A person of great strength does not lift his legs

Zen Master Shogen said "A person of great strength does not lift his legs."

The first time I read this I thought it said "does not lift his leg" – well of course! How uncouth, lifting your leg like a dog...

Needless to say, this koan is not talking about peeing on a passing tree trunk. And it goes on to say "and it is not his tongue he speaks with." So what's all this about?

A person of "great strength" is another way of referring to someone who is awake to themselves, who knows their fundamental nature. "Great" here means something like expansive or encompassing. So an enlightened person does not lift their legs, or use their tongue. Does that mean they just sit still, dumb as a stone?

Here's another koan that points in the same direction (and useful for this time of year):

One day a monk asked Zen Master Tozan, "How can we avoid hot and cold?" Tozan said, "Why don't you go somewhere that is neither hot nor cold?"

In this case, the monk then got a chance to ask what he meant.

The monk asked, "Where is a place that is neither hot nor cold?" Tozan replied, "When it is cold, be completely cold; when it is hot, be completely hot."

If we're cold, most of us spend a lot of effort wishing we weren't. "I hate this feeling", "I wish I was indoors", "why can't the turn the heating up?" "I wish I'd worn my thick gloves", etc. The same thing goes when we're really hot. "I'm so hot I can't stand it", "if there was a freezer here I'd get in it", etc.

But if we can simply be cold when we're cold, as Tozan suggests, then there's no problem. There's only a problem is we want things to be different to how they are. Daizan's teacher, Shinzan Roshi, likes to use the term "nari kiru". "Nari" means to become, and "kiru" means cut off – together it means to 100% become one with how things are and to cut off all other wishes or wants. So when we're cold, we nari kiru being cold – then in that moment there is no cold or hot, we simply are, and all concepts of this or that go out the window.

Shogen said "an enlightened person does not lift their legs". Just like being cold, when we 100% nari kiru lifting out legs (say when we're walking), then the concepts of lifting or lowering again disappear. We are just walking.

So the next time you're walking, or indeed speaking, try not lifting your legs or using your tongue...

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I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Skinner Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

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The Buddha's enlightenment

I'd like to tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably?

Axial age

It's around 500 B.C.E.. The Persian king Cyrus was preparing to invade Babylon. Pythagoras was alive and Greece’s experiment with democracy was flourishing. The great philosopher Confucius (Kong Qui) was beginning to teach in China and Lao-tzu was laying the foundations for Taoism. Zoroaster founded Zoroastrianism, the dominant religion in Iran up until the coming of Islam. It was a time of revolutionary change the world over – some historians call it the "axial age".

In India, the dominant religion was the Vedic faith, which had been around for a good 1000 years at this point. The Vedas are texts that lay out descriptions of particular rituals (and their associated poems, hymns, etc) for things like fertility, rain, bringing good luck in battle, etc. Over these 1000 years, the highest caste Brahmin priests had assumed more and more power since they were the only ones allowed to perform these rituals and communicate with the Gods. As you can imagine not everybody was happy with this situation...

At around this time a kind of protest movement, or peaceful revolt, to this Brahmin domination started. People from the lower castes, typically the warrior/ruler Kshatriya caste, started renouncing the Brahmin-controlled system and going out into the forest-wilderness to search for another way.

Siddhartha Guatama

At this same time, a boy was born on the very edges of the Vedic/Brahman culture, in Lumbini on what is now the border between India and Nepal – in the foothills of the Himalayas. The little boy, who was called Siddhartha Guatama, was born to the Shakya family clan, and his father happened to be the tribal leader of this small kingdom.

When the baby was born he was taken to the fortune teller (as is the custom in India to this day) and they gave two possible destinies: (1) he was going to be a great, wise and wonderful ruler, or (2) he was going to be a great, wise and wonderful spiritual leader. His father, being a ruler himself, didn’t really like the sound of the second option, so the boy was brought up to be a ruler. He was also brought up in complete luxury with his family not wanting to expose him to any kind of suffering at all. He had a palace for each season, only good-looking, courteous people to wait on him, and as he got older, no end of dancing girls!

