Nope. It is not.
"The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the dharma-gate of enjoyment and ease. It is the practice-realization of complete enlightenment. Realize the fundamental point free from the binding of nets and baskets." - Dogen, Recommending Zazen to All People(Trans. by Kazuaki Tanahashi)
Why? A 'learning meditation' has its focus on what's going on in the mind - with the goal of taming thoughts and eliminating delusion, whereas the Zazen that Dogen promotes is focused on shikantaza or 'just sitting.' I wouldn't call this 'no goal,' rather, as Gudo Nishijima puts it "the goal of zazen is to sit zazen." There isn't no goal at all, rather there's no ulterior goal, not being mindful or becoming Buddha:
"Stop conscious endeavor and analytic introspection. Do not try to become a Buddha. How could being a Buddha be limited to sitting or not sitting." - Dogen, Recommending Zazen to All People
In my own experiences, zazen in practice is a far cry from what I read in instruction manuals and magazines - they all are heavily mind oriented, touting meditation as a physiological/psychological panacea. While I don't mean to deny the benefits of meditation that have been discovered through medical science, it seems to me like these benefits are foremost, rather than zazen itself. But I digress, to me it's much more body oriented than is often presented, when I don't have a relaxed and upright body, I don't have a sound and clear mind. Zazen is a body-mind activity.
So what's your Zazen like?
No comments:
Post a Comment