Zazen Is Not Meditation

Complete English transcript — About transcripts

Editorial note: This transcript of a spoken talk has been lightly edited to read well as written text, keeping the speaker’s voice and meaning; the wording was adjusted with great care. We recommend listening to the original audio recording too.

Every Wednesday evening since the beginning of last year, in lockdown, I've been meeting with the Dogen Sangha group in London on Zoom, and we've been studying chapters of the Shobogenzo, sitting first and then studying. The last one we did was in the second book, and it's called Juki. Juki means receiving affirmation. Do you know the meaning of affirmation? I used it yesterday.

Boris: What does it mean?

Mike: Affirmation, yeah? Okay. In Dogen's time, Juki as a phrase was very commonly used to mean that you will receive affirmation that if you practise zazen, you will become a buddha, or you will become enlightened. This was a common understanding. So if you practise, you receive affirmation from your teacher or from the practice that in the future, if you continue, you will become a buddha. And in the chapter, Dogen kind of destroys that understanding, as usual, and he says: When you sit in zazen, you are buddha. You are enlightened. So this morning I want to talk about zazen.

There's a phrase that's very common in America and Europe now: Zen master. It means a mythical person who is enlightened and who has some special powers and things like that. But actually, the meaning is somebody who has mastered sitting in zazen. To master something, in English, means to thoroughly understand and realise what it is. You can say a pottery master. You can say a chair-making master. Do you have the same kind of…? Yeah. That's the meaning. But unfortunately, Zen master has been used to mean something rather spiritual or mystical. So how do you master Zen?

Well, you master it by sitting every day for a very long time. When we first sit, although we're doing it, we're not sure what it is we're doing. So we continue sitting, and then we get lots of different experiences when we're sitting. Sometimes we get strange experiences. Sometimes we get painful experiences. But if we continue sitting over many years, maybe more than ten years, we can slowly begin to understand what it is we're doing. My teacher, Nishijima Roshi, used to insist that sitting in zazen is sitting in the balanced state. The balanced state — what does that mean?

Well, we know that in early Buddhism there was a teaching, which is still there, that our physical and our mental sides are part of one thing. We don't have a body and a mind which are separate — and this includes spirit — but they are two aspects of one whole, and that whole is the whole person, which we're not sure what that is. So to sit in zazen, my teacher would say, is to achieve balance of body and mind. This was based on Dogen's writings. He wrote many times of balance between body and mind, balance between physical and mental, or physical and spiritual, if you like.

But when we sit, we actually have many different states, because it's a dynamic practice. It's always changing. Dogen wrote in his description of zazen that it's not a fixed state. By that he meant it can't be fixed, because our body is sitting and our position is dynamic. So as we sit, as you all know, we get many different experiences. Which of those experiences is this balanced state, which people call enlightenment? Is it the experience where I'm thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner? Is it the thinking when I'm remembering what happened two years ago?

Is it the deep meditative state where my eyes are closed and I'm somewhere deep inside myself? Where is it? Well, if we practise on and on and on, all these dynamic states change one into the other. When we sit, we move from one state to another. It's not just one single experience; it's many experiences. Many people thought, and still think, that zazen is a kind of meditation. In Dogen's time there was an expression, sanzen, and sanzen means achievement Zen. So it described sitting in zazen to get something. And he said very clearly that you don't get anything.

He denied that zazen is sanzen. It's also necessary to say that zazen is not meditation. It's not any form of meditation. In meditation — there are many different kinds of meditation — we can enter a kind of internal space, which we may call spiritual, and in which we may experience images, feelings and so on. Zazen is not that. Zazen is a physical training which also has a mental side. Or it's a mental training which also has a physical side. You can look at it from two sides. Of all these states that we go through when we sit in zazen, let me describe some.

My eyes are not focused. Even though my eyes are open, I'm somewhere inside myself, maybe thinking, maybe feeling, experiencing inside myself. My eyes are open, but I'm somewhere else, if you like. Then something happens and — oh — my eyes come into focus and I see where I am. Then my leg starts hurting, so I'm focusing on the pain in my leg, or a pain in my back, or I feel my posture. So I'm moving from internal to external, if you like, from mental or spiritual internal experience to physical external experience. The focus of my attention goes backwards and forwards.

The state of balance in zazen is neither of those. Some of you have heard me say this before, but if we think of skating or riding a bicycle, we know that when we start, there are two situations: this way and that way. You know, rollerblading or skating. So we go like that. Slowly, after practising, we find that between these two states there is another state, which we didn't know. And so we learn to skate. It's a miracle. The small balance between left and right becomes wider, and when we master skating, that balance, which we couldn't find in the beginning, becomes a whole area.

