Our Meditation Practice: The Way of No-Pretending

Many people find meditating with other people, both online and in person, to be a supportive experience. Maybe you will, too! No knowledge, belief, or non-belief is required to practice with us. During the quiet practice period, you are free to practice your Way as long as you maintain a quiet practice environment for everyone else in attendance. 

Our morning meditations are in the quiet. We sit together for either 50 minutes (at 7:00 a.m. each weekday morning) or 25 minutes and practice returning to ease in the body. There’s nothing to achieve and nothing to attain. You don’t have to push anything out or away. You don’t have to feel any particular way, or achieve any particular state of mind or being. It is a practice of being sincere with yourself. After the meditation, there’s an opportunity for everyone to share reflections and questions. 

How can I join a public practice on Zoom and what can I expect?

Find a clean, comfortable, and quiet place to sit and click the big green button at the top of either this page or indycommunityyoga.org. You’ll enter our waiting room. Whoever is leading practice will let you in. Most people join a few minutes early to say hi and get settled in. The silent part of practice begins at the start of the stated practice times. If you join during the silent portion, please stay muted and begin practicing.

It’s ok to have your camera off, but it’s nice to be seen as well. If you are new, the practice leader will introduce themselves, offer an introduction to the practices offered that day, and ask you if you’d like any instructions on meditation. It’s ok to say yes. It’s ok to say no. 

We typically practice seated meditation in silence for 25 minutes beginning with a recitation of an ancient dialogue between Zhaozhou and Nanquan, two ancient Chinese Zen Masters. It’s ok to sit in any way you find comfortable. Using a chair, cushion, mat, or bench is fine. Do your best to let your body rest in stillness, breathe in and out through your nose, and allow and tension (squeezing of muscles) to soften a little bit. Sitting with ease, breathing with ease, and being at ease are related. At the end of the practice period, the practice leader will invite a bell to ring three times. Each time you hear the bell, take a full breath, hold for a moment, and release. After the third breath, we bow to each other. After that, we typically offer a reading and hold an informal sharing and discussion period.

1. Returning to Ease in The Body

1. Seat. Choose a way to sit that allows you to sit with ease. For some, that means sitting cross-legged on a cushion. For others, sitting in a chair with the feet on the ground is the way. Some use a meditation bench or turn a cushion sideways and take a kneeling position. Others lie down. You’ll learn what your body needs with practice. 

2. Posture. Please sit with dignity, light and tall in the upper body, was floating above your shoulders,  allowing your muscles to soften a little bit. As you practice this over time, it gets easier to relax towards whatever is right in front of you, no matter the obstacles.

3. Hands. Place your hands in a comfortable place. I rest my hands in my lap, left hand palm-up resting in my right hand with the thumbs lightly touching. This may or may not feel comfortable to you. Please place your hands wherever they feel at rest. 

4. Eyes. I sit with my eyes open as is traditional in zen practice. There are many reasons why this is traditional, but you may try practicing with eyes open and eyes closed, observe the effects, and practice as you like.

5. Take it easy. When you notice that you’re leaning one way or another, or feel your muscles tensing up, or have otherwise drifted away from your light, easy posture, please take a breath and take it easy.  This is part of practice. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, or a bad meditator. It just means you’re a human being.

2. Returning to Ease in The Breathing

Breathing in, this is breathing in.
Letting go, this is breathing out.   

Breathe in and out through your nose. You might notice that when you breathe in, you feel a little squeeze just below your ribcage, downward pressure into your belly, and stretch on the belly wall as it expands. When you let go, your breath returns to the air effortlessly. Notice how breathing in relates to the sense of lightness in your upper body posture. Notice also that letting go is allowing your breath to return to the air. Notice how letting go of the breath relates to letting go of tension in other parts of your body, and how that affects your relationship to tension in your mind. Sitting with ease, breathing with ease, and being at ease are related.  

I don’t typically put any special attention on breathing while sitting. (Some traditions do. If that’s your practice, please do your thing.) At the beginning of meditation, I inhale to the top of my breath — the point where breathing in deeper involves a lot of effort — hold for a couple of heartbeats, and release. I might repeat that a few times before releasing my attention from my breath. This helps me relax when I feel upset, agitated, or nervous as well. You can also try squeezing down, holding, and letting go, allowing air back into your lungs.

