With palms together,
Good Morning All,
Zazen was good this morning. It is always good to sit still and become yourself. Someone wrote to me and asked what to do in the "sadness phase" of meditation. I am uncertain as to what she meant, but I suspect when she is quiet, sadness emerges from the shadows.
One of the most challenging aspects of zazen is just this. When we sit quietly in stillness, all of our typical distractions are taken away from us. Movement, chewing gum, smoking, drinking, eating, talking, everything is just gone. These things provide cover for the other things that haunt us. So when they are not there, no cover, and bam! There they are, those pesky feelings or thoughts or memories. And we are there to witness them.
OK. So, what's the problem? They are just thoughts, just feelings, just memories. They have no power of their own. They are chimera. It is when we take them and build on them and wish they weren't there or were there more often or whatever that we begin to go crazy.
Zazen is simply about experience. We do not judge the experience. We do not move from it or to it. We just experience. We learn from this experience over time that everything has a life of its own so to speak. Things rise and things fall, just as our breath comes and goes. When we are with the coming and going, no problem; when we resist it, big problem.
As for me, I am just a simple person on a cushion who enjoys being still. Then again, maybe not.
Be well.
2 comments:
Harvey Sensei, Good post! Zazen is so boring and so interesting. It is always different and always the same. I though I had a problem in keeping my mind quiet. I tried all kinds of things to quiet it down. Then I gave up and quit trying to keep it quiet. When I did that a funny thing happened. It quieted..
I want to thank you so much for your answer to my question! I only found it today. I suspect you might be right about the stillness allowing the sadness to creep in, as if it were a living thing in wait. I know this will sound strange, but what I appear to be really sad about, somehow, is the suffering of so many who do not share my very fortunate (for the moment, so far--haha!) circumstances. A certain USA-ness, I suppose.
When I initiate zazen, I soon observe an elation of freedom, and then so often the tears begin to flow down w/no specific memory from my own life, nor any image other than a profound, generalized, apparently race-based suffering. Like a sound of many people crying. It gets to be too intense for me, so I get up & write a poem, usually. That helps so much.
I have tried telling myself it's just a thought, like a bird or a bug resting and then flying by, or a cloud, etc., but still the sensation of heavy, bottomless sorrow sits there with me until I get up & do something else, something immediately tangible.
I think that's why I chose to be aimlessjoys, because after that sorrowful feeling, all the other wonders stand out for me in a quite sharp contrast.
Any way, thank you for sharing so abundantly your way along the path. Best regards, aj
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