your guide to buddhist meditation · 2018. 9. 17. · insight meditation loving-kindness zen...

4
BUDDHISM CULTURE MEDITATION LIFE JULY 2014 Insight Meditation Loving-Kindness Zen Meditation Visualization Walking Meditation Dzogchen and more… Your Guide to Buddhist Meditation Learn a wealth of meditation techniques to develop calm, awareness, wisdom & love LET YOUR CONFIDENCE SHINE A PUNK LOOKS AT FIFTY THE BUDDHAS OF WEST 17TH S HAMBHALA S UN

Upload: others

Post on 20-Aug-2020

23 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Your Guide to Buddhist Meditation · 2018. 9. 17. · Insight Meditation Loving-Kindness Zen Meditation Visualization Walking Meditation Dzogchen and more… Your Guide to Buddhist

B u d d h i s m c u lt u r e m e d i tat i o n l i f e j u lY 2 0 1 4

Insight MeditationLoving-KindnessZen MeditationVisualizationWalking MeditationDzogchenand more…

Your Guide to

Buddhist MeditationLearn a wealth of meditation techniques to develop calm, awareness, wisdom & love

L e t Y o u r C o n f i d e n C e S h i n e • A P u n k L o o k S At f i f t Y • t h e B u d d h A S o f W e S t 1 7 t h

shambhala sun

Page 2: Your Guide to Buddhist Meditation · 2018. 9. 17. · Insight Meditation Loving-Kindness Zen Meditation Visualization Walking Meditation Dzogchen and more… Your Guide to Buddhist

Fi r s t, w h at Z e n m e d i tat i o n i s n o t. It is not

a meticulous body scan, nor a rigorous examination of

the contents of the mind. Nor is it a private entry into

nirvana.

Zazen is a deep study of the embodied mind. It is a meditation

practice that fosters both gradual and sudden shifts of radical in-

sight into the genuine nature of mind. In a typically startling yet

low-key undoing of expectations, Zen often calls this clear and

most natural experience “ordinary mind.” In Zazen, “ordinary”

things grow both plainer and stranger at once.

This “ordinary” does not mean ho-hum or customary. It

means as ordinary as the way a bee softly bothers the flowers.

As ordinary as waves welling and sucking back over rocks. As

ordinary and unlikely as the overwhelming fact of the universe,

of breathing in and out, of having a boundless consciousness

that seems also to have a name and history and a mortal body.

Ordinary means to be with what is, freely moving with un-

folding circumstances and at rest everywhere, like a leaf in the

breeze.

Zazen (literally, “seated meditation”) is a focused investiga-

tion of the nature of “self.” But as the great Zen philosopher

Dogen put it, to study the self is to forget the self. All fixed ideas

and sense of “self” become “forgotten”—in other words, soft-

ened, dissolved, dropped away, expanded to include all that is.

This is done not by directing yourself toward something

special but by subtly abandoning anything that resists the DIg

ITA

l I

mA

ge

© 2

01

4 m

us

eu

m A

ss

Oc

IAT

es

/ l

Ac

mA

/ A

rT

re

sO

ur

ce

, N

Y

S u S a n M u r p h y r o S h i is the founding teacher of Zen Open

Circle in Sydney, Australia. She is the author of upside Down Zen and

minding the earth, mending the World.

Zazen Just Ordinary Mind

Our natural mind is clear, simple, and ordinary. The practice of Zen meditation, says

susan murphy , is simply to abandon anything extra. Then the ordinary reveals its magic.

Bodhidharma, first Zen ancestor.

