Hardcore Zen_ Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality - Brad Warner [77]
The Complete Posture
The traditional hand-position is what’s called the universal mudra.
The Universal Mudra
You put your hands together facing palms-up at about belly-button level, then make a little circle with your thumbs together on top. The advantage of the full- or half-lotus posture here is that you can use your feet like a little table to rest your hands on when doing the mudra. Rest your wrists on the tops of your thighs.
Now sit there and breathe normally, not real deep, not real shallow. Not fast, not slow. Just let it go on, in and out. Don’t make any effort to stop your thoughts. But if you find yourself drifting off into some reverie, straighten your spine. In all my years of sitting, I’ve never found myself drifting off without my spine going correspondingly slack or out of alignment. When your posture is right, thoughts slow by themselves. Or they don’t. And if they don’t, don’t worry too much. Just keep on sitting.
You may find that your legs fall asleep. No big deal. If that happens you can do one of two things: not worry about it and just take your time standing up after zazen, so you don’t fall over, or you can shift your legs a little. Personally, I shift my legs and get back to zazen. Just be careful you don’t spend your entire time shifting around.
If you’ve absolutely gotta scratch, scratch. If you’ve absolutely gotta fix your legs cuz you’re just in excruciating pain or something, fix your legs. Whatever stuff like that needs doing, do it with as little fuss as possible and return to the position. But also experiment with not worrying about all that so much. Do this for as long as you can stand it, but no more than forty-five minutes at a stretch. And consistency on a day-to-day basis is far more important than duration at any one time.
Morning is the best time for zazen but evenings are also good. Twenty minutes in the morning and twenty before bed is good for starters. I try to put in an hour a day, but I’m a gung-ho kinda guy.
This style of zazen is traditionally called shikantaza, or “just sitting.” This is the real deal, sisters and brothers. This is hardcore Zen. There are other forms of meditation where you’re given objects to concentrate on, mantras to recite, special ways of breathing and so on. There are practices that grade certain levels of concentration, leading students from the lowest levels up to the most exalted. There are temples where they come around and whack you with a stick if they think you’re not sitting right. Hardcore Zen isn’t like that. Everything non-essential has been stripped away. That other stuff is like swimming with Water-Wings® or riding a bike with training wheels. You won’t really learn to balance on your bike until you take the training wheels off, and you’ll never learn how to keep yourself afloat if you don’t you ditch the Water-Wings®. When you’re ready for the real thing, you’ve gotta lose the props. No two ways about it.
The practice of zazen has to be approached with care. Remember those demons I told you about? You’ve got ‘em too. And if you’re not careful they can do real damage. If things start getting a little too heavy, back off for a while. Stop doing zazen if it really starts to bug you. Or seek out a good teacher or even a therapist if that’s your thing.
Probably, though, zazen will just be boring.
But as simple as zazen is, it’s best to have a teacher. Your teacher is a friend who can help you deal with the things that come up during the practice. Good ones aren’t that hard to find. The best Zen teachers don’t go making fools of themselves by writing books, like me. They’re mostly quiet, unassuming folks with little groups. Don’t worry whether the teacher you find is going