1 December, 2022.
A gentle, welcoming sitting today. This was brought about by a confluence of events and readings. One of my favourite chapters of the Dao De Jing, chapter 25, and its so-clarifying and powerful final lines, came up in the cycle of my readings. “The Tao’s standard is spontaneity” (Medhurst’s translation). This chapter’s mystical vision of the Tao and its workings is like no other for my sense of what I seek.
Second, I had recently read “Zazen Yojinki” in Cleary’s translations (Classics of Buddhism and Zen vol. 4), and his instruction for distraction and distress during zazen had stayed with me: “Extraordinary things like this are diseases from lack of harmony between awareness and breath. When they happen, sit with the mind resting in the lap. If the mind sinks into torpor, rest your mind between your eyes on your hairline. If your mind is distracted and scattered, rest your mind on the tip of your nose and your lower belly. When sitting all the time rest the mind in the left palm. When you sit for a long time, though you do not force the mind to be calm, it will naturally not be scattered” (589). In all this, I particularly seized upon the resting of the mind at the centre of the forehead, just under the hairline.
As I sat, the vision of the Tao in chapter 25 and this instruction for calming sitting fused well; my breaths were deep and long, and mostly easy. There were moments of great pleasure as I “witnessed” the Tao as chapter 25 had shown it to me.
A third factor: I sat for the first time in several years cross-legged on the carpeted floor. The last two weeks or so sitting cross-legged in reclining chair, with a sloped back, had given me confidence to try. I can’t explain nor even much describe the advantage for meditation of sitting cross-legged. I suspect the full or even half-lotus, which I can’t do without excessive pain, would give even more benefit. I must confess however that I sat against a wall to help me keep upright; otherwise the upward pressure from my folded feet is too great as yet, and I totter backwards. And this contravenes the instruction of Keizan Jokin: “When sitting in zazen, do not lean against any wall […]”. Yet I must find my way, my own way, as well as find the Way in and of others.