CHAPTER
3

A Zen Practice of Your Own

In This Chapter

If you’re the kind of person who likes to jump right into doing, read this chapter for instructions on how to get yourself a Zen practice of your very own. As you meditate and try other practices for yourself, you’ll have some personal experience as a context for the rest of this book.

If you’re not sure you even want a Zen practice, skip this chapter and read more about Zen methods and teachings in the next two parts of this book. You can always come back to learn about how to work zazen and mindfulness into your everyday life in an effective and sustainable way.

What Is a “Zen Practice”?

If you read any Zen texts or talk to any Zen practitioners, chances are good that you will hear the word “practice” over and over again. Zen Master Dogen will remind you that “practice” and enlightenment are one. “How’s your practice going?” one student will ask another. Someone else will confess, “I haven’t been practicing much lately.” What does practice mean in a Zen context?

Practice is a wonderful English word for what Zen students and teachers are trying to talk about because it has several different meanings. In one sense, a practice is a discipline, such as a martial arts practice or a medical practice. In this sense Zen practice is your engagement with the tradition as a whole, including its goals, methods, and standards of behavior. However, this is the shallowest interpretation of the word practice in Zen. Most Zen practitioners would agree that you don’t have to be doing explicitly Zen stuff to be practicing.

At another level, practice refers to something you decide to do regularly. In this sense you “make it a practice” to always eat a good breakfast, or you “make a practice of” always telling the truth. Interpreted this way, a Zen practice is about choosing to make certain activities, ideals, or approaches a regular part of your life. Such things include explicitly Zen activities like meditation, but they also include your intention to be patient with your kids, or your effort to be alert and aware as you go about your day. This is where another meaning of the English word practice becomes relevant: practice to become better at something. There’s a kind of humility communicated by the term Zen practice, because it acknowledges you never reach perfection.

CONSIDER THIS

In case you feel a little inhibited about making the decision to start a Zen practice, consider doing it on a trial basis, or even secretly. No one ever has to know you gave it a try or that you decided to give it up. Your practice is entirely your own business.

At an even more subtle level, Zen practice is approaching each moment of your life with awareness and the intention to decrease suffering for yourself or others. At this level, you don’t even decide ahead of time how you want to act or how you want things to go. You just meet the next thing with as much attention and openness as you can muster, and try to see clearly what response will relieve suffering or increase real happiness. Then you do your best to offer that response. Although this aspect of practice is subtle, it’s also something you can do at any time, no matter what else you’re doing or what’s going on around you.

Making Zazen a Habit

Even though Zen practice can be a subtle, way-you-approach-each-moment practice, it helps to have a few specific things to start working on if you’d like to develop a Zen practice of your own.

The one explicitly Zen activity that a Zen practice needs is zazen, the Zen form of seated meditation. There’s no rule that says how often you have to meditate, but if you don’t sit zazen at all you won’t really know what Zen practice is about. The reasons for this may not be immediately obvious to you, even if you start meditating! Suffice it to say that zazen develops a part of you that is usually highly neglected. How often do you deliberately settle into just being, without any agenda at all—even the agenda to enjoy yourself?

The simple act of sitting down to do zazen, even for a short session, reorients your day. Every-thing else you experience ends up being seen from the perspective of someone who is looking for something deeper in life than just getting by. Sitting zazen regularly shifts the frame of reference for your life. If you want to make a habit of it, here are a few things to try.

Regularity over Session Length

Because zazen can have such a positive influence on your day, it’s valuable to do it every day you have the time. Most people find 20 to 40 minutes is a good length for a meditation session because it gives their mind some time to settle. However, if you aren’t going to sit because you don’t have 20 minutes to spare, sit for 10. If you are very busy and find yourself resisting even 10 minutes, try 5. Actually, sitting zazen for 30 seconds is better than nothing.

What can you achieve in 10 minutes, 5 minutes, or 30 seconds? On the one hand, you can’t achieve much—but then, we’re not trying to achieve anything in zazen, so that’s okay. On the other hand, each time you sit, you’re building the habit of taking the zazen posture. You start to notice the difference sitting makes in your life. Chances are good that you’ll actually enjoy certain moments of your meditation, too—like when your body finally catches up with your mind and you think, “Oh, hello life! There you are!”

