years and cut off all the verbal demonstrations and creeping vines and useless devices and states, until you are free from conditioned mind. Then this will be the place of peace and bliss where you stop … <\/p>\n

Continue reading ““The Place Where You Stop and Rest””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2444"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2464,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444\/revisions\/2464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}