The practice of just sitting

This is an introduction to Zazen, seated Zen meditation, taught in the spirit of my Soto Zen lineage, in a functional way so you can take up the practice at your own pace. Maybe you've sat with me at SFZC or Young Urban Zen or on a retreat and want to continue. Maybe you're completely new to Zen. In any case, my hope is that you can read this, begin sitting, and let the practice develop, and that if you later come to see me for practice discussion, we'll already share some ground and some language, so that we can begin from where you actually are.

Zazen isn't a technique for producing a special state, and it isn't therapy or self-improvement, though it may quietly change... everything. One way to say it: Zazen is a whole-life practice of waking up in the middle of our life. There's no thing to get. There's just this experience, and how we meet it.

Two things at once

It helps to hold two sides of Zazen together from the start.

One side is, frankly, awe-inspiring. Dōgen calls Zazen "the dharma gate of repose and bliss," the king of samādhis. When we sit, we're not so much trying to get somewhere else as expressing Awakening, enacting the Buddha's Awakening with the details of our posture, together. We place the body in the form of the Buddha and let the practice unfold. Awe-inspiring.

The other side is completely ordinary. Everyday body and breath; everyday rice and tea. Pay attention to how you're sitting, how you're breathing. Nothing fancy. Both are true at once, and the practice lives as we hold both sides, together: the profundity of direct experience, in an everyday way.

How to sit

Posture is Zazen. As my teacher, Linda Galijan, says, "Zazen is a body practice." Getting the form is already doing the practice. This lineage is, among other things, a body training, and the wise body knows something the thinking mind does not.

Find your seat, whether on a cushion or a chair. Be sure you are physically well-supported. Root down through the sit-bones, knees a little lower than the hips if possible, establishing a firm base. Let the spine come up, upright, balanced, alert, with its natural curve, as if the crown of the head were gently holding up the sky. Roll the shoulders back and let the arms rest easily.

Set the hands in the cosmic mudra: palms up, right fingers below, left fingers resting on top, thumbs lightly touching to make an oval, the whole shape held against the lower belly, the hara, the Zazen body's center of gravity. Let the eyes stay slightly open, with a gaze that's soft and lowered to about forty-five degrees, not looking at anything. The mouth is closed, the tongue resting behind the front teeth. Rock the body slightly, right and left, to sense your way to upright. Take three deep, full breaths to settle, then let the breath find its own rhythm through the nose.

Body like a mountain. Mind like the sky.

And one simple, profound instruction from Suzuki Roshi that informs our attitude: be kind to each breath. Not only attentive, but kind.

The breath, and letting attention open

In Zazen we don't manage or manipulate the breath. The breath breathes. Early on, or any time the mind is swirling, it helps to rest attention lightly but deliberately on the breathing and count: "one" on the inhale or exhale, "two" on the next breath, up to ten, and begin again. Breath counting can be a kind and reliable skillful means for settling.

Then, once you're settled, you can let go of the counting and release attention to move where it will. Our task then becomes simply to follow attention, to know what is being known, whatever that happens to be. A sound arises and passes. A sensation. An exhale. Let every experience come and every experience pass.

Shikantaza: just sitting

Shikantaza, "just," or "wholeheartedly," sitting, is Zazen in its full expression. It's not sitting there spaced out, doing nothing, and not sitting there working hard on something. Just this, wholeheartedly, moment after moment.

An old image: the ancestor Kayashata was said to be followed everywhere by a perfect, body-sized mirror. Whatever came before it, the mirror simply reflected, grasping nothing, distorting nothing, adding nothing. Just: this is here, now. Shikantaza has this quality. After you've steadied the mind through breath and body, shikantaza is a little like untethering a boat: you draw up the anchor, let attention float freely, and you accompany the movement of attention rather than steering it.

In our school’s quintessential Zazen instructions, Eihei Dōgen taught, “Think of not-thinking. How do you think of not-thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of Zazen.” While this passage is variously interpreted, in our approach it practically means that when thoughts come, we don’t get involved with them and we don’t push them away. Just as we might allow sounds to arise and pass away without getting involved with them, so too with thoughts.