So then we're a master skater. It's the same with riding a bicycle. But as you can see with riding a bicycle, when we ride, we're never perfectly in the middle. We're always wobbling a bit. Zazen is the same. There is this internal mental or spiritual space, which is sometimes rather nice, especially if we close our eyes. Close your eyes during zazen, go inside, and you can have wonderful experiences in there. You come out and — oh — then you feel your body and so on. So, going backwards and forwards, practising day by day, month by month, year by year, we find an area between these two.

In that area, our eyes are open. They don't have to be open wide; they can be just half open. What we see in front of us is just what is in front of us. What we feel in our body is just what we feel in our body. That experience is completely normal: it's not spiritual, and it's not physical. It's something completely normal. We're not thinking, and we're not focusing on our physical feelings. We are somewhere hovering — you know the word hovering — between the two. That's the essential state in zazen.

So when we're sitting and we get lost inside ourselves, we suddenly come out again: Oh, I'm here. Where was I? When we come out like that, the best thing to do is to straighten our posture. Because zazen is a physical practice, a physical posture, the posture itself is very important. I don't want to be fixed about it, because all our bodies are different shapes. Some people have spines shaped like this. Some people have spines shaped like this. Some people have long bodies and short legs. Some people have short bodies and long legs. Some people are very flexible in their hips, and some people are not.

So what I'm telling you is a kind of perfect model. In this perfect model, the posture of zazen is to sit in physical balance. This means that your spine should be naturally straight and your weight should be over your sacrum. You can try this in zazen, as many of you know, just by wobbling backwards and forwards. You can do this during zazen, just a little, to feel the balance. When you're in balance, you can feel it. There's a kind of physical affirmation. Okay. And then your head needs to be balanced over your shoulders.

If it goes like that, then the weight is on the muscles at the back here. So you pull it back, and as far as you're able with your own body, you keep your head balanced over your shoulders. Again, if you like, you can adjust it during zazen. So you're sitting like a pile of stones, one on top of the other, in balance. That's the essence of zazen. If you don't sit in balance, you can't get the balanced state. The balance that you get with your body depends on you, on your own physical situation.

In daily life, certainly when I work at the computer, I sit like this. My muscles get used to that. They think it's normal. So when I sit in balance, they say, Whoa, doesn't feel right. I want to go back to normal. So it's a kind of physical training. Why do we need to train the muscles? Well, the habits that our muscles develop pull our spine down, shorten the spine. And as those of you who do yoga know, lengthening the spine is very beneficial for health.

Zazen is one way to lengthen the spine, because if we sit in a balanced state, the muscles which control our balance can work in a balanced way. There are lots of small muscles between our vertebrae, and the bigger muscles can learn how to be in a natural situation. From the mental point of view, Dogen calls this dropping off body. He didn't have the language. Dropping off body means releasing the stress, the physical stress in our muscles. In zazen we release the physical stress in our muscles by keeping the posture. So if we notice we're going forward, we straighten up.

Sometimes, of course, we don't notice. If we're lost in an internal state, we don't notice. But suddenly we come out, and when we come out, we can adjust. So zazen is dynamic. We're always moving between different states, but we're always correcting ourselves back to balance. Many people, most people, like to sit with their hands in their lap. I think it's quite difficult to sit in the way that Dogen says, which is without your hands in your lap. Why does he say that? It's very uncomfortable. Oh, I don't like that. Why does he say that? Well, try it. Try sitting like that.

Most people sit like that. Then lift your hands, and you'll find that actually, when your hands are like that, there is a force between your shoulders and your hands. Without knowing it, you're using your hands to support yourself, sometimes a lot, sometimes hardly at all, but there's always something, and it's comfortable. Oh, I'm tired. My muscles are shouting at me. I want to go back to normal. I put my hands on my legs. That's better. I have some support. If you go like that, there's no support. Your body is completely relying on balance. So Dogen recommends sitting like that. I know it's difficult.

I'm just telling you the recommendation; my teacher sat like that, and I usually sit like that. So what I want to emphasise is that zazen is not meditation. Zazen is as much physical as it is mental or spiritual. It's a dynamic practice. It's a practice. You're practising putting your body back into the balanced state, because in normal life we are dragging our body into all kinds of situations, positions. Everybody does it: twisting the pelvis, the muscles here are tight. Some people sit like that a lot. Some people can't talk to you unless they're like that.

