Dogen, mas­ter of ‘just sitting’

The above quote is Mike Cross’ trans­la­tion of a por­tion of Mas­ter Dogen’s (19 Jan­u­ary 1200 – 22 Sep­tem­ber 1253) text on Zazen, “Rules of Sitting-Zen for Every­body.†(Dogen was a Japan­ese Zen Bud­dhist teacher born in Kyoto, and the founder of the Soto school of Zen in Japan.)

Dogen is mak­ing a point we think is essen­tial. To use his words: “Body and Mind nat­u­rally drop off, and the orig­i­nal face appears.â€

Now, since this is Zen-speak, let me attempt an interpretation.

Orig­i­nal face — is all about what lies beneath who we (and the world) appear(s) to be. With­out “beneath†being a direc­tion, of course. We might describe Orig­i­nal face as our essen­tial nature, which gets obscured when our focus is on “things.â€

Body and Mind drop off — to see through to Orig­i­nal face, our bare atten­tion must let go of our end­less focus on “me.†Our sto­ries about live, and our deper­son­al­iza­tion of our bod­ies cause us to spend our days lost in thought, as opposed to actu­ally living.

We talk a lot about drop­ping Mind.

This does not mean den­i­grate Mind or elim­i­nate Mind. It means “let go of cling­ing to Mind.†Fritz Perls put it,

Our ten­dency is to equate think­ing with actu­ally liv­ing. For exam­ple, many are the clients who insist on the cor­rect­ness of their imag­i­nary, inter­nal sto­ries. They tell me, in graphic detail, that, for exam­ple, they can’t change any­thing in their lives until they have “…thought things through, so as not to make a wrong decision.â€

To drop the Mind is to notice our ten­dency to do just this, to make Mind games supe­rior to liv­ing. Or, as Dogen wrote,

Drop­ping off the Body

We’ve been talk­ing about this for the last few weeks. Many peo­ple are also one step removed from their bod­ies. For exam­ple, peo­ple will say, “I have a headache.†As if there is a thing, a headache, that one has, like one has a book, or a cup. “My head aches†is more accu­rate. Or, “I am headachy.â€

Sim­i­larly, “He turns me on†is inac­cu­rate. “I turn me on†is so. “I’m so bored†is inac­cu­rate. “I am bor­ing myself†is so.

Let­ting to body drop off means “stop talk­ing about your body (and your Mind!) as if they are some­how sep­a­rate from you.â€

Your body and your Mind are how you expe­ri­ence being. They are not “separate.â€

In a sense, we are say­ing that think­ing about an expe­ri­ence and expe­ri­enc­ing are two dif­fer­ent things. Mostly, we con­tent our­selves with think­ing, wish­ing, and hop­ing. Expe­ri­enc­ing, on the other hand, is close to our orig­i­nal face.

How? By pay­ing exquis­ite atten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing right now. In other words, to be lost in the expe­ri­ence of living.

When tast­ing, taste, when hear­ing, hear.

A client, the other day, described los­ing a box of CDs dur­ing a move. I used his love of music to say,

Because he loves music, he imme­di­ately knew what I meant.

Lose your­self in your liv­ing, and you will have found your illu­sive orig­i­nal face.

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