Zazen: Counting the Breath
The Japanese word zen means meditation, and the central practice of Zen is zazen, or sitting meditation, also simply called “sitting.” This book includes instructions in three slightly different forms of zazen, as well as several other forms of meditation. We will begin with a basic Zen meditation practice called “counting the breath.”
Getting Ready
Find a relatively quiet place, where you can sit undisturbed. Eventually, you will be able to do zazen in almost any environment, but especially in the beginning, a quiet space is helpful. If possible, the lighting should be dim, like twilight.
Wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothes. You don’t want to be wearing anything that constricts your breathing, so if you are wearing pants that are snug at the waist, you might want to undo the top button and loosen your belt. Remove your shoes. Either socks or bare feet are fine.
You will need a cushion that is several inches thick when compressed. Try a bed pillow folded in half or a rolled-up blanket, or try putting a sofa cushion on the floor and sitting on the edge of it.
If you want to make zazen a regular practice, I would recommend getting a zafu or a seiza bench to sit on. A zafu is a round meditation cushion, about a foot in diameter and about six inches thick, traditionally black or brown, stuffed with a plant fiber called kapok. A recent variation is a zafu stuffed with buckwheat hulls. A seiza bench is a small wooden bench, about six to eight inches high, used to support a kneeling position. (Benches of the same sort can be found at Christian retreat centers, where they’re called “prayer benches” or “kneeling benches.”)
The zafu or seiza bench is traditionally placed on top of a zabuton, a thick, squarish mat that cushions the knees and legs. For cross-legged positions, a carpeted floor is usually sufficient cushioning, but for kneeling positions it’s helpful to have extra cushioning. A blanket or two folded in half several times can function as a zabuton.
The only equipment you need for Zen practice is something good to sit on, though catalogs of Buddhist supplies and ads in Buddhist magazines will try to sell you all sorts of other stuff. The list of recommended resources at the back of the book includes sources of zafus, zabutons, seiza benches, and other supplies.
Finding a Sitting Position
You need to find a sitting position that allows you to have an upright spine and to be stable, still, and relatively comfortable. Zen meditation is not a matter of the mind only but of the whole person, the whole body-mind. An alert posture supports an alert mind, and an alert mind supports an alert posture.
The cross-legged positions have been time-tested for millennia as excellent positions for meditation—if you can get into one of them with some degree of comfort.
One position that works well for many people is the so-called Burmese position, in which both calves rest on the floor in front of you, parallel to one another and not actually crossed (see Figure 1).
If you’re fairly limber, you might try the half-lotus position, in which one calf is on the floor and the other calf is pulled up so that the foot rests on the opposite thigh (see Figure 2). This position torques the spine just a bit to one side, so if you mainly sit in the half-lotus position, it’s a good idea to switch which calf is on top occasionally so that the spine gets torqued to the other side sometimes.
Figure 1
Figure 2
For those who are exceptionally limber, the classic meditation posture is the full-lotus position, in which each foot rests on the opposite thigh (see Figure 3). This is the most balanced and stable position, but I know very few Zen practitioners who regularly sit in a full lotus, which most people find impossible or painful, even with practice.
In any of the cross-legged positions, sit on the front half of the zafu so that it acts as a sort of wedge under you, raising your buttocks off the floor while allowing both knees to touch the floor. If one or both of your knees don’t reach the floor at first, that’s fine. If you regularly sit in a cross-legged position, you’ll loosen up over time.
A cross-legged position you should not use is an ordinary “Indian-style” or “tailor” position, in which the calves are crossed, with both feet on the floor and both knees in the air. This position is not conducive to sitting up straight, and the circulation in the legs is cut off too easily.
You also can use a kneeling position, which many people find more comfortable than a cross-legged position. Kneel with your knees apart and your feet on either side of the zafu, and sit down on the front half of the zafu. If you want more height, turn the zafu on end. This way, your knees will not be bent at such a sharp angle, but you may feel a little more precariously balanced. Or you can use a seiza bench. Kneel, put the seiza bench so that its legs are on either side of your calves and the seat slants down toward the front, and sit on the bench (see Figure 4).
