This is a great article with some little heard advice. Warning! This isn’t for the politically correct. Here’s the original. Below is just an excerpt of his excellent advice. He really doesn’t let you get away with excuses. His comment that if you’re too fat to sit correctly, you should lose weight is classic. Enjoy.
Zazen is not a “spiritual” practice. It is the effort of mind and body. Body and mind are one and the same. If you were not born with eighteen slimy green tentacles instead of legs — or whatever — and you still cannot manage the lotus position, this is evidence that you have abused your body for many, many years. If you don’t believe me, find me one able bodied three year old who cannot do the lotus position or indeed bend her body in ways most accomplished yogis or gymnasts would envy. You had that ability too when you were that age and you lost it. No, let me be more direct. You threw it away. And if the body is not right, neither is the mind.
Zazen is very much a physical practice. As with any physical practice, there are right ways and wrong ways to do it. Keeping the spine straight using your own ability to balance the vertebrae on top of each other without any effort is the key to good zazen. Zazen is all about achieving physical as well as mental balance because they are the same thing. While sitting in zazen you’re trying to maintain balance in your posture. Sit like you would if you had one of your rich Aunt Betty’s antique porcelain dishes worth a couple hundred bucks balanced on top of your head. Stay straight and your mind will settle of its own accord. You won’t need to count your breath or think about a koan or any of that silliness if you just keep your posture right.
If you’re too fat to do zazen, try losing some weight. If your legs are too stiff, try doing what I did and learning some other yoga exercises to loosen those muscles up. Nothing worthwhile comes without effort. People who tell you you can do zazen just as well lying down or in a chair or on a kneeling bench are fooling you. Those kinds of practices are only for people who absolutely can’t do anything else. They’re effective practices for people who really, truly need them. That doesn’t mean they’ll work just as well for someone who doesn’t.
8 responses so far ↓
1 wujimon // Jul 4, 2007 at 2:09 pm
totally agree, zazen IS NOT easy and takes effort. How is this not different than taiji? All practices, IMO, take effort and require time and patience.
I remember the first time I did zazen, my ankles were killing me and I was just sitting in normal cross-leg fashion.
2 mo // Jul 4, 2007 at 3:45 pm
what he says is so true. there is a very real connection between posture and mental state. while i wouldn’t go all the way as to abolish props such as the kneeling bench, practicioners should understand that these are temporary, and the final goal should always be to be able to come into any posture without the use of any external help.
this also applies to zhan zhuang. while people tend to start out in high poses because they cannot physically accomplish the lower stances, many of them do not progress and stay stuck in high postures.
3 Chris @ Martial Development // Jul 6, 2007 at 2:44 am
On one hand, it’s a good article. On the other hand, it’s an excellent illustration of the issue I complained about earlier, ending with nonsense: “what you discover by [non-seated] practices is not Reality.” WTF?
If you can’t write 500 true words, better stop at 490.
4 taijiquestion // Jul 6, 2007 at 7:46 am
Great topic! Fatness has never been my problem; quite the reverse.
I recall clearly that in younger days, possibly up into my twenties, I could sit full Lotus. I never valued it much, and certainly I was no meditator. I was somewhat proud of my raging Monkey Mind always doing gymnastics.
Later in life when I wanted to pursue the Eastern arts, I found that full Lotus was no longer available to me. I can sit half-lotus without much trouble, but I regret letting the other slip away.
My young son is the type of “natural yogi” that the excerpted article mentions. My boy is 9 now and I remind him to value his tremendous flexibilty and movement skills.
I’d be curious if anyone out there had the goods at one time like I did, then lost it, but was able to reclaim. And how exactly.
5 taijiquestion // Jul 6, 2007 at 7:55 am
BTW, I’ve worked on a Yoga approach to the Lotus problem as well as my other wild goose, the full front split. But I’m not going to do tons of yoga for any reason, it’s just not in the cards for me. Taijiquan is my focus now.
I hope that TJQ can address the meditation side of things for me, but it would be nice to have traditional Zazen. I’ve read that if you get the posture just right, then you’re in like flint, you’re there! Mind will follow body.
I guess it all comes down to choices. And “magic bullets” usually in scarce supply.
6 chessman71 // Jul 6, 2007 at 9:38 am
Taijiquestion,
Yeah, that’s where I’m at now regarding some tings. I could do splits, etc. when I was doing tangsoodo in my teens and early twenties. Now that I’m older, I’m finding that I have issue related to my lower body flexibility because I didn’t keep it up. In order for me to advance, I need to go back a bit and regain those abilities. But as you say, it’s much tougher now. I need a few more tools in the tool kit to do it beyond just taiji.
7 taijiquestion // Jul 7, 2007 at 2:57 am
Thanks Chessman, I can’t think of better areas for folks like us (health and ability minded) to “keep after” while we each of us push our limits.
I liked & disliked this writer’s drill-sargent style of presenting his material. But in the end Martial Development makes a good point. Why go overboard with flaming statements, when your material is otherwise pretty right-on?
The one that got me was when he implied that anybody should be able to do full lotus sitting, and then throws out the “many years of self-abuse” taunt. Sure, I abused my body for years like a lot of us did; Macho Man rides again. But how about Betty the Librarian, or Frank the Florist; how did they squander their god-given abilities? By not doing Yoga lifestyle since childhood, seems to be the implication. No need to oversell Yoga, it’s a great practice. Thanks for exploring that current issue in your blog.
8 scott // Jul 8, 2007 at 4:27 am
Well, I don’t mind saying this guy is an ignoramus about the body.
Not only is he obviously on a superiority trip, I’ll bet he believes that Zazen was brought to China from India. Actually the earliest written account of the original practice that inspired Zazen is Chinese and is found in the Neiye, ~400BCE. The early practices of Buddhism were more like Vipassina.
It is true that the posture must be correct, but there are at least 3 orthodox postures which use a stable base to support an upright spine. (This, by the way predates the invention of the chair.) Unorthodox postures could work also, but I wouldn’t recommend an uneven posture like half-lotus. Still… chill out.
Yes before puberty I could get into lotus with out pain or injury. But duh, my hips grew. Specifically the size of my greater trochantor makes the lotus posture impossible to do with out causing injury. I’m willing to bet that I’m more flexible than this guy, I can do the splits, and I can put a straight leg above my head and a bent leg behind my head. My legs work very well thank you.
We are not all the same.
Orthodox Daoism teaches virtually the same practice as zazen but gives it different names, the one I practice is called zuowang “sitting and forgetting.” For people who are old and decrepit there is even a traditional meditation “crutch” that you can get to hold up your head. I’m sure it works just fine.
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