Zazen is hard because it's simple.
It's the nothing-to-learn that loses beginner and master alike.
We start off being told to clear our minds. Seems straightforward: just don't think.
But you will.
Specifically, you'll think about thinking.
Then you'll become upset with yourself (or if you're a teacher, your student). Which is just thinking harder.
Some folks get stuck there, circling that holding pattern forever. It's one of the Buddhist definitions of hell, but since we're born into that hell on Day 1, I'd call it a lateral move at worst.
At some point I decided to forgive myself for thinking – leering at the priggish monk with a smart-ass teenaged grin on my face – and my sits improved noticeably.
Now when thinking happens, I speak to myself in friendly, collegial tones. Then I return to breathing and sitting.
Sometimes I ease into a deeper state. Sometimes I go back to designing a new workbench. Sometimes I return to fear or pain. Given enough time, I'll eventually do all of these, and a lot more. Maybe enter kensho. Maybe talk out loud with others who aren't there, but still distract me.
Sitting is always worthwhile. Useful. This is hard for some to grasp. You have to see it from the cushion. There is no alternative, and there is no shortcut. No-one can hand it to you, or verify or disqualify it.
It is not transmitted.
But these days, as I enter the last phase of my life, I'm coming to shikantaza. That's the particular notion of zazen that Dōgen handed down to Soto Zen. The word is said to mean "just sitting".
Dōgen's standards are higher than the basic breathing drill. Whereas I've mostly used the breathing method – assume lotus, count one to ten, follow the breath – now fellow Soto-trained monks are recommending shikantaza as sole practice.
Especially those my age.
I haven't done a lot of that. Some, when breathing practice led me there. But shikantaza is devilish difficult.
To do it, you sit.
What? Aren't I speaking English?
You just sit. You don't try. You don't want. You don't aspire. You don't flee. You don't punish. You don't fear, honour, cultivate, or avoid.
Things around you do.
You, not so much.
You don't breathe. Something breathes; you let that breathe. No inventory. No supervision. No observation.
Stuff goes on. You let it go on.
Thoughts think. You let them.
Everything continues. You neither allow nor forbid it.
You have no attitude.
It's exhausting.
Now I see why my brothers and sisters waited till I'd walked this far before they began – gently, confidently – plugging the founder's teaching.
Because you have to gather a lot of nothing before you put it down.
When I get up after these new sits, I have no idea if any of it was worthwhile.
And I'm OK with that.
(Mudra of Great Buddha statue in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