Two more pointers about shikantaza. First, as Suzuki Roshi is often quoted: you don't sit Zazen; Zazen sits Zazen. You can't make Zazen happen as a technique; instead, we might say it's a description of what shows up when the grasping, gaining mind relaxes enough to let the practice be itself. Second, Suzuki Roshi had a unique formulation: Zazen is just to be yourself. I will add that "yourself" is so much more, and so much less, than you might imagine. Try counting down from five and not being you. You can't! In this compassionate sense you can't do Zazen wrong. In another sense you can't do it at all; Zazen does Zazen. We just make a form to hold emptiness.

The spirit of the practice

More than any technique, Zazen is carried by an attitude. A few threads:

Acceptance. One teacher I trust says the whole of practice can come down to one question: am I at war with this moment, or at peace with it? Whatever arises, pleasant, unpleasant, inside, outside, you can meet it with a attitude of "and that's okay. This too." Because you've committed to stay on the cushion, Zazen is a remarkably safe place to feel even the feelings you'd rather not. Sometimes Zazen is a ring of fire, and you simply stay, and feel it, and "that's okay." Acceptance is also where Kodo Sawaki's startling line comes in: "Zazen is good for nothing." He gave his life to Zazen, so it's a surprising thing to say; what I hear in it is that even our meditation is not something to grasp or try to profit from. If we allow it to, Zazen will transform us, but we don't get to decide how. Even this, we accept with an open hand.

Ready, willing, don't-know. These are three orientations to keep returning to, rather than states to achieve. Ready: poised to keep opening to experience for as long as you're sitting. Willing: meeting whatever comes. Don't-know: intimate with experience without pretending to have it pinned down; as the old line goes, "not knowing is nearest." We all know exactly what it's like to feel not ready and not willing; the practice is to keep opening, to the next moment, and the next.

Warm-heartedness. I would characterize the lineage I come through as warm-hearted. Suzuki Roshi's laughter, sincerity, and kindness... We get to forgive ourselves for being human beings; this is a practice for actual people, warts and all. The question underneath it all might be: what kind of companion do I want to be for myself?

If you'd like to approach Zazen gradually

The most traditional approach is to jump in the deep end: take up the whole instruction above and "just sit." But some people prefer to enter Zazen one step at a time, and that's a valid skillful means. With this in mind, I've taught a gradual entry to Zazen called Everything Included, One at a Time, which develops awareness in stages: breath, then body, then emotions, then thinking, until everything is included and we open into shikantaza. The recordings are linked below. (If you already know the Insight Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation practice, you'll recognize the same widening arc in a different Buddhist idiom.)

When it's challenging

Pain in the legs or back, sleepiness, a mind that won't stop: none of this means you're doing Zazen wrong. It's just what sitting includes. We meet this with the same spirit as everything else: attend to it, feel it, let it be here, "and that's okay," and keep returning attention here, now. A sound comes and goes; an ache comes and goes; a thought comes and goes.

That said, the mind's habitual patterns (craving, aversion, restlessness, dullness, uncertainty) warrant a sincere study once you've settled into the practice for a while. My suggestion: sit Zazen simply, more or less as described here, for a month or so first, to get familiar with the mind's tendencies, habits, reactions, and presence. Only then, when you're ready to work with these challenging patterns directly, take up Working with the Hindrances.

Practice with these

Dōgen's universal recommendation: the Fukanzazengi, Dōgen's seminal instructions for Zazen. Short, and worth reading slowly or reciting, more than once, even weekly.
Dharma Talk:Zazen in Brief. I surveyed ten dharma teachers for the one line that clarifies Zazen, and gathered what I heard.
Gradual guided instruction:Everything Included, One at a Time (four sessions with instruction, lecture, and Q&A):

Session 1: Zazen is Vast; Awareness of Breathing

Session 2: Liberating Awareness of Body & Emotions‍ ‍

Session 3: Observing Thought as Process‍ ‍

Session 4: Entering Shikantaza

Practice discussion

One of the ways I teach is through one-on-one practice discussion, to extend and deepen our understanding of these teachings, especially as they bear on the questions arising from our life, on and off the meditation cushion. If you've taken up Zazen and would like to talk it over, you're welcome to reach out.

Introduction to Zazen