Some people don't like sitting like this. It feels uncomfortable. Why? Because they're not used to it. Some people have to cross their legs. I used to have a habit of crossing my legs; I still do. Ah, it's much better. I've twisted my pelvis, so it feels comfortable. But in zazen we take away all those habits, just for a time. Because it's a physical practice, it's hard work. So zazen is not some kind of state of relaxation. It's also not a state of tension, because we're trying to release our tension. But it's not a peaceful… Although Dogen writes, It's a peaceful gate to the Dharma, he doesn't mean no problems.

Boris: How do you know it's a peaceful gate?

Mike: How do I know? I know because I studied the whole of his writings for forty years, and I sat every day for forty-five years. That's how I know. And if you do the same, you can know the same.

Boris: Yes, yes. But why did he write ‘peaceful gate’?

Mike: Because if you practise balance and your body adjusts, it is a peaceful gate.

Boris: Right. Rely… rely a little bit more.

Mike: And you might find that peaceful gate as you pass backwards and forwards through your physical, mental, physical, mental — body aches, mind busy — somewhere in the middle of all that. You find, for one second, one minute, a peaceful gaze. That's the same as when you're learning to skate. Your ankles hurt, your body is tired, but then, just for one minute, you skated. And so you practise. And if you practise, you will find it.

But more importantly, just like riding a bicycle, where you have to wobble — and even skating, you're wobbling — real balance is different from our perfect balance, which is in our minds. Real balance is wobbling around. So as long as we are practising zazen, sitting in balance and doing the best we can, we are in the balanced state. It's just that our balanced state, when we start, is wobbling all over the place. But if a child rides a bicycle like this, you don't say, You're not riding a bicycle. You say, Very good, you're getting better.

One difficulty with zazen is that when we talk about it, as now, we build up an idea, and the idea is different from zazen. The model is different from reality. I want to emphasise this because there are lots of different forms of meditation. I don't know what some of them are like; I've never done them. I know how I can go inside myself and have lots of experiences, but that's not zazen. In zazen, the balanced state is a simple, very simple state where you see the wall or the floor, and it's just the wall or the floor. Your eyes are not glazed over.

Your eyes are not shut. Your eyes are not wide open. They're just natural. What you see in front of you and what you feel is normal. So it's also called the natural state. To achieve the natural state, we practise sitting in the natural state. If you see a small child sitting, they sit very naturally, beautifully. A little baby who can sit up sits like this: empty mind, beautiful posture. But then we enter the trance, and it pulls us this way, and then our bodies carry our experiences.

I went for a hike the other day near Hradec Králové, and at the end of the hike I was coming into the railway station, and there was a woman in front of me. She was younger than me, and she was walking like this. For her, that was perfectly normal. She had no idea that she was walking like that. And you see people who walk with one shoulder higher than the other, and they don't know. A great way to put our muscles back into the natural state is to do yoga.

It's a wonderful method, and I recommend doing some kind of simple yoga as well as sitting, because often, when we sit, our muscles are very tense. If our muscles are really tense from what we did last week or yesterday, it takes a lot of zazen to release them. But with yoga, or stretching of some kind, or sport, we can release the tension, and then it's easier to sit. If I sit and it's really, really difficult, if my body is really painful, I stop. I get up and go for a walk, or do some stretching, or go for a bike ride.

Because if your body is really carrying the weight of your life, just sitting zazen for half an hour won't make so much difference. You've got lots of tension in your muscles. You've got lots of stress. So Dogen writes, even in the thirteenth century, Practising zazen is one way to achieve a balanced state. He says there are myriad — myriad means numberless — myriad ways, and there are. However, if you go into the gym — do you call it a gym?

Participant: Yeah.

Mike: Yeah, exercise. You see people on exercise bikes, right? They’re riding like this, and they’ve got earphones on, and they’re talking to their neighbour here. So although they have the opportunity to experience this wonderful state, they take themselves out of it by talking or listening to music, which is great, but they’re missing something, missing one experience. So I’ll stop. What are your experiences in zazen? What are your questions?

Participant: I have two things that support what you said.

Mike: Good, I like support.

Participant: In my experience — I have practised zazen fewer years than you, thirty years — and it’s a fact: I think it took me twenty-five years before the left shoulder stopped lifting itself during zazen. For about twenty-five years, when I was practising zazen, I went like this, slowly. So after ten minutes… And I noticed a few years ago that it doesn’t happen anymore. The point is, when you practise for many years, some strange habits may come down. You may relax some strange tensions, but it takes years for some reason, and probably if you practise some specific yoga, you can do it quickly.

Mike: I think yoga would help.

