Zazen : Settling Down
There is a practice in Zen Buddhism known as zazen. It’s commonly misconstrued as a meditation but in fact it isn’t. True, if you came upon someone practicing zazen you’d either think they were meditating or they had a fondness for non-prescription medication.
Whereas meditation is about achieving some kind of a relaxed state and withdrawing temporarily from the world – zazen is about staying in the world. Zazen practitioners face a wall, keep their eyes open and basically just sit still and perfectly attentive for periods of time.
The trick is to stay in the world but not of the world. Hence the open eyes. An attempt is made to still the chattering ego mind – that internal, infernal conversation which goes on inside your head all day, every day!
A famous zen teacher, Taezan Maezumi said that when sitting zazen we should “let the myriad of things settle.” How often have you wanted to do that? And what constitutes your particular myriad of things – work; laundry; kid’s soccer games; your “relationship” ;bills; mortgage re-fi’s; PTA meetings; dentists visits; oil changes etc. etc. Sometimes there seems to be no end to the “stuff” we all have to deal with on a daily basis.
If you work in a corporate environment where you are continually interacting with others you also have your myriad of office things – politics; project deadlines; sales and/or strategy meetings; pay raises; performance evaluations; mergers; diversity trainings etc. There’s always a demand on your time, energy and patience.
When you practice zazen you let your original, or unconscious, mind out for a breath of fresh air. So often it’s suffocated by the sheer weight of demands our busy minds place on it. So, when you sit quietly by yourself and allow your mind to be clear and open you are whole and unconditioned. Gradually, your breath slow,; your eyelids soften, your jaw releases it’s tension ). Bet you didn’t know that your jaw was tight much of the time, did you?
Your thoughts still pop in from time to time. But you watch them come and go like clouds scudding across a clear blue sky.
Someone once said to me – anyone can knock on your door anytime but you don’t have to always invite them in for coffee. Try to think of your urgent, insistent thoughts as pesky visitors knocking on your door at the most inopportune time – like just when you’d like a little time to yourself.
When you let your thoughts settle and you clear your mind during the heat of a workday it’s like taking a siesta, going for a cool walk around the block and connecting with life outside of your workplace or having a neck massage.
It takes you out of the place where you normally live all day every day – between your ears – and connects you to things bigger and infinitely less comprehensible than your everyday problems.
Consider letting the myriad of things settle for even a few minutes today.
Let your conditioned mind drift like a blossom drifting gently from a tree in Spring. You can always pick it up later. But right now you’re just going to watch it fall.