One day in his 20s, as he was preparing to take over the rulership of the kingdom, he went out with his chariot driver, Channa, for a drive to have a look around. As they were heading down the road they encountered a sick person hobbling by. The young Siddhartha had never actually seen anybody who was ill before – the old texts says he didn’t even recognise the person as human. “What’s that?” he says, and the chariot driver explained to him. A little further on he saw an old person, slumped over, and again he came to the realisation, through the gentle guidance of Channa, that everybody (including himself) was going to get old. Further down the line still they saw a dead person carried along in a funeral procession. Again the prince was dumbfounded and realised that not only will he get ill and get old, but he will also die.

Siddhartha out with his charioteer having his mind blown!

As you can imagine, he was in shock! Further down the road still he and his chariot driver saw a wandering holy man (a sadhu), and the chariot driver explained that this person was seeking for that which was beyond old age, sickness and death. This very much intrigued Siddhartha.

So the young man had a chat with his wife (who'd just recently given birth) and he somehow convinced her that he wanted to go off to search for himself for "that which was beyond old age, sickness and death". He slipped out of the palace with Channa, his charioteer, in the middle of the night and disappeared into the forest. He was about 29 at this point.

His search

I can't imagine what those first few nights must have been like. He'd grown up in this sheltered life of luxury – what a contrast! However, bearing in mind the age he was living in, there was a whole movement of people in the forests of northern India searching for new ways outside the established Vedic/Brahmin tradition. Over the coming months or years he found a number of different teachers (possibly yogis) to study with, and became very skilled at what they had to offer, but none of them could show him that which was beyond old age, sickness, and death.

After about 6 years of wandering and studying, he got really into fasting and reached a stage of eating just one grain of rice a day... He was on the verge of starvation and saw that, far from seeing clearly, his mind was getting duller by the day. It just so happened that one day a maid named Sujata was wandering by, and, looking at his emaciated body, offered him a bowl of milk rice sweetened with lumps of honey. He accepted it.

A very early statue of an emaciated Buddha-to-be

He started eating properly again an getting his strength back. One day he was sitting by the river Neranjara in northern India and sees a boat going past. Perhaps it was a vision or perhaps real life. On the boat there was somebody playing a veena (a type of Indian guitar). This veena had three strings, one of which is so loose and flappy that he can’t get any sound out of it, and one of which is so tight that the instant he touches it, it just breaks. The middle that’s tuned just right where he can get some music out of it. Seeing this, Siddhartha saw that humans are the same: they don’t work well if you over-tighten things (like doing ascetic practices), and too much slackness doesn’t work either (his life of luxury in the palace). He became convinced that the middle path was the way to go.

So with this in mind, Siddhartha went and sat beneath an enormous fig tree (of the type that has a big root structure with little niches to sit between) and began to meditate. He made a commitment: "Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom." He was at a place called Bodh Gaya, in the modern Indian state of Bihar, and was in his mid-30s at this point.

A Bodhi tree with a big root structure ideal for meditating inside.

Awakening

According to some traditions he sat for just one night. Others say three days and three nights; while others say 45 days. Between his periods of sitting, he apparently mindfully paced up and down a path about 17 steps in length in walking meditation.

After one particularly eventful night of meditation, so it is said, Siddhartha looked up and saw the morning star (Venus) in the golden light of daybreak. At this he had a great awakening and exclaimed "I am enlightened, together with the whole of the great earth and all its sentient beings." He saw in his mind all the life of the world and the planets; of all the past and all the future. He understood the meaning of existence, of why we are here on this earth and what has created us. At long last he found the truth – that which is beyond old age, sickness, and death. The name Buddha means “the awakened one.”

But what is this truth? If you want to know that for yourself, come along to one of our Zen meditation sessions!

Different schools of Buddhism remember the Buddha's awakening at different times during the year. In the Zen school it’s always on December 8th and they call it the Rohatsu retreat – it’s akin to a sort of Zen Christmas! So last night (7th Dec) we sat all through the night (9pm through to 7am) to remember this journey the Buddha took, and to share in his commitment to "not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom".

