25 July, 2023.
A small, fragile breakthrough today: in the course of sitting I had my fullest experience yet of the hara and managed to settle my consciousness there for several moments. It seems to be a place of openness and also of light; mind there had a quality of outdoors I was not expecting (for we think of the abdomen and its innards as enclosed, dark). The rational mind cannot accept that the solar plexus and the pit of the belly are the seats of a fuller, freer consciousness, but today my self resisted less, indeed gave way intermittently. The Musica Tipica Giapponese I mentioned some time ago helped me to this ease.
From Kapleau, Three Pillars of Zen: “According to Hindu and Buddhist yogic systems, there are a number of psychic centres in the body through which vital cosmic force or energy flows. Of the two such centres embraced within the hara, one is associated with the solar plexus … The other centre is associated with the tanden, a point of concentration, roughly the width of two fingers, located below the navel in the lower belly. Hara is thus a wellspring of vital psychic energies … Settling the body’s centre of gravity below the navel, that is, establishing a centre of consciousness in the tanden, automatically relaxes tensions arising from the habitual hunching of the shoulders, straining of the neck, and squeezing in of the stomach. As this rigidity disappears, an enhanced vitality and new sense of freedom are experienced throughout the body and mind, which are felt more or less to be a unity.” (15-17)
What I experienced seemed to embrace both centres of the hara. It wastes time to wonder if my experience was the correct one, or to give in to skepticism about there being such an alternative seat of consciousness at all. The chief impression was that the mind I keep in my head so earnestly was no longer locked in there, and that this other part of my body was equally its home. And for that impression to have arisen, mind itself must have changed, to have received so gently those moments of air and light and freedom. I believe any passer-by to my zazen would have seen me smiling.
That this should happen in my first full meditation in all these weeks of anxiety and the dispersal of energy into caregiving is surprising to me, and I know it has something to do with my finally agreeing once more to the correct posture, with legs crossed, hands embracing a circle of air, eyes closed, breathing released. The small short lazy meditations I have attempted in desperation, in hospitals or cafeterias or in passing on the metro, simply cannot bring the well-being, the better-being at least, that I have needed so badly. I submit to the non-sense of this truth.