Mondo Brad Warner FIRST QUESTION OF THE DAY:
Tell us the motivation to continue the practice of zazen.
I practice zazen for about 5 years every day, and I feel that I become somewhat easier now. What is funny is that it is easy for me more and more it is difficult for me to find reasons to continue my practice. I mean, at first it was pretty cool when I got to sit down, say, twenty minutes against the wall, but I think it is less clear today to find the direction to pursue. I was wondering if you would have something brilliant to say about this topic? MY ANSWER:
This is one of the questions I get asked most often. How we began the practice of Zen? And how do we continue?
People who ask these questions generally end up questioning the motivation. But I wonder if this is really what we need.
The avowed aim of a discourse of Dharma is usually the "encouragement." The speech is expected to provide viewers with a motivation to continue this practice so often difficult and seemingly pointless. When these speeches often include Dharma - as is often the case with me "phrases like the famous one, Kodo Sawaki to the effect that" Zazen is not anything "we often feel they are missing completely at their goal. Why continue a practice that is useless?
The only way I can answer this question is to try to understand why I continue practice. I guess I'm a good case study because this is a good twenty years that I continue this practice unnecessary and that I have no intention of stopping. And yet I often wonder why I do it, even when I'm sitting on a rolled towel against the wall of a hotel room in a foreign country, with the wail of sirens or calls to prayer screaming that the speakers of the nearby mosque and tear my eardrums, because I woke up early and I handed the lunch later history of doing that.
Yet just when I wonder why I do, I continue to do so. Even knowing that it is useless, I still sit. Am I stupid? Maybe. And maybe what he needed.
At one time, I practiced zazen because I wanted to have an experience of awakening. Altogether. I did not start with that reasoning. But shortly after he started practicing, I read the Three Pillars of Zen by Philip Kapleau with extraordinary descriptions of authentic experiences of awakening and I wanted one, too. This proved relatively rotten as motivation, because it never happened. So I dropped it.
is when I dropped zazen that I discovered the only form of motivation that has never really worked. Very simply, when I stopped practicing zazen, I felt like shit. The first few times I stopped the practice, I do not really understand why I felt so crappy. Then, when I myself handing, things were a little better. It was not a vast improvement. But it was better than not doing so. So I returned to practice.
I said and repeated this more than I can count it. I'm sure it's in all my books in one form or another. And I know that I wrote on this blog several times also [NB: http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com] And yet we keep asking myself the question again of motivation.
There are two or three things I can say that would be useful. One is that it improves. There are actually moments of insight and transcendence. One can identify a package of waste that we could nail the ground. It can even happen to any of these so-called "awakening experiences".
I am not arguing that these things do not happen. On the contrary. And they have value, that's for sure. And yet, as I said, enlightenment is for fags. This is not the purpose of practice. That is not the goal.
Ultimately, we must all provide our own motivation. What motivates me to me might not work for you. I only hope this will help you find yours.
QUESTION # 2:
You say you do not focus your mind on anything in particular that you just let your conscience go where it goes, but you make constantly correcting your posture.
My experience is that each teacher teaches posture zazer a little differently. The backs of the hands on the thighs, two small fingers on his stomach just below the navel is an example.
But my real question: When zazen "gets up and running" as Kobun Otogawa Chino said that sometimes, how to ensure that the posture is correct? ANSWER # 2: It is all
is another I am often asked. A popular variation is: how to keep his mind when zazen is not sitting on the zafu? And again, I can not answer that from my personal experience.
I worked hard on this sort of thing at a time. When I started, I had a job as part-time postman. So, doing my tour, I paid attention to my feelings, to keep my back straight and my rib cage open while walking, the color of the sky and the sounds around me. This kind of thing, you know. I had read it in a book. Probably not a book Zen.
I no longer do this, really. At least, consciously. I may have internalized the thing and made myself a habit. I do not know.
There came a time after perhaps a decade of practice, where I noticed something strange: the colors were brighter, sounds sharper, clearer my vision and my senses somewhat sharp. It was as if a great veil of black gauze that had enveloped my entire body had been removed and I could finally see and feel things directly. The only other time I felt anything like this was when I took LSD.
What was the cause? I do not know. Over ten years of zazen each morning plus lots of sesshins several days have certainly done their part, but it was not something I've been looking.
Today, I did not feel that it is correct when I'm slumped in a chair or sofa. A few years ago, I got rid of my couch (at the time I had a show, what luxury!) Because I could not stand to be seated. I replaced it with pillows on the floor.
At time of writing I am sitting in a coffee (Shaik, in Notre-Dame de Grace, Montreal) and my back does not arise against the back, because I find it too loose and decentralized . When I drive, I take up the case until almost straight without What I seem to be only half awake.
So how does one keep his zazen mind doing something else? In the same way we do zazen: when we realize we drift back to good posture. When you find yourself trying to divert, back to good posture again. After a while, it becomes a habit and it does not even thinking about it.
In his commentary on the Heart Sutra, Dogen says: "There are four forms of prajna in everyday life: when walking, when standing, when sitting and when you lie.'s Prajna is intuitive wisdom. So, for Dogen, the whole of life is wisdom, it all zazen. We were watching or not is of little importance.
is good? Good.
Here, I'll do anything!
(Blog of Brad Warner, 24 October).
photos / m 