SHAMBHALA SUN JULy 2014 48

Page 3: Your Guide to Buddhist Meditation · 2018. 9. 17. · Insight Meditation Loving-Kindness Zen Meditation Visualization Walking Meditation Dzogchen and more… Your Guide to Buddhist

Koans represent the sayings

and doings of Zen masters and

their friends and students, as col-

lected many centuries ago. Koan

(Japanese) literally means “public

case” (as in a legal precedent),

and these ancient cases continue

to have relevance for modern

dharma students, illustrating

what it might mean to live free

from repetitive dualistic patterns

of thinking and behaving. We are

all prisoners of a mind that judges

and compares, endlessly caught in

dualistic thinking: like and dislike,

this and that, you and me, know-

ing and not-knowing. Through

the serious play of koan practice,

we learn to live freshly and imme-

diately with everything that arises.

We personally taste life as it is,

however it appears: as a breath, a

headache, the song of a bird, with

nothing extra added.

Koans are not intellectual puz-

zles or riddles, and they are not

designed to destroy the discursive

mind. They are instruments of

practice that lead to a real human connection, with other people

who have studied the way of the Buddha and who have them-

selves become open to the possibility of a life lived with clarity

and compassion. As Wumen, the thirteenth-century chinese

compiler of the koan collection The Gateless Gate, said, through

this practice we learn to “walk hand in hand with all the Ances-

tral Teachers…the hair of your eyebrows entangled with theirs,

seeing with the same eyes, hearing with the same ears.”

To dive deeply into koans, it’s essential to work directly with a

teacher. In my lineage, students often begin with Mu, sometimes

considered a “breakthrough” koan. A monk asks Zen master

Zhaozhou if a dog has buddhanature and receives the answer

“mu,” meaning “no” in Japanese. This is unexpected because it’s

a well-known mahayana teaching that everyone and everything,

dogs included, have awakened nature. Working with this koan, a

student can drop the story and become one with the word “mu.”

Accompanied by a quality of won-

dering, mu rides on the breath and

washes through all experiences and

actions. As insights arise, and as

old patterns of experiencing real-

ity drop away, the teacher works

closely with the student, support-

ing and directing his or her new

discoveries.

Although not traditional, it’s

also possible to engage with koans

on your own. They can yield great

treasure if we sincerely engage

with them. For example, let’s

look at case 20 from The Book of

Equanimity:

Dizang asked Fayan, “Where are

you going?”

Fayan said, “I am wandering

aimlessly.”

“What do you think of

wandering?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not knowing is most intimate.”

Fayan was suddenly awakened.

Without trying to figure out

what Dizang and his student

Fayan are actually talking about, we can feel our way into what

“wandering aimlessly” suggests to us: an accurate description

of how our own heart-mind wanders aimlessly and endlessly

through its patterns of thinking and feeling. What would it be

like to truly admit that we don’t know, on the very deepest level?

And how could we taste what Fayan discovered, the great inti-

macy of not having to know?

This direct intimacy is available to everyone, and koan intro-

spection is one of the many skillful means that can lead us to a

fully compassionate, clear, and awakened life. ♦

simplicity of just being, just sitting, just breathing. It begins in

grounding the mind deep in the body and breath, just as they are.

simple? Yes. And yet it takes all that we are, and many years of

practice, to truly experience and maintain.

Zazen means only sitting. It means dropping away anything

extra to your breathing, the air on your face, the weight of your

body, the subtle energy in your hands, the intimate sounds of

lungs, heart, and belly, the sudden cry of a bird, the coming and

the going of thoughts and half thoughts, feelings and sensa-

tions. None require anything beyond your steady, unpresuming

attention.

Wonderfully, there are no steps, guidelines, bullet points or

blueprints for this state of resting the mind in what is. I love the

way Zen’s generous but challenging gift to us stays almost com-

pletely silent on method—as silent as the mind free of constructs

and narratives of self. Instead, Zazen honors direct, ordinary ex-

perience, moment by moment, as the path itself.

I am delighted to learn that in Botswana some train crossings

bear a sign saying “WArNINg: Trains may be hiding trains!”

Well, be warned (and reassured): the method of Zazen is hid-

den (and revealed) entirely in the activity. It will reveal to you

the birdsong hiding in the birdsong, mountains hiding in moun-

tains, trains hiding in trains, the self hiding in the self.