A Designated Time and Space

In developing a habit of zazen, some people find it’s helpful to choose a regular time of day to sit. The time you choose depends on your schedule and responsibilities, of course, but it also depends on what time of day you find it easiest to settle the mind and body but still stay alert. Some people prefer the morning, others the evening. Few people prefer the afternoon (it tends to feel like siesta time once you sit down), but any time of day is fine if it works for you.

You may need to sit quietly in your bedroom in the morning before you let the kids know you’re up, or you might sit as soon as you get home from work because that’s when there’s no one else in the house. Get creative if you need to, and don’t be shy about letting other people know you’re sitting zazen; your effort can lend a vicarious calm to the other people you live with.

If you have the space to do it, it can be very helpful to designate a place just for zazen. I once moved some furniture so I could have a tiny, private meditation space in a corner of the bedroom I shared with my husband. Some people are able to set up a meditation room. It helps if the space can be free from clutter, but all it needs to accommodate is a rectangular meditation mat about 2 feet by 3 feet. You can buy one of these online to lend an air of specialness to your meditation space, but you can also just use a folded blanket. Even if you sit in a chair, a mat of some kind under the chair helps designate the space for meditation.

If you like, you can set up a simple altar with a Buddha statue, a picture of someone you admire, or something natural like a beautiful stone; an altar can help focus your intention. Some people also find burning incense during meditation becomes a mnemonic device; when they smell the incense, they remember the meditative frame of mind. If you have a space where you always meditate and burn incense, the space will usually end up having a pleasant smell that reminds you of meditation, even when the incense isn’t burning.

CONSIDER THIS

Some people new to Zen feel uncomfortable with the use of altars, whether this is because they are non-religious or because they perceive a Zen altar as somewhat sacrilegious. However, altars are a natural human expression of reverence for something. You probably have one in your home, although you may not call it an altar: a clean, special, attractive, elevated space for objects or pictures that portray or represent important things to you. A Zen altar is usually about honoring meditation, wisdom or compassion, and it can be a meaningful addition to your meditation space.

On the other hand, don’t let a chaotic schedule or the lack of a designated space keep you from sitting. Grab opportunities wherever you can! I’ve known people who sit a little zazen behind the wheel of their parked car during their lunch hour. You can keep your meditation mat or blanket in a closet and pull it out to make a little meditation space whenever you find a quiet ten minutes. The important thing is that you do it.

The Right Equipment

If you can sit zazen for a prolonged period without discomfort, no problem! If you can’t, consider investing in a meditation mat (often called a zabuton), cushion, or bench, which can be found online.

Many people are amazed when they first sit on a proper meditation cushion, often called a zafu, after having improvised with pillows and blankets at home. Zafus are much sturdier than most pillows you have lying around the house. They’re often stuffed with kapok, a cottonlike substance that resists compression, or with buckwheat hulls. A substantial meditation cushion can give you 3 or 4 inches of loft off the ground, whereas most pillows are going to compress down to 1 or 2 inches under your weight. Stacks of pillows might give you loft but are unstable. Zafus are also round, which reduces the chance that the blood supply to your legs will get cut off while you sit.

You might also find a seiza bench a liberating addition to your meditation practice. (You can find an illustration of someone using a seiza bench in Chapter 4.) These short little benches sit over your calves as you kneel on the floor, so you can sit down on them rather than resting your weight on your feet. They don’t require much physical flexibility to use, and they support a good, upright alignment of the spine.

DEFINITION

A zabuton is a rectangular mat you sit on during meditation. It’s usually about 2 feet by 3 feet and stuffed with cotton to cushion your legs from the floor. A zafu is a sturdy round cushion made specifically for sitting in a cross-legged posture. A seiza bench is a short bench you sit on while kneeling on the floor.

Joining a Zen Group

Many people feel wary about joining a group of any kind, especially one that might be considered spiritual or religious. You might have had a negative experience with organized religion, or suspect group membership might become oppressive or compromise your ability to think clearly and independently. Fortunately, the professed function of a Zen group is to support your own process of awakening to truth, not to provide you with a dogma to accept. If you encounter a Zen group that seems to discourage questioning, disagreement, and thinking for yourself, find a different group.