Participant: Yeah, but another thing: after twenty, twenty-five years I also dropped some strange needs, mental needs — I need that, I want to be like that. I just gave up. But I couldn't do this by deciding, you know, I don't want this, I want to be relaxed. After twenty or twenty-five years of zazen, one day I stopped worrying about something I had worried about all my life. One day it was just like, I don't care anymore. Probably zazen, probably. And as for the peaceful — as you say, you doubt it's a peaceful gate. When I go—

Mike: I didn't say that, but carry on.

Participant: No, he said— Dogen said it's a peaceful gate.

Mike: Okay. Yes.

Participant: You said peaceful. You know me, I don't look very peaceful. I'm very busy in my life. I like to be active, I like to go to the beach and swim in the ocean, and I'm full of energy and happy. But then I sit on the beach — and I'm getting to the point — I'm sitting on the beach like this and watching women, and then I realise: why are you so restless? This is a beautiful ocean, Greece, everything is wonderful, fish, swimming, clean water. Why don't you calm down? Because I really still feel a bit restless, not peaceful. So what I propose is—

Pavel: Because of the woman. Yes, yes, yes.

Participant: I'm happy, you know what I mean? I'm happy on holiday, but something is missing. Something — why don't you calm down a bit? So what I do: I make a zafu out of the sand and sit in zazen posture on the mat. People think I'm crazy, or some kind of yogi person. But nobody knows that only then do I finally relax and let go, and I can just — that's the peaceful gate of a crazy person. During my everyday life, when I'm busy at school, working and all kinds of stuff, the only time I can really find some peace is often only when I sit in zazen, even if it's just two minutes or five minutes. So I do it every morning, and it helps me to survive — and in the evening. So I want to support a crazy person like me, restless, telling bullshit or blah blah blah. People say, That guy is not a Buddhist. You can't be a Buddhist. Nobody knows that when I practise zazen, I can calm down. Maybe Palina knows about it.

Mike: Actually, you don't need to be a Buddhist.

Participant: Yeah, I know, I know. I don't care anymore. I used to care. So I support both these two points: relax your body and relax your mind.

Boris: Why do some people, after maybe ten, twenty years of practising, stop practising?

Mike: Why?

Boris: Why do you think? If you have some idea about this.

Mike: Do you have a person in your mind you’re talking about, or generally?

Boris: Maybe my cousin, for example. Igor?

Mike: I don't know.

Boris: And some close friends.

Mike: Ask Igor. Okay. Everybody is different. Some people practise zazen because it…

Boris: You know the Bristol group you told me about yesterday, twenty people, I don’t know how long they practised. Sorry? You told me that the Bristol group, maybe twenty people, who were sitting zazen in Bristol for I don’t know how long, stopped.

Mike: No, no. What I said was that the group in Bristol has stopped sitting together at the moment.

Boris: Stopped sitting together, okay.

Mike: The twenty people… Paul is now in Wells with his group. Martin is in London with his group. Everybody went to different places. So the reason there aren't twenty there is that they all went to different places.

Boris: Okay. You didn’t tell me the second part. Well, yeah, but there are people who stopped sitting.

Mike: There are always people who stop sitting.

Participant: I think Boris was asking what your opinion is, or whether you asked them what their reason was to stop sitting.

Mike: No, I never ask. If they want to stop, fine. I don’t mind. If they want to leave, it’s fine. So I never ask. And there must be many, many different reasons, maybe. I’ve had lots of people come to the groups who are very enthusiastic for a couple of… and then they disappear again. They’re very enthusiastic because they’re hoping to get something, happiness or enlightenment or something. Then they realise, whoa, this is quite hard work. This is something different. So they leave again. But, you know, I don’t know. I don’t really know.

Pavel: And did Dogen actually write something in the Shobogenzo about — how to say it — motivation to pursue the truth, how to develop it or keep it or nurture it, you know? Because he often talks about the will to the truth. But for example, at the beginning, for a beginner, the will to the truth is an empty phrase. So there must be some kind of motivation, and it may change in time. For example, at the beginning you are looking for happiness, whatever it is, and then it may change. So my question is whether he wrote something about motivation or nurturing this will to the truth, this feeling for the real.

Mike: Yes, he wrote about the will to the truth, and he said that we all have it. But sometimes we only notice it in difficult circumstances. He was talking to people within his temple, so they had all decided to lead a Buddhist life. But, for instance, my teacher Nishijima Roshi used to talk about the will to the truth. Everybody has it, and very often we only discover it when our life doesn't work anymore.