How to Do Zazensettle into stillness with an upright spine and a slight curve at the

base of the spine, assisted by a cushion that subtly tilts the pelvis

and establishes a firm base that is free of strain.

upright and self-supported, head erect but chin slightly tucked

in to draw the weight of your head off your neck and spine, you

begin to focus on every part of each breath.

You are asked to favor a gentle persistence—not so much con-

trolling the mind as letting thought soften. At the same time,

maintain a foreground awareness of the whole body breathing,

hearing, feeling, resting. Any unbidden sounds, sensations, emo-

tions, and half thoughts passing through are taken to be just right

and just enough. In each moment you offer “just what is” your

complete confidence, and rest your mind in that.

There’s no need to fear failure. As the contemporary chan

master sheng-yen said, “If you have never failed, you have never

tried.” When straining for something falls away, what is more

natural can appear and success and failure no longer trouble you.

“Natural” means closer already to your true nature.

As self-consciousness begins to soften its grip, you intimately

encounter, breath by breath, a sense of who you really are. In that

heartfelt awareness of body, breath, and mind, you become more

seamlessly breath-body-mind. slowly the mind darkens from

thoughts into a state of “not-knowing.” When that grows deeper,

some utterly ordinary sound or sight or touch can abruptly es-

cape the clutch of conceptual mind and reveal its self-nature in a

way that wondrously confirms your own original nature. Dogen

called this the falling away of body and mind in realization. In

becoming real.

A sudden birdcall, a twig snapping, a flame flickering, a shadow

melting in grass, the crunch of an apple in the mouth, the ridicu-

lous beauty of a crushed beer can found on a beach—any ordinary

blessed thing can bring the entire universe to light as your self,

clean as a whistle, with nothing that can possibly be attached to it.

This “confirming of the self” is an unbidden coup de grace, a

gift that can reach the ground of mind made receptive by freeing

itself again and again from “supposing” anything in advance or

adding anything in excess of this one breath-mind moment.

This receptivity is an act of yielding the self to the completeness

of each moment. even if the particular moment is difficult, when

it is received complete we are able to die to one moment and be

born fresh to the next, with our sense of curiosity and apprecia-

tion intact, free from the crippling mind of “better” and “worse.”

Zazen is a disciplined act of conceding full agreement with

what is. With this comes the dropping away of the kind of

“knowing” implicit in anticipation and disapproval, and Zazen

begins to open as a pure question.

What is the provenance of this breath? What is it? Who is breath-

ing? Where on Earth did this mystery of being here and breathing

come from? And where does it go when we are gone?

To sit Zazen is not to sit in the presence of big existential ques-

tions. It is to sit as these questions. In place of an assured goal

or method, or the promise of final answers, Zazen practice of-

fers radical uncertainty that is alive with something bigger, more

generous, more promising.

As the late robert Aitken roshi put it, Zen is dedicated not to

clearing up the mystery but to making the mystery clear. Whales,

blue wrens, cries in the dark, the sudden fall of a heavy camel-

lia—each thing steps forward to let us know how mysterious this

being here really is. As emily Dickinson said, “life is so astonish-

ing, it leaves very little time for anything else!”

so how do you offer yourself to such intimate inhabiting of

this very moment of life? The poised alert state of Zazen pre-

sumes nothing; with a simple, ruthless kindliness, it just avoids

inattentiveness and preferences.

When you choose not to object to what’s going on, the lovely

thing is that it has a much harder time becoming objectionable.

And when you persistently drop each arising impulse to control

or engineer things for ever-improved “outcomes,” you can dis-

cover the peculiar contentment, low-lit and wondrously “ordi-

nary” inside the subtle action of the mind of not-doing. ♦

M e l i S S a M y o z e n B l ac k e r is the abbot of Boundless Way Zen,

a community with Zen practice centers throughout New England. She

also teaches mindfulness programs and retreats.

