Zen Classes AT East Barn ZENDO
ABOUT THE CLASSES
Zen Meditation (zazen) classes at East Barn Zendō are open to anyone interested in learning to meditate in the Zen Buddhist lineage of Taizan Maezumi Roshi and StoneWater Zen Sangha. I do not charge for these classes, although donations to support the charitable work of StoneWater Zen Sangha would be appreciated.
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve practised in another tradition, or if you have never been to a Zen class or meditated before. On your first visit, you’ll be guided through the basics.
If, however, you would like some idea of what zazen entails before visiting the zendö, there are some outline instructions at the main StoneWater Zen Sangha website, which may help.
And here is an introductory video on the practice of zazen published by Yokoji Zen Mountain Centre, in Southern California, which you may also find helpful.
In a Zen class at East Barn Zendō, there are normally two periods of zazen (30 minutes each) separated by a few minutes of kinhin (slow, mindful walking). After the second period of zazen, I may offer a short talk or invite a discussion, time permitting.
I offer private 1:1 interviews on Zen practice (daisan) to those who are interested. Daisan facilitates kōan study (kōan are selected examples from the classical encounter dialogues between ancient Zen masters and their students, which are studied formally with a teacher in order to bring about transcendental insight, or kenshö). However, daisan can simply be a good opportunity to explore any aspect of your Zen practice with me in a private meeting.
ABOUT THE PRACTICE
Usually, Japanese Zen is presented as having two distinct sects - Sōtō and Rinzai - and the impression is generally given that in Sōtō Zen, students practise shikantaza (or "just sitting") exclusively, whereas in Rinzai Zen, kōan are studied. Teachers in the White Plum Asangha generally regard themselves as the successors of a Sōtō Zen lineage, but they don't make a hard distinction between Sōtō and Rinzai teaching practices. Students may either practise shikantaza or study kōan with a teacher, depending on their preference. White Plum teachers are empowered to work within both the Sōtō and kōan systems because Maezumi Roshi himself received and transmitted teachings in the Sōtō Zen lineage from his father, Baian Hakujun Kuroda Roshi, and also from Hakuun Yasutani Roshi (a successor of Daiun Sogaku Harada Roshi, a Sōtō Zen master who nevertheless completed kōan study in the Rinzai system) and from Koryu Osaka Roshi, a lay Rinzai Zen teacher.
ABOUT MEDITATION POSTURE
In Zen practice, you will notice that a lot of importance is attached to the meditation posture. You may be wondering why that should be. In the following paragraphs I will explain something of the understanding behind this emphasis on the body.
In his essay Fukanzazengi (Recommendation for the Practice of Zazen), Eihei Dogen Zenji (1200-53), the Japanese founder of Sōtō Zen Buddhism, had a good deal to say about the posture of zazen, and very little to say about the mind. Many people find this puzzling, chiefly - I think - because of a widespread misconception that any kind of meditation (including zazen) must be a practice that primarily involves the mind.
Most attributes applied to the practice and purpose of meditation – mindfulness, concentration, calm, clarity and, perhaps above all, the absence of thought – imply that it's all about the mind rather than the body. Since meditation is a kind of personal research into who or what we truly are, it might seem to follow that the "laboratory” of meditation must be the mind. However, when mental attention is directed only towards the mind, the body is left out, and its importance for a holistic engagement with who we are tends to be overlooked, or else relegated to a purely subsidiary role in which the physical aspect of meditation is regarded as a preliminary to the meditation practice proper. When the bodily dimension of meditation is understood in such a narrow way, the body becomes an obstacle to our understanding of meditation practice, because it's only getting attention when it feels awkward or uncomfortable.
A sense of the body as an obstruction to a serene mental practice is very common among beginners. However, it can also be the prevalent experience of people who have meditated for several years, who may then feel discouraged because they haven't found the inner peace and stillness they’d hoped for. In effect, the assumption is that the body is a problem obstructing a mind-based practice. From that perspective, meditation practice begins to feel like something wilfully imposed on the body, rather than something in which the body participates.
To make meditation workable, we need an interconnected understanding of body and mind. We are not merely minds with bodies, we are body-minds. Nor are we present simply because we think. We have a feeling-presence. In The Posture of Meditation and other his books, the Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher Will Johnson lays out a somatically based perspective on meditation practice that explores the value of the body as a transformative teacher. His perspective mirrors that of Eihei Dōgen Zenji, who time and again in his writings presented body and mind together, in the conjoined term shinjin (body-mind). For example, in his Shinjin Gakudo (Body and Mind Study of the Way) Dōgen says:
‘To study the way with the body means to study the way with your own body. It is the study of the way using this lump of red flesh. This body comes forth from the study of the way. Everything which comes forth from the study of the way is the true human body’.
As the Japanese philosopher Yasuo Yasua (1925 – 2005) put it, the posture of zazen has the effect of "… correcting the mode of one’s mind by putting one’s body into the correct posture…" In other words, the body we were born with and carry into this moment is able to correct the mind; the mind does not correct itself.
In slightly different terms, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Reginald Ray has said that stillness is found in the body; it is not in the mind; because the mind is constantly jumping around and moving. This point repays continual investigation. To settle into an upright, balanced and resilient posture, relax into the breath and allow the senses to open into the feeling-presence of each moment, unfolds the whole of our being as the teaching of the Way, even as the mind may be quite agitated.
To simply allow the body to do the work may feel counterintuitive to an overactive mind, nevertheless, with trust in the practice, it is possible to let go of any tendency to want to manipulate our experience by act of will. Then, through repeated and regular practice, we begin to appreciate how the body and the breath work autonomously in zazen, to bring us into a state of ease and joy in our lives, in which we can see things as they are, with more clarity and care.
Here is a wonderful article by Taizan Maezumi Roshi on breathing in zazen.
This is also a very interesting and helpful perspective on the practice of zazen by Ven. Issho Fijita.
More generally, here is information about StoneWater Zen Sangha.
And here is some more background on the White Plum Asangha.