If you have visited a group that feels right to you, consider making a habit of practicing regularly with them, particularly for meditation. It can help a great deal with maintaining a regular sitting practice on your own. For one thing, if you participate with a group every week or two, you will at least sit zazen that often! For another, the experience with the group will probably inspire you to sit at other times.

Whether or not you enjoy socializing, there’s no way around the fact that you are a social being. Humans inspire, encourage, and influence one another. When you spend time with other people who are making zazen and Zen practice part of their lives, you know it’s possible, and you might even get some good ideas about how to maintain your own practice in the midst of a busy life.

A group will also usually have a teacher or a leader—or at least some practitioners more experienced than you are—who can give you personalized advice about your zazen. Be sure to ask them about any physical discomfort you experience during meditation. They may be able to suggest a better posture for you. Also ask for ideas about things like how to better calm your mind, how to let go of persistent thoughts or feelings, or how to know whether you’re making the right kind of effort. You may be surprised to find that any struggles you’re having with zazen are not at all unique to you, and that there are all kinds of different things you can try to improve your zazen.

Attending a Retreat

Just as it’s valuable to take an intensive course in something you want to understand or master, it’s very useful to attend a meditation retreat to deepen and improve your zazen. At a Zen retreat you will end up sitting in meditation for 4 to 8 hours a day, and you will usually also receive guidance in your meditation through lectures, workshops, or personal interviews with a teacher.

Retreats can last a single day or up to a week or even 10 days. The longer a retreat, the more likely your mind and body will eventually settle, despite themselves, and you will experience a more still and spacious meditation than you usually do in the midst of daily life. This can instruct you as to what is possible in meditation, and give you an idea of what to work toward in your daily zazen.

If you can’t attend a retreat because of physical discomfort during zazen or because of your life responsibilities, don’t be discouraged in your zazen practice. Still, if you get the opportunity, there’s nothing like a retreat to energize and clarify your efforts in meditation. You can often attend a retreat for just a single day, so you may be able to work it into your life even if you’re very busy.

Zen off the Cushion

Actually, not only is Zen not limited to zazen, it shouldn’t be. There’s an essay on zazen by Zen Master Dogen that’s recited in Zen centers and temples across the world, and it states that zazen is not meditation practice! It also asks how becoming a buddha, or awakening, could be limited to sitting or lying down. This is because the mind-body posture you take in zazen—alert, upright, still, and open—is the mind-body posture you want to take in all aspects of your life.

It’s relatively easy to be still and open when you’re seated in meditation. It’s not easy, but it’s much easier than it is when you’re driving in heavy traffic, deciding how to get by on a slim budget, or arguing with a significant other! It’s when you get up off the cushion that your practice is really tested. While sitting you may have a pleasant experience of calm or a nice insight about how everything is interconnected, but that calm and insight can disappear in an instant when you’re challenged by life. Therefore, you need to study and experiment with how Zen practice looks and feels in all kinds of different circumstances.

POTENTIAL PITFALL

Most people only have so many hours in a week that they can devote to explicitly Zen activities, whether they spend it meditating, reading about Zen, listening to talks, practicing mindfulness in the garden, or volunteering with their Zen group. All of these things can be useful, but when you choose how to spend your Zen hours, beware of wanting them to be productive. The most useful Zen practice is taking the time to put everything down and be still.

After all, even if you sit zazen every day for an hour or more, the bulk of your waking hours are going to be spent off the meditation cushion. How do you practice Zen while going about your day—eating, working, playing, or interacting with others? How do you integrate Zen into your life, rather than letting it make things busier or more complicated than they already are? Fortunately Zen is about living your life, so there are all kinds of ways to take Zen off the cushion.

Practice Applies to Everything

To illustrate how Zen practice can apply to everything in your life, it may help to describe how Zen practice might look throughout a typical day. More details about Zen methods can be found in Part 2 of this book, so here I’ll just mention which ones are relevant and how they might be used in a given circumstance.