3. Ordinary Heart is The Way

There’s nothing to achieve and nothing to attain. You don’t have to push anything out or away. You don’t have to feel any particular way, or achieve any particular state of mind or being. It is a practice of being sincere with yourself.

There is joy in feeling what is true, joy in being sincere with oneself, and joy in abiding in the courage to not-pretend and speak and act sincerely. This is Ordinary Heart, your heart of hearts. When I practice sincerely every day, over time, I find that I speak, act, and live in the real world, with honesty, even when it’s not pleasant. I find it easier to set aside my ideas I have about myself and others and accept myself and others as they are, and then deciding what to do with that. I find it easier to hear the heartbreak in our world and see injustice, cruelty, and coercion, and take action together with others. In contact with my ordinary heart, it is possible to live courageously.

Silent meditation practice is an opportunity to allow your moment (everything you’re sensing, feeling, and in relationship with) to come into focus and become clear, like a scene in a camera, or water in a stream. By allowing yourself to face whatever is there, by unclenching, and letting go of strain, you have a chance to see a clear, full picture. Sitting is an opportunity to ease toward whatever is present and be honest with yourself. This is, as Dogen wrote, “the dharma gate of great ease and joy.”  

Sitting is also an opportunity to practice being gentle and kind both to yourself and to whatever guests (sensations, feelings, stories) arrive. Allow any tension or squeezing of muscles to soften a little bit, just like letting go of your in-breath and allowing the breath to return to the air. This tension in your body is related to suffering, the distance between the way things are and your ideas about the way things are. You can see whatever arises and all of the conditions underneath them.

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are a helpful framework for understanding. Sense input reacts with unconscious stuff to give rise to feelings/impulses automatically. Each is a window into everything else. 

1. body sensations (inputs; sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mind-stuff, like memories, other stories you tell yourself, emotions, explanations, speculation), 
2. feelings/impulses (reactions to sensations; like and dislike, or the reflex to either move towards or turn away, which can also elicit feelings; ever have a feeling about a feeling?), 
3. unconscious stuff (habits, conditioning, impressions left by everything you’ve ever experienced, how you conceptually group things, biases, ill will, willful ignorance, strain, struggle, language, genetics, etc.), and
4. phenomena/circumstances (how things are related to one another and affect each other)

Buddhist teaching offers many frameworks for understanding human experience. For a list that I find useful in my daily life, please visit A Living Summary of Impactful Buddhist Teachings.

What is Zen?

Our practice is a Zen practice. We do not claim to represent any particular lineage, nor do we require people who practice in our communities to believe or not-believe anything in particular. While I identify as Buddhist in settings where people ask about that sort of thing, it is not necessary to identify as Buddhist to practice with us. People who practice regularly with us and join our Community Care projects come from a variety of religious and spiritual traditions. Anyone who wants to practice sincerity and sincerely practice is welcome.

Buddhism, like many forms of spiritual practice, has various denominations from different places with different practices. Just as the Quakers can be categorized under Christian religion, Zen is a form of Buddhist practice. And just as there are many subgroupings of Quakers, Lutherans, Catholics, Vedantans, Shia, etc., there are different Zen schools. 

Zazen is literally Japanese for “seated meditation”. Zen is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese character 禅 (Pinyin: chán, Vietnamese: thiền), which is truncated from 禪那 (Pinyin: chán nà), which is the Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit word ध्यान (dhyana), which means “meditation”. Nowadays in colloquial English it can mean “being relaxed and unbothered by things.” Some people make the mistake of reaching for that through emotional suppression or denial, by stuffing thoughts or feelings down, out, and away. This is not what we practice. Zen is also not a practice of straining to focus, anchor, or concentrate on anything. Rather, it is a practice of not-ignoring, of seeing clearly a broad picture, even when it contains things you wish weren’t there. Peace of mind comes with accepting the presence of things, even things I don’t like. This could be everything from little things like the annoying knot in my left upper back to big things like the existence of racism, systems of exploitation for profit, and other forms of injustice. Being unbothered by being bothered comes with practice. Being present is looking at what is here, seeing the past contained in the present, and finding paths forward to reduce harm for the future. From here, Right Action is possible.  

Thanks for reading! I look forward to practicing with you. Please reach out with any questions or comments.

– Tony
tony@indycommunityyoga.org