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I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Skinner Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

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Mindfulness and family

The Buddha talked about four stages of enlightenment. The first he called "stream enterer", describing someone who sees through the delusion of self and no longer sees themselves as being separate from the rest of the Universe. In Zen you "enter the stream" when you have your first kensho – when you see your true nature.

Push-pull factors, desire & aversion

The next two stages describe someone who has greatly reduced and then completely eradicated those things that act as push-pull factors in our lives (i.e. things that we're attracted to and averse to, wanting things to go "our way") and any feelings of ill will (including hate and anger). The final stage is to see through all delusions and attain the highest enlightenment.

So in this description, someone could've entered the stream (seen through the illusion of our self being a separate entity that needs constant protection), without dealing with any of those other things related to sensual desire and aversion. Basically that person could still be a pretty horrible person! It's rare, but it could happen.

At this point it's important to point out that being free from those push-pull, desire factors doesn't mean we stop liking or disliking things – we still, for example, like hot sunny days and dislike cold wet days. But the difference is we're totally ok when it's cold and wet. It's no problem.

Seeing our true nature and entering the stream is not that hard to do. In Zenways we run 3-day retreats aimed at precisely this. But reducing and eventually eradicating our desires and aversions – well, that's something else entirely! This is the part I want to focus on here. Whether or not you've reached that first stage it's so important, and in my understanding has a lot to do with mindfulness.

Spending time with family

I've just spent almost two weeks with my mum – probably the longest continuous time I've spent with her for years! She's been living in Stockholm for more than 10 years and this year she decided she wanted to move back. The move date was last weekend. I went over and spent a few days with her in Stockholm helping her prepare things, then we spent 3 days on the road driving back with her cats, then I spent a few more days with her in her new house in England.

On the road with mum's cats

Because she's disabled there are some things she can do fine, other things she can do, but not quite as you would, and other things she just can't do. Maybe everyone is actually like this. The trick is to let her do what she can do, be ok with the things she does not quite as you would, and jump in with the things she can't do.

As we arrived at her new place in England, I felt a rising sense of wanting to do more to help her. Lots needed to be done that she simply couldn't do. This feeling kept rising and actually felt like it accelerated as the days went by. It got to the point where I realised I wasn't doing some of the things I enjoy doing because I perceived her need as being greater. Of course that was just my perception – a delusion. It had nothing to do with her. I was being sucked in to the drama of the situation to the detriment of my internal balance.

As I'm sure you know, family members have a particular ability to press your buttons like no-one else can! They wind you up! By definition that phrase means the effect is cumulative. Lots of little things that slightly annoy you or frustrate you literally wind you up until you blow up over something quite trivial.

In both these situations, mindfulness is absolutely key.

Mindfulness

If we can be aware of each little thing that annoys you as it arises then in each situation we can make a choice – to acknowledge and allow that thing without judgement, simply letting it go, or you express the emotion(s) that arise because of it. If we do this truly and honestly then we don't hold onto anything and there's no cumulative build up.

Of course discerning if it's appropriate to express your feelings in that moment or whether to hold your tongue and mention it later also requires mindfulness. And discerning when you're holding on/repressing an emotion because you think it's not appropriate to express it (at all/to that person) also needs mindfulness.

The original translation of the Pali word "sati" (which nowadays is translated to "mindfulness") is "recollection" or "remembering". Remembering to stay rooted in the sensations and feelings of the present moment without being carried away into worries and anxieties about some fantasised future. Remembering that you are not a separate being with a separate self that needs protecting – you are actually not separate from the other person or indeed the whole Universe. Getting annoyed and irritated at something stems from the delusion of a separate self.

Another analogy for the stages of enlightenment that Daizan often uses is that of cleaning a very dirty window. It starts off so dirty that no light can get through. As we start to practice, we start cleaning one tiny part of the window. Kensho is when that first shaft of light breaks through. The next stages represent more and more cleaning and more and more of the light coming through. It's all the same light, but there's just more of it. More of us comes into the light.

The result of all of this is that I feel my relationship with mum is much easier than it was. There's a sense of flow in the relationship and we can have fun together! I can love her more fully, and better appreciate the love between us. So it's well worth it!