As soon as you turn off the alarm in the morning, you have an opportunity to work with your habits. Do you greet the coming day with some enthusiasm, or do you have a sense of dread or being overwhelmed? Primarily you just notice how you feel, but you can also work on clarity by looking deeper. Do you really feel overwhelmed, or is that just a habit of mind? Can you try on a different state of mind, and if so, how does that feel? All of this reflection can happen as you get out of bed and stand brushing your teeth in the bathroom; there’s no need for your movements to become ponderous.

As you stretch away the stiffness of a night’s sleep, there’s an opportunity for mindfulness. You notice your breath and the sensations in your body. As your mind leaps on the chance to worry about whether you are getting enough exercise, you cultivate mindfulness by letting the thoughts pass and returning your attention to your bodily sensations. Then, as you arrive in the kitchen for breakfast, you have a chance to work on not indulging anger when you notice your roommate has left dirty dishes in the sink again.

On the drive to work you notice your apprehension about a meeting you have later in the day, and decide to take some time to work on clarity. You examine your thoughts and feelings more closely. What is it about your boss that makes you feel defensive? You realize that your boss reminds you of your mother, and that she triggers in you a sense that you’re not qualified to be in charge of things. This realization opens up a possibility that you can react differently to your boss by noticing how your job situation is nothing like your childhood.

CONSIDER THIS

Get creative with your Zen, and see if you can practice it in the most unlikely places, at the most unlikely times. When waiting at the doctor’s office, notice your impatience and the way your mind would rather avoid the thought of how serious illness can get. When drinking wine and eating cake at a friend’s wedding, be mindful of the vicarious joy you get from the love being experienced by others, and the fluffiness of the frosting on the cake!

At work you have many chances to work on behaving morally and compassionately—not being dishonest, not gossiping about others, being generous. Throughout the day you return to the sensations of your breath in order to be more present; you begin to recognize how worrying about the future actually makes you less efficient.

After work you get to observe a habit of eating and drinking too much. You know your patterns won’t change overnight, but you at least try to increase your awareness of the choices you make and their repercussions. You acknowledge the energy it took to at least have the salad instead of the fries. Later you practice mindful appreciation of a friend who spends some time with you, and as you meditate before bed you get a sense that life is about continually learning.

There you go—Zen practice from dawn to dusk. It doesn’t have to be burdensome; it can be a constant companion that can turn otherwise boring, annoying, or difficult experiences into opportunities.

It’s Not Practice Versus Life

It’s not unusual to feel some friction when you start practicing Zen. To the extent that you’re able to change your mind and behavior, you may find others frustrated with you—especially if you’re spending lots of time meditating that you used to spend with your partner, or you’re suddenly trying not to abuse intoxicants while your friends still partake liberally.

Ideally your Zen practice is about waking up to, embracing, and more fully living your life. Some changes are necessary, but it’s good to be a little gentle with your life and the other people in it. Try not to neglect your relationships, but instead adapt your Zen practice to include them.

Also try not to annoy people with too much talk about Zen or the great things you’ve realized since you started studying it. (Look for other Zen practitioners to talk to about these things; they can go on for hours about it.) Instead, try to quietly manifest what you’ve learned, and practice listening to others. You’ll know you’ve hit the right balance between taking care of your life and changing it when someone suggests you take some time to go do your meditation because it makes you happier or nicer.

A sense of friction may also arise between the explicitly Zen parts of your life and the rest of it, which can seem chaotic, demanding, and agitating in comparison. People often find that while they’re meditating, or spending time with a Zen group, or reading Zen books, they can access a still, centered, and appreciative state of mind that evades them at most other times. When this is the case, it’s natural that some aversion arises to aspects of your life that tend to knock you off your Zen center.

Aversion or frustration is especially likely to arise if you have to put up with dysfunctional work or family situations, or have so many demands on your time that you can hardly think straight. It may be time to address the situations that are bothering you, but these situations are also extremely rich fields for practice. After all, you won’t always be able to set things up the way you’d like them, so you might as well get some practice trying to be Zen in the midst of less-than-conducive conditions. Just understand that it is difficult to practice in these situations, and don’t expect to feel as connected to Zen there as you do on your meditation seat.