You also can sit in a chair. Sit with your back upright and your feet firmly planted on the floor, about shoulder-width apart. Do not lean against the back of the chair (see Figure 5). It will be easier to maintain your posture if you put a zafu (or your makeshift zafu) on the seat of the chair to act as a wedge so that your thighs slant down from hip to knee instead of being parallel to the floor. If you don’t have a cushion that will create this slant of the thighs, I would recommend putting a cushion between the chair back and your lower back to lean against and help keep your back upright.
Figure 4
Figure 5
I encourage you to experiment with various sitting positions to see what works best for your body. But please do not try to force your body into positions that will put stress on weak or injured hips, legs, or knees!
In all the sitting positions—cross-legged, kneeling, or sitting in a chair—tilt the top of your pelvis forward so that there is a curve in your lower back, with your abdomen protruding in front and your buttocks protruding in back. (Notice that this is exactly the opposite of a slouch, in which the top of the pelvis is tilted back.) The forward tilt of the pelvis and the curve of the lower back help keep the back upright with minimal effort from your muscles. And the downward slant of the thighs from hip to knee helps keep the pelvis tilted forward.
Sit with your spine long and tall, upright but not stiff. Imagine that you’re pushing up the sky with the crown of your head or that you’re a marionette on a string that pulls straight up from the top of your head. The energy that goes into sitting upright is all in the spine. Let everything else be loose and relaxed. The abdomen is relaxed. The shoulders are relaxed down and back. I sometimes feel like I’m a big laundry bag, with everything hanging in a loose, heavy lump from the drawstring pulling up at the top.
The head is upright, with the chin tucked slightly in and down, not jutting forward or lifted up. Viewed from the side, the ears are in a vertical line with the shoulders.
The mouth is closed (unless you’re congested and are having trouble breathing through your nose), with the tongue pressing lightly against the roof of your mouth to inhibit salivation.
There is a special hand position, or mudra, used in zazen. Take your dominant hand—your left hand if you’re left-handed or your right hand if you’re right-handed—and place it in your lap, palm up. Place the other hand on top of it, palm up, with the middle knuckles approximately overlapping, and touch your thumbs lightly together so that your hands form an oval. Let your hands rest in your lap, up against your abdomen, and let your arms hang loosely, with no tension in your arms or shoulders.
The eyes are kept open in zazen. This helps prevent drowsiness and supports awareness of the here and now. Let your gaze fall at about a forty-five-degree angle, resting on the floor three to four feet in front of you. Let your eyelids be relaxed and droopy, and let your gaze be relaxed and somewhat unfocused. At some Zen centers and monasteries, you sit facing a wall, in which case you look “through” the wall to rest your gaze at an imaginary point three to four feet in front of you.
You maintain this posture in complete stillness for the entire meditation period—no rearranging your legs, no fidgeting, no scratching your nose, no cracking your back—no moving at all. Let the body be still and quiet. Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck says that zazen is basically “a simplified space.” We sit completely still in a quiet and dimly lit place to simplify our space—to minimize stimuli—and give ourselves an opportunity to see what’s happening in the present moment and what our minds get involved with instead of the present moment.
You may feel some discomfort sitting in a zazen posture for more than a few minutes. Be assured that it becomes easier over time, as the muscles get used to sitting up straight and, if you’re sitting cross-legged, as the muscles and joints loosen up. As unlikely as this may sound at first, these postures really are, in the long run, the most comfortable way to sit upright and still for an extended period. If you sit several periods in a row, as is done at Zen centers, you may want to change your position from one period to the next, to shift the stress on your body—perhaps simply shifting which leg is in front in the Burmese position or which leg is on top in the half-lotus position.
