The Budo Zen Way: Zazen and the Budoka

On the Physical Practice of Zazen and its Application to the Martial Ways

     This is the 2nd part in my new series on the Budo Zen path for the martial artist.  Although this series is written for the martial artist, I hope that even those of you who may be lifters might benefit from its insights.  In many ways, it is as much about the intersection of Zen and physical practice in general, meaning that some of its insights will carry over into active pursuits outside of the Asian martial arts.

     My intention is for this series to be practical.  I hope that it does have some degree of depth to it but, at the same time, my wish is for it to be easy to understand and easy to apply, though you do have to apply it.  Not applying what is written here would be akin to reading my pieces on strength training but never actually working out.

     The cornerstone of Zen is the practice of zazen or “seated meditation.”  If you wish to understand Zen, then you must actually take up its practice of meditation.  Oddly enough, the earliest popularizer of Zen in the West was Allan Watts, who never actually practiced zazen, or, if he did, didn’t do it on a regular basis.  I, for the most part, like Watts, though with some caveats.  His book “The Way of Zen” is still a good read.  Nonetheless, Watts’s approach to Zen—and this trend has carried on to this very day in many westerner’s understanding of Zen—was a psychological one.  He could be insightful, sure, but without the physical practice of sitting in zazen, I don’t think its benefits can be fully comprehended.

     In the West, meditation in general is largely seen as a psychological practice, or, to put it another way, a mental practice.  You see this most clearly in the modern “mindfulness” movement, where the practice of mindfulness meditation is used as a way to de-stress and to achieve a sense of calm and “peace of mind.”  It is promoted and sold to the general public as a form of “wellness,” devoid of its original religious underpinnings.  Because of this, almost everyone—including seasoned meditators—view it as a mental exercise

     But zazen is not so much a mental practice—though it does have a mental aspect to it, that can’t be denied—as a physical one.  It is, in fact, largely a bodily practice.  I think one of the benefits the martial artist has when she first takes up zazen is that it’s easier for her to understand this physical aspect.

     I first learned to sit zazen in the karate dojo of my youth—although the practice was sometimes referred to as misogi, a term which comes from Shinto.  There are different forms of misogi in Shinto, the most common being the austerities of the Shinto practitioner immersing himself beneath a frigid waterfall or submerging himself in a near-freezing river.  In this view, zazen was also seen as a form of shugyo, a Budo term that roughly translates as “ascetic training” or simply “discipline.”

     In those teenage years of Okinawan karate training, I understood full well the physical aspect of zazen without anyone explaining it to me.  We would practice zazen at the end of a long class, covered in sweat and with muscles that were aching from the rigors of our training session.  Also, we would do so while sitting in seiza without the aid of a zafu or zabuton as a cushion.  If you train in a traditional Japanese martial way, then you know how difficult seiza can be.  Once undertaken, it’s not long before your feet and lower extremities begin to grow numb.  Now, imagine sitting seiza while also maintaining an upright posture after a grueling training class and attempting to empty your mind of all thought.  Anyway, my point is that zazen performed in such a manner is very physical—in fact, as much as you would like to do so, you simply can’t escape the physicality of it.

     I don’t write the above to in any way suggest that the way I initially learned it is an optimal way to sit zazen.  It’s not.  But it is important to understand its physical, rather than mental, nature.

     For the martial artist, the best way to think of zazen is to liken it to a technique that you hold for an extended period of time.  But, in this case, it’s the only technique.  It’s akin to sitting in a horse stance for a prolonged interval.  The key to training a horse stance—or kiba dachi in Japanese—is to maintain an upright, unyielding posture while controlling your breath.  That is the key, as well, to proper zazen.

     For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to provide detailed instructions on how to begin to sit zazen posture-wise.  If this whole enterprise is new to you, then I suggest finding a teacher who can properly teach how-to-sit or, if that’s not possible, find detailed instructions online or via a book.  The way that I sit is most similar to the instructions of Kodo Sawaki and his student Kosho Uchiyama.  I highly recommend Uchiyama’s book Opening the Hand of Thought.  Not only is it a good book on Zen overall—providing both depth and simplicity, a rare combination—but it has an indispensable chapter on how to sit zazen, or, to be more precise, how to sit shikantaza, or the zazen of “just sitting.”  The remaining thoughts offered here assume proper form.

Kodo Sawaki, affectionately known as "Homeless Kodo," sitting zazen (and demonstrating correct posture).

     If you do already have a regular Zen practice, or if you are already well-versed in Buddhism or other Asian philosophies—or perhaps just religious practices in general—you may find some of the insights below to be a little different.  This is one of the advantages—there can be disadvantages as well, mind you—of a Zen martial path as opposed to the more common religious path of Zen.  Because it has different ends and is concerned with different goals, it is capable of seeing Zen in an unorthodox, if not outright novel, light.