When our life is going perfectly, we can't find it. For instance, we can say that, in a way, somebody who wants to be rich or famous is following a kind of will or direction they have. But when they arrive at their target, they're not satisfied. Yet what takes them towards their target is the same will to the truth that takes us towards zazen. So, you can feel that you have a will to the truth — it's not a very satisfactory phrase, really. Something is pushing us, and we don't know where it's pushing us, so we're searching around to see where it takes us. When our life is not going well, we look around for what we should do, where we should go. That feeling in us, that drive — we can give lots of names to it, but the essential drive or motivation is called the will to the truth.

So everybody has it, but we look for it in different places. Some people look for it in meditation. Some people look for it in zazen. Some people look for it in fame. Some people look for it in a rich life. Some people look for it in pleasure. But they won't find it, because, for instance, if you try to find what you're looking for in pleasure, if you pursue pleasure on and on, because it's an unbalanced state, you can't find happiness. If you look for what you're seeking in being rich, you can become very rich, but it's never enough. Oh, so I've got everything.

I've got all the money. So I want to go to the moon. I know, I'll invent a spaceship and go to the moon. And then that's not enough. We can call it a kind of childlike curiosity. It's what makes us, when we're children, want to know, want to look, want to explore. But when we become older, we search for it in different directions. If we're lucky, we search for it in the direction of practising zazen. If we search for it in the direction of practising zazen, and we practise and practise, eventually we will find it.

Robert: What do you think about negative motivation? Because, honestly, part of my motivation for zazen is often that I see I’m creating a mess for myself and for the people around me, and when I sit zazen I create a little less mess. So it seems — I admit it’s probably part of my motivation for doing zazen.

Mike: Negative motivation? You mean doing something you don’t want to do?

Robert: No, no, no.

Mike: What does it mean?

Robert: I’m creating a lot of mess for myself and the people around me. When I sit zazen, I make a little less mess, it seems.

Mike: Well, maybe you’re not creating the mess for people around you, but you feel it. Maybe the fact that you feel it is the problem. Maybe there is no mess. Did you think about that?

Participant: Yeah. No.

Mike: You don’t want to think about it like that. You need to feel that you’re creating a mess. No?

Robert: No, no, no, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m used to feeling it. But my wife says I’m creating a lot of mess.

Boris: What kind of mess? Are there special kinds of mess, or…?

Robert: They only start being nervous, not being nice to each other, not being satisfied with, you know…

Mike: Normal relationship.

Robert: But then you see the children copying me, and it’s like, wow, they will have… You see, I’m transferring these bad habits to my children.

Mike: Well, we do that even if we don't want to.

Robert: Yeah, absolutely.

Mike: We all do that. We transfer to our children things that we don't realise.

Participant: And the first noble truth: life is a mess.

Robert: Yes, yeah, yeah.

Mike: I don't understand negative motivation. I can't grasp the meaning of it. I mean, often I do things that I don't feel happy about doing, but I do them because I notice that my feeling of happiness or not happiness, or fear or whatever, is sometimes not realistic. So I don't want to go to the retreat. I don't want to give a talk. I want to stay at home. But when I go, it's not like that. So that's a kind of negative… I don't know what it is, but there's one part of me that pushes me to do it.

Robert: That sounds right, yeah. This negative motivation is at the time I'm deciding what I should do, when I'm planning, not at the moment of zazen. When I'm setting my clock, whether to wake up in the morning or not, to go to a retreat or…

Mike: Well, you know, maybe it's helpful that we love ourselves.

Boris: Dogen doesn't write about this. If Dogen wrote about this — about loving ourselves — somewhere, between the words…

Mike: Love ourselves. Yes, he didn't use the word love.

Boris: Yes, he didn't.

Mike: No — well, no, Dogen didn't say we should love ourselves. I'm saying it.

Boris: Okay. I think it's very important. We make many, many messes.

Mike: Yeah, but to love ourselves doesn't mean to be kind to ourselves or to think we're great. It means to accept who we are, shit and everything. And to love somebody else is also the same: not romantic love, but just to say, I accept that person just as they are. It's difficult for us to do. We always make an image of the other person, and we make an image of ourselves, and we don't live up to the image we create. So get rid of the image and look at the person. Dogen didn't write that either.

He might have done. I have to look.

If, during the zazen this weekend, you experience just a short period where you see everything just as it is, you can feel a kind of affirmation. That's the affirmation that Dogen talks about in the Juki chapter, which we are just discussing with the London group. But don't look for it.

Robert: And if you try to grab it, you will screw it up, right?

Mike: Yeah. It's like trying to get that moth. But we have to look at it from many different viewpoints to see what is beyond words. Can we stop?

Participant: Yeah. Or are there any more comments, anything? No. Good.

Mike: Thank you.