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I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Skinner Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

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An aligned, relaxed body leads to the mind of awakening

Life takes place in this body, right here and now.

We experience the world around us through our body and its senses, so obviously how we use, move, understand and perceive our body has an enormous effect on how we live our lives. If we perceive our body as out of proportion, ugly, or incapable, this necessarily affects how we live compared to someone who is comfortable in their body.

Posture and alignment

Feeling pain, particularly chronic on-going pain, can very easily lead to negative feelings towards the body. One of the biggest causes of pain is bad posture, and the body area that suffers the most is often the back. According to the NHS, back pain is the leading cause of long-term sickness in the UK, and was responsible for a whopping 15 million lost work days in 2013. Sitting for long periods in front of a computer is bad enough, but couple that with bad posture and you've got a recipe for pain.

In meditation we also sit for long periods, so it's no wonder that meditation teachers have a lot to say about sitting posture. The famous 13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen wrote that to practice meditation one should "Sit ... with your [clothes] tied loosely and arranged neatly. ... Straighten your body and sit upright, leaning neither left nor right, neither forward nor backward. Align your ears with your shoulders and your nose with your navel." Simple enough!

When we start our meditation practice and bring awareness to the body, one of the first things we may notice are areas of stiffness or tension. These can arise for many reasons as I wrote about here.

One of the keys to releasing tension and encouraging relaxation is bringing the body into correct alignment (the subject of a wonderful little book by Will Johnson). But what are we aligning our body to? The answer is our innate sense of “up” and “down”, and this comes from gravity. If we can align our body around a predominantly vertical axis (whether sitting or standing), then the force of gravity will support us instead of weigh us down. Right now try leaning to one side. It takes a some work! So aligning of the physical body with the vertical allows us to relax and shed unnecessary tension. This is why sitting up straight is so important, and that's why doing something like yoga practice is also so important.

Upright meditation position

Firstly, yoga practice shows us where our tensions and imbalances lie. For example, almost all of us have natural imbalances in the hips which cause a slight scoliosis (sideways curve) in the spine, which in turn causes our shoulders to sit skewey and our neck and head to be slightly off-centre. Through correct practice we can learn to release and unblock these tensions and asymmetries so that both our physical and energetic bodies can come into balanced alignment.

However, it's important that the uprightness we cultivate isn't rigid. The strength to hold ourselves upright (especially in this day and age where we tend to slouch at every opportunity) takes time to develop, and it must come together with a sense of softness. This is particularly important in the chest and belly so that our breathing can be as unrestricted and natural as possible.

An aligned, relaxed body leads to a relaxed mind

A relaxed body, in turn, encourages a relaxed mind – one that is less distracted by pain and discomfort, and more able to feel and sense what’s happening in this present moment. Zen master Dogen said, "if one's body is straight, one's mind is easily straightened too. If one sits keeping one's body upright, one's mind does not become dull... One must be aware when one's mind runs around in distraction, or when one's body leans or sways, and allow body and mind to return to sitting upright."
In this quote, Dogen is making an analogy between present moment awareness and our vertical axis. As soon as the mind loses alignment to this axis (i.e. the present moment), we can say our mind loses balance and we start to wander off into memories or fantasies.

One of Dogen’s students once asked him “Do we find the way in the mind or the body?” Dogen answered "In the body." And in his famous book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" the 20th century Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said "The state of mind that exists when you sit in the right posture is itself enlightenment."

I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

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What's your experience of sitting up straight in meditation? How do you combine uprightness with soft relaxation? Leave a comment below, join the discussion.

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It's all in the sparkle

Here's a little poem that just popped out the other day whilst I was down in Dorset helping out on the ZenWays Mindfulness and Meditation Teachers Training course.