     Most folks, when they take it up, find the shikantaza method—if it can even be called a method—quite odd.  Even seasoned meditators.  After all, you just sit.  You don’t do anything.  Well, other than sit.  Be aware of your body.  Pay attention to your breathing.  Feel sensations as they come and go.  But you’re not attempting to actually do anything other than stay present.

     It may be good, at least at the beginning, to bring a sense of calm to your body.  This is what I do.  Once I take my position, I spend a brief few moments to feel my body and bring calm to it.  I notice wherever there might be some tension and release that tension and try to calm that part of my body down.  Once my body feels calm and it has a sense of stillness, I simply sit with that stillness.

     Shikantaza can be difficult, especially at first, even for rather seasoned practitioners, because it doesn’t appear to have a goal.  For this reason, I recommend that those new to zazen take up the practice of susokukan, roughly translated as “breath counting method,” although the Zen and Budo master Omori Sogen wrote that the literal interpretation is “the Way of (finding) true perception by means of counting the frequency of breaths.”*  Omori Roshi is one of my heroes and personal inspirations for the integration of Budo and Zen.  (The others being Miyamoto Musashi and Yamoaku Tesshu, who I hold as the two greatest samurai of all time, though they lived in completely different eras—Musashi in 17th century Edo and Tesshu in the 19th century, living into the Meiji period.  They were also quite different in the fact that Musashi killed over 60 men and Tesshu not a single one.)  My admiration for Omori Sogen probably makes me partial to his translation, but, for the purpose here, it doesn’t really matter, for susokukan is the method for counting your breaths while doing zazen.

     Many times, practitioners see the breath counting method as too “simplistic,” and they want to move on to fancier, “shinier” methods, especially ones that they read or hear about that guarantee instant enlightenment or allow you to experience psychic phenomena or some pseudo-spiritual crap like that.  But, truthfully, you don’t need anything other than the simple method of breath counting.  In fact, its very simplicity might make it the best method for the majority of budokas.  It's similar to practicing the basics in whatever style you practice.  Karatekas want to do more complex katas and techniques when what they really need is to simply focus on the basics: backfist, reverse punch, ridgehand, front kick, side kick, roundhouse—you don’t really need anything other than those basics (at least for stand-up kumite; grappling’s a different animal).  Or it's similar to lifters and bodybuilders who overcomplicate things by doing long programs with multiple exercises and too much volume, when what they really need to do is get “back to the basics” with full-body workouts consisting of the compound movements like squats, deadlifts, cleans, bench presses, overhead presses, and barbell curls.  You don’t need much more than those few lifts, either.  With martial arts, lifting, and Zen, many seem to want to just accumulate a lot of knowledge instead of doing a few things and perfecting them well.

     So, stick with susokukan and go deep.  In budo, you don’t practice Shotokan for one or two weeks, then Aikido for a week, then decide those aren’t working so you’re going to do TaeKwonDo for a couple weeks.  No, you stick with one style until you’ve developed a thorough understanding.  Only then do you move on to another style if you want but you don’t have to.  Meditation is the same way.  Sit zazen with susokukan until your realization has some depth to it, until it has penetrated not just your practice but your life.  Then you can move on to something different but, as with martial practice, you don’t have to.

     Although I often sit in goalless shikantaza now, I spent years using susokukan before doing that.  And even now if I feel as if my practice isn’t going anywhere, or if I’m spending more time with mind distractions than just sitting—fantasizing, ruminating over things, etc—then I spend several weeks sitting susokukan in order to get “back to the basics.”

     Here is Omori Sogen’s explanation for the actual technique of how to do breath practice: “According to the Shoshikan,** shusu (mastering the way of counting the frequency of breathing) means that we should regulate our breathing—not allowing it to be too shallow, too rough, or too smooth—by counting the breaths calmly from one to ten. In this way, the mind becomes concentrated. Then we should repeat counting all over again starting from one. If we repeat counting in this way a number of times with all of our effort, our disturbed minds will come to be concentrated and unified naturally.

     “There are three ways of counting the frequency of our respiration: count the cycles of inhalation and exhalation, count just the frequency of inhalation, or count just the frequency of exhalation. From my own experience, the best way to enter into the state of samadhi seems to consist principally in counting the frequency of exhalation. 

     “As I exhale, I count, saying to myself, ‘Hito …’ with the second syllable pronounced long as if I were chasing the exhaled air with my mind’s eye. Then I add the short sound “tsu,” the last syllable of hitotsu (‘one’ in Japanese), as I inhale after the long exhalation. Of course, I do not count the frequency of my respiration aloud, for my mouth is closed during meditation. But I count to myself in silence as mentioned above. At first, we have to practice breathing consciously while breathing lightly and slowly in the direction of the tanden, but as we keep on practicing, the duration of our breathing will naturally increase.