Keeping It Up over Time

Hopefully you will feel some immediate benefits from Zen practice so you will feel inspired to continue. Still, if you do keep it up, there will inevitably come a time when practice starts to feel a little dull or fruitless. You need to know how to keep your practice going through these times, because mastering the art of living takes a lifetime! Think of practicing 10, 20, or 30 years; how can you approach Zen in order to be able to sustain your practice that long?

Patience, Patience, Patience

Your path of learning and development—in life as well as in Zen practice—is rarely straightforward. Sometimes it can seem like the harder you want to change something, do something, or understand something, the less likely it is to happen. Sometimes the goals you had a year ago, or 10 years ago, morph into something different as you go along, so it’s not really clear where you’re going in the long term.

It’s best to think of your Zen practice like baking a loaf of bread or cultivating a garden. In both of these examples, you’re depending on living organisms (yeast or plants) to bring about the desired result. Depending on the materials you start out with—your altitude and climate, your oven or soil—the amount of time it takes to produce what you want differs, as does the resulting product. Sometimes your bread rises quickly, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s done in an hour, other times you take it out after an hour and it’s still not fully baked. You may have planted a certain kind of flower in your garden but then find it doesn’t thrive, while another kind takes off.

If you want to be a good gardener or bread baker, you work on understanding your own circumstances and adapt. Perhaps you even choose a slightly different goal—still a garden, still bread, but something you will be able to achieve beautifully given your materials, skills, and conditions. You also come to appreciate how these things can’t be rushed; more water and fertilizer is only going to help a plant grow faster up to a point, past which they will actually kill the plant. If you turn up the heat on your bread, you will just wreck it. If you come to view your own practice and development like bread baking or gardening, you naturally become more patient and flexible. After all, the material for your Zen practice is a living organism—you.

Not Judging Your Practice

While it’s true that you may be too hard on yourself, or unable to accurately evaluate the “good” of your Zen practice, neither of these is the most important reason to avoid judging your practice. The most important reason is that evaluating the effectiveness or rewards of your practice involves exactly the discriminating mind that you are seeking liberation from! This is why Zen Master Dogen spoke of the “goal of goallessness.” However, it can be hard to be goalless about a practice like Zen, which takes lots of effort and sets out plenty of ideals for you to set your sights on.

Imagine this approach: you simply practice, meditating and incorporating Zen teachings and methods into your life. You do this in a steady, dedicated way, without constantly asking, “Is it worth it? Is the payoff of this effort outweighing the costs?” You go about practice the way you would go about taking care of anything that’s your responsibility. When you take care of your children, clean your house, brush your teeth, or support a good friend, do you consider whether the effort is worth it? No, because these are just things you have to do. You don’t even do them because you want to; it’s not a matter of wanting to or not wanting to. It’s a matter of living your life.

POTENTIAL PITFALL

Spiritual materialism is approaching spiritual practice with the same sense of gain or loss with which you might approach your career or your material wealth. When you are caught up in spiritual materialism, you base your actions on the idea that you lack something, and therefore strive to obtain it (such as a particular insight). Alternatively, you may think you have it while others don’t, and you strive to keep it. Spiritual materialism obscures the reality that wisdom and liberation are reached by realizing your sufficiency here and now, that this sufficiency is the same for everyone, and that it cannot be possessed.

In the West many people suffer from a deep sense of inadequacy, so many Zen students carry around a sense that their practice is small, half-hearted, less than it should be, or at least less than the practice of some other people. This is unfortunate, because thinking like this can put a glass ceiling on your practice. If you’ve written yourself off as a halfway practitioner, you’ll probably remain that way. Yet Zen, as the art of living, is unlike any other kind of discipline or skill. It’s not about getting good at something else, it’s about wholeheartedly embracing your life as it is. No matter what your practice or life looks like, fully embraced and lived it is perfect Zen.

Learning to Shrug

It’s great to be able to avoid taking yourself and your Zen practice too seriously. I once got a fortune in a cookie that summarized this perfectly: “The beginning of wisdom is the ability to shrug.” At the time that seemed to me like a very high expectation, because I was in the middle of some acute personal suffering. What on earth could it mean, to shrug? Wouldn’t that require a callous disinterest? How can you possibly cultivate a disinterest in your own experience of suffering?