Koans One with the QuestionThe enlightenment stories of the ancient masters are confounding to conventional mind. Their truth,

says melissa myoZen BlacKer , is revealed only when our whole being becomes the koan.

© T

He

Ne

ls

ON

-AT

KIN

s m

us

eu

m O

F A

rT

, K

AN

sA

s c

ITY

, m

Iss

Ou

rI.

Pu

rc

HA

se

: W

Ill

IAm

rO

cK

HIl

l N

el

sO

N T

ru

sT

, 7

2-5

Above: Hanshan and Shide, Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Luo Ping, Chinese (1733-1799). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

SHAMBHALA SUN JULy 2014 SHAMBHALA SUN JULy 2014 5150

Page 4: Your Guide to Buddhist Meditation · 2018. 9. 17. · Insight Meditation Loving-Kindness Zen Meditation Visualization Walking Meditation Dzogchen and more… Your Guide to Buddhist

We’re pleased to offer you this article from the new issue of Shambhala Sun magazine.

Like what you see? Then please consider subscribing.

$6.99 US / $7.99 Canada

Simple, powerful techniques for real relief

from what puts you on edge—at work, at home,

in relationships, and more. A special section

for living in a stressed-out world.

Always Beginner’s Mind

San Francisco Zen

Center at 50

The Novelist’s Path

Kim Stanley Robinson,

Susan Dunlap, Cary Groner

SHAMBHALA SUNB U D D H I S M C U LT U R E M E D I TAT I O N L I F E S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 2

D I A N E A C K E R M A N • C H Ö G YA M T R U N G PA O N M A H A M U D R A • T H E V I R T U E S O F B O R E D O M • W A B I S A B I

Real Peacein Times of Stress

abacuswealth.com/shambhala888-422-2287

GRAND OPENING NEW YORK CITY SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA • LOS ANGELES • PHILADELPHIA

We’d like to think he would help people dedicate more time, money and energy to what matters most, and invest in a way that reduces suffering.

Our fi nancial advice is based on Nobel-prize winning research and the Buddhist practices of awareness, simplicity, equanimity, and non-harming.

Located at Rockefeller Center, our newest offi ce is close to Wall Street.

But not too close.

How WouldBuddhaOccupyWall St�eet?

$6.9

9 U

S /

$7.

99 C

anad

a

3 STEPS TO CREATIVE POWER • HOW TO LIVE IN OUR TOPSY-TURVY WORLD • NO-SELF 2.0

Pema Chödrön

Feminine PrincipalWomen teachers changing Buddhism

ICU for the SoulPico Iyer on the healing power of retreat

Don’t Go ThereA Jewish Buddhist in Germany

B U D D H I S M C U LT U R E M E D I TAT I O N L I F E N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 2

A Greater HappinessThe compassionate life of the bodhisattva-warrior

B U D D H I S M C U LT U R E M E D I TAT I O N L I F E J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 4

RAM DASS • HOW TO PRACTICE MET TA • ARE YOU TRULY L ISTENING? • ANYEN RINPOCHE

Joyful Giving’Tis always the seasonWhat Makes Us Free?Practical and profound guidance from

Jack Kornfield & Joseph GoldsteinBe a Lamp Unto Yourself Unpacking the Buddha’s famous exhortation

Thich Nhat HanhSit in on a transformational retreat—and exclusive interview—with this masterful teacher of Zen and mindfulness.

ABOUT USThe Shambhala Sun is more than today’s most popular Buddhist-inspired magazine. Practical, accessible, and yet profound, it’s for people like you, who want to lead a more meaningful, caring, and awakened life.

From psychology, health, and relationships to the arts, media, and politics; we explore all the ways that Buddhist practice and insight benefit our lives. The intersection between Buddhism and culture today is rich and innovative. And it’s happening in the pages of the Shambhala Sun.

JOIN US ONLINEShambhalaSun.com | Facebook | Twitter

CLICK HEREto subscribe and save 50% immediately.