Posture

Establishing Your Meditation Posture

By: Bhikkhu Analayo

The sitting posture needs to be such that the spine is kept straight.  Here some degree of continuity of attention to the posture is required to avoid and slumping of the body….Keeping the body erect could be achieved by slowly passing our attention through the spine from bottom to top, relaxing each vertebra.  Such relaxing enables a natural alignment of the spine, by just letting gravity pull downwards.  The overall sense is as if the body were suspended from above, at the top of the head, and the rest of it relaxes downwards.  The resulting erectness of the body is not something to be held in a fixed manner.  Instead, the body remains flexible, comparable to a slender tree in the wind.  Such flexibility allows for minor adjustments to occur whenever we notice that the body is not fully in balance.  Needless to say, this does not mean that we keep shifting around all the time, but just that we avoid holding the posture rigidly and with tension, be it when sitting on the ground, a cushion, a bench, or a chair.

 In order to keep the body erect, we of course need to be aware of it.  Thus…[we] establish awareness of the body as a whole in the sitting posture and to some degree also monitor it throughout the meditation session, at least until such a deep level of concentration is reached that the posture of the body naturally remains firm.

From Mindfulness of Breathing. Bhikkhu Analayo is perhaps the foremost contemporary scholar-monk in the Theravadin tradition. Among the many books that he has published, his works on the four foundations of mindfulness—Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization and Satipatthana Meditation: A Practice Guide—are exceptional.

Strict Adherence to Form is Not True Zazen or True Dharma

By: Sekkei Harada Roshi

But it isn’t necessary to stick to this form [prescribed by Dogen in the Fukanzazengi]. It is fine to switch over and put the right foot on the left thight. It is also all right to sit the way women do in Japan, with their feet tucked under them. Or to use various kinds of seats or benches. In any case don’t worry too much about the outer form. I would simply like you to find a position so you can sit comfortably for a long time, without feeling too much pain in your legs.

In some of the bigger monasteries in Japan, if a monk could not sit zazen in the full-lotus position, he was not allowed to stay. In recent years, though, there has been a realization that this was an error, and slowly things have changed. I think this is good.

Why is it that only the outer form has become emphasized in this way? The reason is that the essential Dharma has been lost, and in order to at least pass down something, a lot of emphasis has come to be placed on form.

We hear of people who think that Buddhist practice involves faithfully following the rules that Dogen prescribed. This is a great misinterpretation. This is to practice in a very narrow, militaristic sort of way. There may be some people here who think that practice means strictly adhering to the form, with no deviation allowed whatsoever. They may like to do it this way and thing it cannot be done in any other manner. I would like you to understand, however, that it is clearly taking place in a context where true zazen and true Dharma have disappeared. For that reason, only the form is emphasized and rigidly followed.

Note: Sekkei Harada Roshi (1926-2020) was the abbott of Hoshin-ji, a Soto Zen training monastery in Fukui Prefecture, near the coast of central Japan. The above quote is taken from his book, The Essence of Zen: The Teachings of Sekkei Harada.

Zazen is Not the Same as Meditation

By Rev. Issho Fujita

Meditation practices which emphasize something psychological—thoughts, per­ceptions, feelings, visualizations, intentions, etc.—all direct our attention to cortical-cerebral functions, which I will loosely refer to as “Head.” Most meditation, as we conventionally understand it, is a work that focuses on the Head. In Oriental medicine we find the interesting idea that harmony among the internal organs is of greatest importance. All the issues associ­ated with Head are something merely re­sulting from a lack of harmony among the internal organs, which are the real bases of our life.

Because of our highly developed cor­tical-cerebral function, we tend to equate self-consciousness, the sense of “I,” with the Head—as if the Head is the main char­acter in the play and the body is the ser­vant following orders from the Head. However from the point of view of Oriental medicine this is not only a con­ceit of the Head, but is a total miscon­ception of life. Head is just a small part of the whole of life, and need not hold such a privileged position.

While most meditation tends to focus on the Head, zazen focuses more on the living holistic body-mind framework, al­lowing the Head to exist without giving it any pre-eminence. If the Head is over­functioning, it will give rise to a split and unbalanced life. But in the zazen posture it learns to find its proper place and function within a unified mind-body field. Our living human body is not just a collection of bodily parts, but is an organically inte­grated whole. It is designed in such a way that when one part of the body moves, however subtle the movement may be, it simultaneously causes the whole body to move in accordance with it.

The entire article may be found in the Spring 2002 issue of Insight Journal, a publication of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.

Suzuki Roshi on Sitting

You should not be tilted sideways, backwards, or forwards. You should be sitting straight up as if you were supporting the sky with your head. This is not just form or breathing. It expresses the key point of Buddhism. It is a perfect expression of your Buddha nature. If you want true understanding of Buddhism, you should practice this way. These forms are not a means of obtaining the right state of mind. To take this posture is itself the purpose of our practice. When you have this posture, you have the right state of mind, so there is no need to try to attain some special state.