Fortunately, the ability to avoid taking yourself too seriously is not a matter of cultivating disinterest in yourself, it’s a matter of broadening your perspective. Here’s an analogy: a small child breaks his favorite crayon. He is devastated and comes to you crying uncontrollably. You don’t judge him for being upset, you feel empathy for his pain, but you also know that a broken crayon is not the end of the world. There will be other crayons, and there will be a time in the not-so-distant future when the child will be able to move beyond the pain of the broken crayon and be engrossed in something else. You comfort the child, let him cry it out, and gently encourage him by reassuring him that you can get him another crayon or by distracting him with another activity.

In this scenario there is (hopefully) no point where you think, “Stupid child, getting upset about something so insignificant.” The crayon is not insignificant to him, and if you were in his situation it wouldn’t be insignificant to you. Yours is not a superior view, it’s just a bigger view.

Our adult trials, tribulations, and longings are similar to this child’s lament for his crayon. There’s no way to judge our concerns as being ultimately worthy of attention or not; if we experience them as challenging, then they are. Over time, however, we can cultivate a larger view—particularly one that’s not limited to the world of our small sense of self. The farther out we can place our boundaries in time and space, the more we can contain with some equanimity.

For example, if you don’t feel so separate from other people, your own misfortune is contained in a broader landscape and there’s a chance life won’t appear so utterly bleak when things are going badly for you. Or if you’ve watched your own mind states carefully over time, you realize how completely they arise and fall, so even in the middle of anguish you understand it won’t last forever.

It’s never appropriate to shrug when it comes to someone else’s pain, or your own experience of trauma or loss—after all, you don’t shrug off the child who has broken his crayon. There’s a time for empathy, sympathy, and healing. The shrug comes in when you start to evaluate your own practice and response to things. When the thought occurs to you, “I shouldn’t be so upset about this,” you shrug because you recognize this is just impatience arising. Naturally, you’d rather have achieved the ability to maintain more equanimity, but you know that by simply being present with your feelings they will pass away more quickly.

When you feel inadequate and frustrated because you want to understand a Zen teaching, or experience liberation, or achieve whatever improvement of character or understanding strikes your fancy, there comes a time in life or practice when you are able to shrug about your own longing. You are able to see the longing as a feeling that arises within a much larger sense of who you are, so it can be observed and dealt with instead of becoming all-consuming.

ZEN WISDOM

“Magnanimous Mind is like a mountain, stable and impartial. Exemplifying the ocean, it is tolerant and views everything from the broadest perspective. Having a Magnanimous Mind means being without prejudice and refusing to take sides …. Do not get carried away by the sounds of spring, nor become heavy-hearted upon seeing the colors of fall. View the changes of the seasons as a whole ….”

—Zen Master Dogen (1200–1253), from “Instructions for the Zen Cook,” as translated by Thomas Wright in From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Refining Your Life by Uchiyama Roshi

A Sense of Curiosity

Finally, to sustain a Zen practice over time, it is very valuable to maintain a sense of curiosity about yourself and your life. If you approach your practice with the attitude of a scholar or scientist, you will find yourself fascinating. After all, every human being is fascinating; we have incredibly complex minds, influenced by genetics, experience, and culture. The variations in our manifestations and the ways we can experience our lives are without limit.

It may sound a little weird, but it is possible to maintain a sense of curiosity through anything. For example, let’s say you suddenly experience anxiety attacks, and you’ve never had them before. Naturally you would like the anxiety to end, and you get to work on ways to relieve it. At the same time, however, you look deeply at your life. What is this anxiety about? Why is it coming out now? Have you been pushing away or avoiding something for too long? What ways of living might you need to reconsider?

However uncomfortable the experience, it provides an opportunity to learn something more about yourself and about how life works. Some Zen students will confess the rather unnerving experience of a slight sense of excitement when trouble hits as they wonder, “Hmmm … what am I going to learn?”

The Least You Need to Know