Sorry if this is a dupe, I thought I'd mailed it but its here as a draft.
---Chris On Dec 13, 2012 7:48 AM, "Edgar Owen" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Chris, > > Why do you sit if you don't enjoy sitting? Sometimes I love it sometimes I don't - one learns to care for the body/minds near one without excessive regard for preferences. I always enjoy having sat. I don't always sit down eagerly. > If it's a pain the legs, ass or mind? The reason I took such care to work up to the group time gradually is to avoid unneeded pain. > This is a question all Zenners should ask themselves. Why if it is such a chore that they have to time themselves so they will get to stop do they do it? Why if we are all fundamentally ok why do we practise! that is the rub of it indeed. If you have forgotten why, perhaps sitting is not a good path for you. I am unaware of any claim of exclusiveNess for zazen as a useful path. At the time I was writing about, my motivation was do take my attraction towards zen seriously - if I quit paid work based on my response to a paragraph on anatta and my response to a paragraph about right livelihood, it is only being an adult to try sitting. Plus I had always enjoyed that sort of thing - I did self-hypnotism and the 'relaxation response' and trances and the like, so it seemed double. then the zazen itself keeps coming back. I can't put it into more clear words than the laughing joke about 'why practise if ok!' Perhaps you are quite different > > Is torturing your body this way Zen? It reminds me of the old Christian nonsense that one has to suffer to be be a good person.... One should't experience anything like torture in zazen - that would be a sign of something bad going on with the knees or something. slow down and use an easier posture if it is really painful. I think the Christian message is that we are all good people, regardless of suffering. we can be broken hurting people and be loved and accepted just as we are. and of course, if life compels us to take some risk, we need not fear. > > Edgar > > > > On Dec 13, 2012, at 10:11 AM, ChrisAustinLane wrote: > >> >> >> My introduction to formal practice was thusly: I read Buddha by Karen Armstrong, found that attentively reading about the eight fold path lead me to the feeling I needed to fix my work situation to accord with right livelihood, so I determined to leave my job and become a stay at home parent. Figuring if I was going to take this path that seriously, I should try the meditation. So I read my father's (already dead by that time) copy of the Three Pillars of Zen, rather intensely, probably more than once. Resolving to set my foot upon the path, I did find innumerable bodhisattvas springing up to assist. I found a local Zendo that had hours of sitting that I could make, arranged to go to an intro session in a month or two, and set about readying myself to sit on a zafu for 25 minutes. I read some Thich Nhat Hanh intro to sitting, different chapters on numbering the breath on the intakes, numbering the breaths on the exhales, etc. I gave it away to the Zendo library in a fit of burn the writings zeal so I'm not sure. >> >> I sat five minutes the first day I think and worked my way up to 25. >> >> So I have a fond spot in my heart for The Three Pillars of Zen, despite ending up with much mellower training in a more Soto lineage. >> >> Thanks, >> Chris Austin-Lane >> Sent from a cell phone >> >> On Dec 12, 2012, at 11:09, "Joe" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > Chris, Merle, >> > >> > That's right!, it is great! >> > >> > Kapleau Roshi obtained very special permission from the Roshi and from the students to take and to publish those records, for all our benefit, in his book THE THREE PILLARS OF ZEN. Kapleau's mission was to give a flavor of formal Zen practice before it was much established in the West. Very influential and successful, his book. >> > >> > Kapleau had been a court reporter during the Nuremberg trials, and his shorthand was good, so I think we can trust his Dokusan accounts, even if they have been edited. >> > >> > --Joe >> > >> >> Chris Austin-Lane <chris@...> wrote: >> >> >> >> Tho the Three Pillars of Zen has a great section of dokusan transcripts. >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > ------------------------------------ >> > >> > Current Book Discussion: any Zen book that you recently have read or are reading! Talk about it today!Yahoo! Groups Links >> > >> > >> > > > > > >