You may find that one or both of your legs fall asleep when you sit cross-legged. Sitting a bit further forward or back on the cushion may prevent this. If you’re sitting in a half lotus, adjust the foot that’s underneath so that it presses into the opposite thigh and calf as little as possible. If your legs do fall asleep, just let them be asleep. Unless you already have some trouble with your legs or hips, no harm will come from having your legs asleep for a five-minute or thirty-five-minute sitting period. At the end of the sitting period, be sure that some feeling has returned to your legs before you try to stand up or you might collapse right back down to the floor.
Awareness of Breathing and Thoughts
Once in a sitting position, you may find it helpful to take one or two slow, deep breaths to settle in. Then let your breathing be however it is—fast or slow, deep or shallow, regular or irregular—not manipulating it in any way.
Become aware of the physical sensations of your breathing—the cool air flowing into your nostrils and the warmer air flowing out, the rise and fall of your chest, the movement of your belly.
Let your attention settle in your hara, a point about two inches below the navel, understood in Zen to be the physical and spiritual center of the body. Feel your breathing from the hara. Feel the expansion of the abdomen as you inhale and the contraction of the abdomen as you exhale.
Starting with the inhalation, begin silently counting your inhalations and exhalations. Count the inhalation “one,” exhalation “two,” inhalation “three,” and so on. If you get to ten, start again at one. When you realize that your attention has wandered away and you’ve lost track of the counting, notice the thought you were involved with—or the most recent thought in a long series of thoughts—and gently return your attention to the breathing, starting the count again at one. The word thought here is meant broadly to include any mental activity: ideas, emotions, images, plans, memories, fantasies, judgments, whatever. If thoughts arise and then vanish without carrying your attention away from the counting, you don’t need to start again at one; just continue counting. If you realize that you’ve counted past ten, start again at one.
That’s all there is to it. Notice the thought that captured your attention and gently return your attention to the breathing, starting the count again at one. Notice the thought, return to the breathing, notice the thought, return to the breathing—over and over and over.
The point of this practice isn’t to count to ten without a thought. If you repeatedly notice your wandering thoughts and return your attention to the breathing after counting just one breath, that’s great. If there can be said to be a point to counting the breath, it is to practice returning to the present moment. You repeatedly notice the thoughts that carry your attention away and return your attention to the physical sensations of the breathing, which is always happening right here and now. Thoughts are fine. They are an intrinsic part of Zen practice. They are what you return from.
Zazen does not require exertion. You don’t need to tense your muscles or grit your teeth or cling on to your breath for dear life and try to keep thoughts from arising. As you can discover for yourself, that’s futile anyway. Zazen simply requires persistence—a commitment to noticing thoughts and gently returning your attention to the breathing, again and again and again.
How Long and When to Sit
When you’re beginning, I’d suggest sitting for five to ten minutes, once or twice a day. If, after a few weeks or a few months, you find that you’d like to sit longer, then increase your sitting a little bit at a time—say, adding five minutes to your sitting periods or doing one more sitting period a day. It is not advisable to sit for more than about forty minutes at a time. If you want to sit longer than that, you can alternate periods of sitting meditation with brief periods of walking meditation, as described in the next practice section.
To time your sitting periods, I would avoid using an ordinary alarm, since that is indeed an alarming way to conclude your zazen. A quick online search for “meditation timer” will turn up many sites and apps with more pleasant sounds, or you can place a clock just at the edge of your field of vision and check it now and then. You can also buy incense sticks that are made to burn for certain lengths of time so that your sitting period is over when the incense has burned out.
It is better to sit regularly for a short time than every once in a while for a long time, and it is good to sit every day or nearly every day. It is helpful to sit at about the same time each day so that zazen becomes a habit, a part of your daily routine. The only time that isn’t very good for zazen is right after a meal, when you’re likely to be drowsy and dull. First thing in the morning and last thing at night are times that work well for many people, but you’ll need to find what works with your own rhythms and the rhythms of your household.
