I teach meditation at a local alcohol and drug abuse center. Last week a person in my class stated he knew how to meditate and was there to follow his technique which began by becoming fully relaxed stretched-out on a chair and ottoman. I suggested meditation had many forms and my teachings were not about relaxation. I was informed that he needed to be in my class to get credit for attendance (program schedule attendance) He followed my teachings and when finished expressed what I taught did not work for him as well as his method. I pleaded my case and he did the same.
I am coming to appreciate that zazen is not meditation. That is it is not meditation as generally defined. One of the more popular “apps” for meditation is Calm.
Here the emphasis is on object centered meditation or focusing. That is exerting awareness in the direction of the object, call this “getting into.” This getting into also called focusing can be further expressed as pushing out awareness into the object like grunting when trying to unscrew a jar lid. In this construct you are something active trying hard to reach an end.
I have noticed two “meditation” methods that are used by folks in their recovery practice. One is program Recovery Dharma and the second is coloring.
So, I recall my teacher saying once… “there is more than one way to skin a zen cat.” Here I go.
Rather than argue about forms of meditation I offer that Zazen is a form of zazen and not a form of meditation. In the two approaches sanctioned above I can see benefits relative addressing anxiety and ways to calm stress as prescriptive. Activities generally called therapeutic as in writing, art, breathing. In this example, to do no harm must be addressed, in order not to over promise the benefits.
Going back to Dogen’s Shikantaza (underlining by me):
- Non-instrumental: Not a means to an end; practice = realization.
- Posture as Dharma: Physical sitting is inseparable from awakening.
- No stages or methods: Not breath-counting, not concentration, not analysis.
- Shikantaza (Just Sitting): Pure presence, neither suppressing nor cultivating states.
- Body-and-mind dropped off: Radical non-attachment, beyond even “awareness of awareness.”
I do not teach meditation, I help others explore Shikantaza, which is a way of experiencing Buddha Nature, or seeing (through) the Right View of The Noble Eight FoldPath, an ongoing process of pure presence, which includes the interplay of the arbitrary separation of body, breath, sensory awareness, and thinking, as this usual “sense of” body and mind drops away.
Sangkau