     “We are told to concentrate our minds on counting the frequency of our breathing to keep the mind from being disturbed. Therefore, it is important to concentrate on counting each breath and also to become one with the frequency of each breath. One of my disciples once told me that by earnestly disciplining himself in susokukan he came to comprehend the true meanings of such Zen phrases as, ‘the cutting of the duality between before and after,’ ‘the continuation of non-continuation,’ and ‘the absolute present.’ Thus, the counting of the frequency of our breathing should not be undervalued.”

     After typing the above, I thought, perhaps, that I should have left out the experience of Sogen’s disciple, only because you shouldn’t concern yourself with such “awakenings” during practice.  But, at the same time, it is good to realize that zazen is done for more than just well-being.  Otherwise, it risks becoming utilitarian in much the same way as the mindfulness movement that I criticized earlier.  In fact, we should realize that Budo practice itself should have the goal of “the cutting of the duality between before and after” as much as zazen.  The same way, however, that we don’t concern ourselves with such things during Budo training, we should not think of such experiences during our Zen training, either.  Those encounters will come of their own accord when the fruit of zazen or martial practice has ripened.

     Roshi Sogen mentions breathing into the tanden.  This is important.  It is, in my experience, the key for being able to attain stillness and calm abiding through zazen.  It should also be something that is readily understood by Budokas, as it’s the traditional way that one is taught to breathe in a wide variety of Asian martial practices.  However, over the last several years, I have been shocked by the many martial practitioners I have met who have never even heard this, much less been taught it by their teachers.  Without a proper understanding of how to breathe into the tanden, or the dan jeon as my sabu*** refers to it, you will not be able to develop, and therefore harness, ki energy.  In a further installment of this series, I will discuss the development of ki, but for now it will suffice if you simply understand the importance of breathing into your tanden as opposed to breathing into your diaphragm and chest.

     If you’re not a meditator or a martial practitioner, you may have never thought there is an alternative way to breathe.  You may find it hard, at first, to breathe this way while sitting zazen.  But, when you reflect upon it, this might be a good thing.  As you learn to breathe into your tanden—expanding your stomach outward on the in-breath and relaxing it on the out-breath—it will focus your mind more due to the concentrative effort of this new way of breathing, keeping your thoughts from drifting off into one fantasy after another.  Which brings us around to the last thing I want to discuss before concluding: thoughts.

     Do not try to control your thoughts during zazen.  Some meditators think that zazen is about attaining a state of “no thought.”  Though you do hear sayings in Zen such as “no thought, no mind,” they actually don’t refer to a state of non-thinking.  The same goes with the attainment of mushin (or “no mind”) in Budo.  They are a realization similar to the ones mentioned above by Omori Sogen’s disciple, not a practice that you take up.  Instead of attempting to control your thoughts, or stop them, an impossibility anyway, simply do your practice.  If you follow my recommendations here, that means just doing susokukan.  Thoughts will come and go.  Don’t try to stop them but also don’t follow them.  Be aware of them.  Let them come.  Let them go.  Thoughts have often been compared, by Zen and other meditation teachers, as clouds in the sky.  An apt comparison.  Clouds come.  Clouds go.  Sometimes there are few clouds.  And some days there are dark, ominous clouds; nothing but clouds.  However many clouds there are, or are not, the sky behind them remains the same.  That natural state of the sky is also the natural state of your mind.  Bright.  Luminous.  Open and vast.

     As you practice, in both Zen and in Budo, that state of open vastness of your mind will eventually reveal itself.  When it does, your practice will begin to take root.

     

*From “Introduction to Zen Training: A Physical Approach to Meditation and Mind-Body Training,” by Omori Sogen Roshi, published by Tuttle Books.  For Budo practitioners or lifters who are interested in Zen training, this would be my “go to” book.

** The Shoshikan is a Japanese translation of an ancient Tendai meditation manual entitled Hsiao Chih-kuan or “The Lesser Calming and Contemplation” by the Chinese monk Chih-i (538–597).

***Sabu is the Korean equivalent of “sensei.”  Sensei is well-known in America as the term for teacher simply because of a half-century, or more, of Karate’s popularity in the West.  I didn’t take up Korean martial arts until I was in my 40s.  I never planned on studying the Korean arts, but when I was searching for somewhere to practice in the city I now live, a Korean dojang was the only “valid” place I could find.  It is hard these days to find a good martial arts school.  Most of them are after profit and don’t offer good instruction, although they may not be aware of this themselves in their defense.  They simply don’t know what they don’t know.  If you can get a “black belt” at a school after only 1 to 2 years of training then, news flash, it’s NOT a good school.  Martial artists from these schools are also the ones who are not taught how to properly breathe.  The current state of martial instruction in the United States is, I’m sad to say, quite watered down.