What is Zazen?

Back when I used to teach "Learn to Meditate" at the Village Zendo I would joke about the paradox of Zen Master Dogen's intructions. Since the Way is perfectly pervasive, why even practice? "The Way is never separated from where we are now." Alas, "if there is the slightest deviation, you will be as far from the Way as heaven is from earth." And then he lays out detailed instructions on how to sit--arrange your cushions thus, cross your legs like so, line up your nose with your navel, and on and on. Zazen is seated mind, so how you sit affects your mind. 

What is my zazen when I can't sit upright? I ask my teacher and he tells about how he's sometimes sitting in a chair and sometimes sitting on a cushion. We agree that will be my koan for the next week. When it comes I answer:

"OW!"

People think zen is about achieving some state of mind. Not so. Don't be a zen zombie telling everyone else to chill out.

Think of not thinking, Dogen says, but that doesn't mean your mind is blank.  

Include everything, I say to myself and to anyone who will listen.

Someone asked if I am depressed, or assumed I was. I am not. I am full of feeling. I am empty, changing every instant. I love life and I am extraordinarily uncomfortable. 

Zazen is as impossible to define as life itself, and yet it is possible to practice in such a way that life pours through you, that change is allowed to happen, that you create a new world with every breath. 

March 23, 2022