Zazen: Following the Breath
At many Zen centers and monasteries, beginners are taught the practice of counting the breath. After a while, a student may shift to the practice of counting only the exhalations instead of both the inhalations and exhalations. And then as counting the breath becomes easier, the student may be given the practice of following the breath, which is like counting the breath but without the counting.
In following the breath, you simply feel the physical sensations of the breathing, and when you realize that your attention has wandered, you notice the thought and return your attention to the breathing. The posture instructions are the same as for counting the breath.
Going from counting the breath to following the breath is like having your training wheels removed. The counting is a support, making it easier to stay with the breath and easier to notice when your mind has wandered off. In following the breath, you’re a little more on your own.
Note that breathing is not something you have to do. In zazen, just let the breathing happen and observe it.
Similarly, attending to the present moment is not something you have to do. Clear awareness is the environment of our wandering thoughts. When rather than grabbing on to thoughts or pushing them away, we simply notice them and let them be, clear awareness is revealed.
The Essentials of Following 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).
•Attend to your breathing, to the physical sensations of each breath.
•When you realize that your attention has wandered away from the breathing, notice the thought and gently return your attention to the breathing.
Notice the thought,
return to the breathing,
notice the thought,
return to the breathing,
notice the thought,
return to the breathing . . .
Swirling Thoughts and Swirling Snow
When I’m driving, usually I spin around in my thoughts and maybe talk with my husband, Brian, or listen to the radio. But sometimes I need a break from my brain, so I notice my thoughts and return my attention to just driving, and notice my thoughts and return to just driving, and so on.
I was doing this once when Brian and I were on the long drive home to Atlanta, Georgia, from his mother’s house in Tampa, Florida, and I thought of a snow globe—you know, one of those clear globes or domes with water and a little scene inside. You shake the snow globe to stir up the “snow,” and then you set it down and watch the snow fall over the scene.
In our ordinary lives, our thoughts are almost continuously swirling around. In Zen practice, we repeatedly set down our minds to let the thoughts settle by returning our attention to the breath. We notice the swirling thoughts and set down our minds, notice the swirling thoughts and set down our minds, and so on.
The snow will settle if we simply set down the snow globe and let it be. Shaking the snow globe in a certain way in an attempt to make the snow settle more quickly just stirs the snow up more. It’s the same with thoughts. All of our attempts to control our thoughts—to force them to settle—just stir them up more. The thoughts will settle on their own if we simply set the mind down, letting our attention return to the breathing.
After I’d played for a while with the snow globe image—which is just a variation on a common image in Zen of mud settling out of water if you simply let the water be—I decided I wanted to get a snow globe to use when I teach Zen. On another drive home from Tampa, Brian found one in the gift shop connected to a restaurant just off I-75. It has a picture of palm trees along a Florida beach and sparkly multicolored glitter instead of white “snow,” and the great thing is it was designed so that you can remove the picture and insert your own. Online, I found a nice picture of the scowling, wide-eyed face of Bodhidharma, the “first patriarch” of Zen in China, and I printed it out, cut it to the right shape, and put it in the snow globe.
The sparkly thoughts swirl around Bodhidharma’s head and then settle. I like this. When I’m busy with thoughts, it feels like my energy is all up in my head, and when I notice the thoughts and return to my breathing, I let my energy and my attention settle back down toward my hara. Also, being caught up in thoughts sometimes feels to me like there’s a cloud of stuff floating around my head, keeping me from seeing clearly what’s going on right here and now besides my own mental chatter. So returning to the breathing feels like letting the thoughts settle down so that they’re no longer obscuring my vision.
Note that swirling snow is an intrinsic part of a snow globe. You don’t make a better snow globe by freezing it so that the snow can’t move or by extracting the snow. Likewise, swirling thoughts are an intrinsic part of Zen practice. We just watch our thoughts as we watch the snow:
Notice the swirling snow,
set down the snow globe,
notice the swirling snow,
set down the snow globe,
notice the swirling snow,
set down the snow globe . . .