Aspects of Just Sitting: Relaxation (continued)

By: Bob Zeglovitch

The last post suggested that relaxation is important to just sitting because it allows for ease in the posture, expands the range of what can be known, and avoids a tight approach that can lead to bypassing. While these are all good reasons to relax the body/mind, there is a more fundamental reason: the bodily tension that we create and hold is a manifestation of the grasping that causes suffering.

When there is contact between either the five physical sense organs or the mind (considered a sixth sense in Buddhism), and the corresponding sense object (e.g., eye and sight, mind and thought, etc.), feeling arises. Feeling in this context means the quality of pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant that is involved in every mind moment. Because of feeling there is craving (desire)—to obtain the pleasant and get rid of the unpleasant. Craving in turn causes grasping (also called clinging).

This grasping expresses itself directly in the body. With repeated observation, you may begin to see the relationship between your grasping and bodily tension. You can feel it in the clenched jaw, tight abdomen, furrowed brow, labored breath, tightness in the chest, etc. Relaxing the body is a gesture of letting go, of non-grasping. After you complete your initial sweep of the body to relax, you can continue to observe where there are increasingly subtle areas of physical tension and holding and then further relax as best you can. Along the way, you can also explore whether there is mental tension that you can relax.

The topic of relaxation relates back to the passage from Gregory Kramer regarding the “human predicament” that Kate Savage shared with us in her blog post on February 16, 2022. Kramer notes: “The body-mind’s sensitivity is the the seedbed of longings and their occasional gratification. The entire organism tenses against the world’s sensory and social onslaught, hungering in vain for stability and settling instead for temporary pleasant stimulation…Pings of pleasure cause a reflexive grasping as we struggle, individually and collectively, to hold on to what we like and avoid what we don’t like.” The tension that arises from our grasping, Kramer observes, forms into a core sense of self, an “I” or a “we” that would be protected and satisfied.”

In my last post, I highlighted the reference to relaxing completely in the 8th Century teaching poem Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage. Upon a closer look at that poem, I’ve found that it contains other references to calm, rest and relaxation (check it out on the chants page of this website). This led me back to Dogen’s Fukanzazengi (also on the chants page), in which he states: “The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the dharma-gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment.” Here is an endorsement for relaxing from the founder of the Soto lineage in Japan, who often presents as a stern taskmaster!

The Human Predicament

By Kate Savage

Here is a quote from Gregory Kramer’s book A Whole Life Path: A Lay Buddhist’s Guide to Crafting a Dhamma-Infused Life that I used in my talk on the precept against misusing sexuality. The recording of my talk on November 5, 2021 can be found on the Dharma Talks page of this website.

The Human Predicament 

You and I are so sensitive.  Virtual clouds of nerves wrapped in skin, we are drawn to or repelled by every touch.  The slightest changes of light trigger responses in the eyes; the slightest changes of air pressure alert the ears to the unexpected. Molecules from afar touch the nose; those nearby touch the tongue.  Electrochemical changes in the brain register as thoughts that touch the mind.  And when what contacts our senses is perceived as another person, neural and hormonal processes that evolved with the brain itself activate. All these things are happening right now, as you read these words.

Your sensitivities and mine are meeting right here.

This is how we meet the whole world.  Placed in an environment in constant change, we organisms seek air, food, safety, and the comfort of others.  Affection and loneliness, competition and fear, anger and isolation join the sharp and soft touches of the material world.  But that world is out of our control.  Hungers drive us, but we can’t have what we want.  The fragility of the body assures a constant flow of pleasure and pain, injury and illness, aging and loss.  We feel belonging and isolation, protected and traumatized.  This sensitive life culminates in our own death and the death of those we love.

The body-mind’s sensitivity is the seedbed of longings and their occasional gratification. The entire organism tenses against the world’s sensory and social onslaught, hungering in vain for stability and settling instead for temporary pleasant stimulation.  We interweave with others to satisfy cravings and enhance protection; relationships and groups also become loci of action.  Pings of pleasure cause a reflexive grasping as we struggle, individually and collectively, to hold on to what we like and avoid what we don’t like.

This tension forms into a core sense of self, an “I” or a “we” that would be protected and satisfied.  The self’s appetite keeps us off balance as it clings to one thing (or person or group) and then another.  Gripped by its project of satisfaction and becoming, the body-mind is blind to the fact that its suffering is self-inflicted.

There are no moments, no events, no interactions, no relationships that do not affect the body-mind.  Every thought and action, here and now, combines with all we have done and said to determine the direction and tenor of our individual lives and society as a whole.  Learning, memory, and family and cultural conditioning collude to form how we perceive the world.  There is no moment when we, as individuals and as a society, are not navigating the body-mind’s responses to the world, because every moment conditions the next.

The question is, how are we navigating these responses?  If we choose to let wisdom guide us, our responses are intentional and our movement through this life is conscious.  If we choose to ignore our power to learn, our responses are habitual, and our movement through life is unconscious.  Depending upon which choice we make, there is suffering or there is peace;  there is cruelty or harmlessness.