The Essentials of Counting the Breath
•Find a sitting posture that allows you to have an upright spine and to be stable and completely still.
•Keep your eyes open, with your gaze lowered at about a forty-five-degree angle, soft-focused, eyelids droopy.
•Take one or two slow, deep breaths. Then let your breath be however it is.
•Let your attention settle in your hara (about two inches below the navel).
•Starting with the inhalation, begin counting your inhalations and exhalations, silently to yourself: one, two, three . . . If you get to ten, start again at one.
•When you realize that your attention has wandered away and you’ve lost track of the counting, notice the thought and gently return your attention to the breathing, starting the count again at one. (If thoughts arise but don’t carry your attention away from the counting, just continue counting.)
Notice the thought,
return to the breathing,
notice the thought,
return to the breathing,
notice the thought,
return to the breathing . . .
Here is an image of what happens in zazen.
The engine of the mind is constantly spinning, and off our attention goes, all over town, all over the country, even crossing borders into other countries. In zazen, we practice disengaging the clutch. We practice shifting into neutral, letting our attention coast to a stop, and letting the mind idle.
Our usual way of dealing with life is to drive all over, hoping to find a place where everything suits us, where there is no pain, where we can be completely happy or at least happier than we are now. Although we can indeed solve some of our problems by driving someplace else or by taking a new route or stepping on the gas or slowing to a crawl, these strategies won’t solve the fundamental problems of pain and death. No matter where we go or what route we take, no matter how fast we go or how slowly, we won’t escape pain and death.
You probably already know or at least suspect that there’s no escape, or you wouldn’t be reading a book like this. You’ve tried to escape. You’ve tried the interstates. You’ve tried the back roads. You’ve tried going off-road in your SUV. You’ve tried higher-octane gas and new tires. You’ve tried riding a bicycle instead. But none of it worked. Pain and death kept on chasing you.
Oddly enough, the freedom we’re looking for is found not in trying to flee this big mess we’re in but in stopping right here in the middle of it.
I was once struck by a passage from Isaiah that seems to express a similar insight:
In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.
But you refused and said,
“No! We will flee upon horses”—
therefore you shall flee!
and, “We will ride upon swift steeds”—
therefore your pursuers shall be swift!
If we insist on fleeing, we will be pursued. If we flee swiftly, we will be pursued swiftly. Our salvation is found in returning and rest.
To rest from our fleeing, we don’t need to shut off the car engine. We only need to shift into neutral. When we disengage the clutch, the car can stay right here, no matter how fast the engine spins. We don’t need to quit having thoughts. We only need to notice the thoughts and let them go. Then our attention can stay right here, no matter how fast the mind spins. Of course, there’s little reason to step on the accelerator while we’re in neutral, so the engine does tend to slow down when we disengage the clutch.
So this is the practice: when we realize that we’re driving away, we notice where we are and disengage the clutch. We notice the thought that captured our attention and gently return our attention to the breathing. Then, inevitably, without even noticing it, we engage the clutch and step on the gas and off we go. That’s fine. That’s exactly what human minds are prone to do. When we realize that we’re racing off at seventy-five miles per hour, we notice where we are and disengage the clutch. We do this over and over and over: notice where we’ve driven and disengage the clutch.
With practice, we tend to get quicker, on average, at noticing where we’ve driven and disengaging the clutch. Instead of noticing, when we get to Nova Scotia, that we’re not in Los Angeles anymore, we start to notice in New York. Then we start to notice in Chicago, in Denver, in Las Vegas. Now and then we notice as soon as we get on the highway or as we’re pulling out of our own driveway.
But it doesn’t matter when we notice where we’ve driven. It’s the noticing and disengaging the clutch that’s the key. Road trips are fine. Zen practice is about noticing when we’re taking one and disengaging the clutch.
Notice where you’ve driven,
disengage the clutch,
notice where you’ve driven,
disengage the clutch,
notice where you’ve driven,
disengage the clutch . . .