Light from the mighty fusion reactor
Created by the force of gravity
Arrives

Delicate dew drop on sharp grass edge
Oblate under the force of gravity
Sparkles

Entire universe
13 billion years old
100 billion suns per galaxy
10000 billion atoms per sun
So little known, so many questions
All understood in that sparkle

Waiting for the morning star

About 2500 years ago, a young prince from an area just into present-day Nepal, northern India, left his comfortable palace life and went off into the forest in search of what life was all about. He met a number of teachers who taught him how to meditate, and through these methods he achieved amazing states of relaxation, bliss and joy. But still, he felt, something was missing – these states he achieved were very beautiful but they wore off when he came out of it. They were changes in state, not trait.

Bodhi tree much like what the Buddha sat under

So he tried some other things, including fasting. In fact he fasted to such an extreme that he became just a bag of bones and almost died. The legend says that one afternoon he met a milk maid who offered him milk rice sweetened with lumps of honey and he took it. It gave him a boost, and settling himself down comfortably in the shade of a big tree he made a vow: "if only my bones and sinews remain and all my skin and flesh wither away I will not leave this practice place until I have realised full enlightenment".

So he sat all through the night, and as he saw the dawn and the rising of the morning star he woke up completely and fully – not because he was snoozing(!) but in the sense that he realised everything and understood the true nature of the universe. After that he became known as the Buddha – meaning the awakened one.

In the Zen tradition they celebrate the Buddha's awakening on 8th December. In a monastery they would hold a 5-day retreat (called a sesshin) in the days preceding the 8th, and on the last night, sit all night until the dawn like the Buddha did. It's called the Rohatsu sesshin, and here in London we just did the last bit.

So we gathered at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell on Saturday night (7th) at 9pm, and after a short recap from our Zen teacher Daizan about why we were there, we all had a bowl of milk rice sweetened with lumps of honey (commonly known as rice pudding). Freshly lifted into the Ambrosia sugar high we began our night of celebration: 25 mins sitting meditation, 5 min break, 25 mins sitting, 10 mins walking meditation outside around the neighbouring tennis courts, all the way through to 7am.

At about an hour in I started calculating how many hours there were left! After about 2 hours I needed to open out my cross-legged posture. After 3 hours my back muscles which were holding me upright started getting quite uncomfortable. The hardest period for me was from 12-2am where my body was uncomfortable, I was restless, and it was difficult to stay concentrated. The discomfort in my legs started shouting "YOU MUST MOVE", but I knew the best thing to do was to just encourage it to soften and let it be. It took some effort to resist though. Surprisingly the pain gradually faded into the background – only to move into my left shoulder and the process repeated.

At about 2am I realised just how much I was resisting being in the moment. And somehow that realisation allowed something deep inside to give up its fight. The minutes start flying by. The sound of someone's breathing came into sharp focus for a moment or two and then disappeared. The sound of the second hand of the wall clock became incredibly loud. And that made me remember how physical time goes at a constant rate no matter how much you will it to go faster, or how much you get absorbed. Time is such a funny thing.

By 3am I had an impulse to work out how many sits we'd done, to congratulate myself on how far we'd got. But I had no idea. How many times had we walked around the tennis courts? No idea. But it was bracingly cold each time we went outside (no-one put on a coat or extra layers besides shoes) and so invigorating. I came back inside zinging each time! Sleepy sensations swirled around but never really took hold. My body seemed to stay quite upright without much problem (the back pain had faded), but by 5am the mind started going in and out of dull sleepiness like someone was slowly twiddling the focus knob.

Each time we sat back down, I noticed how the same muscles felt sore, then sorer. I was stretching and trying to relax those same muscles again and again. For a time I was fed up with doing these same movements – there's that resistance again. Then I was grateful for how relieving it felt, then there wasn't even that. There was just the movement, the sitting, the walking, and no me doing it.

At 6am with only one hour to go I got a second wind! Only one hour... well I'd better get down to it then. I'm not sure everyone felt like that though. Glancing around the dojo I saw at least 5 people slowly falling, nodding sideways with sleep!

At 7am we finished, stood up, bowed, and hugged each other. We shared a simple breakfast from what people had brought, and left into the morning sunshine to go home.

Offer the time,
offer the space,
offer our presence,
offer our effort,
offer the support,
offer our willing,
make the intention,
and the rest will take care of itself.