Our Meditation Practice: Ease in the body. Ease in the breathing. Ordinary Heart.
by Tony Wiederhold
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 form is simple. We sit together in quiet for 25 minutes and practice returning to ease in the body and ease in the breathing. There’s nothing to achieve and nothing to attain. Over time, you learn to allow yourself to ease back towards the wordless present, before words and concepts. Part of returning to ease is allowing yourself to rest the part of you that cogitates, conceptualizes, and explains. There is joy in that ease and acceptance. 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.
This can feel difficult at first. It is common, even normal, to have to pretend or perform in one way or another in order to survive systems, workplaces, schools, and relationships that are oppressive. It is also common and normal to be overworked and sleep deprived. We are all inundated with obligations, pressure to continuously improve and continuously produce (e.g. wealth for someone else), and signals that may leave you feeling that you need to be somehow different than who you are, or that if you’re stressed out or angry that it is somehow wrong or your fault and that you need to be more resilient. Many of us are in some stage of grief — anger, denial, bargaining, despair, acceptance. It might seem counterintuitive to ease into these things, but there is joy in feeling what is true, and joy in expressing that which is sincere.
When you practice sincerely every day, over time, you may find that clarity, joy, courage, grace, and compassion arise naturally in your everyday life, and paths to reduce harm and have healthy relationships with others, the environment, and yourself become apparent.
How can I join one of your public practices 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
Returning to ease has big effects, and that starts with posture, or how you arrange your body. When you continually return to ease in the body, it gets easier to relax towards whatever is right in front of you.
1. Sit so that you can allow your leg muscles to relax while keeping your torso light and upright. Allow your ears to float above your shoulders. Choose a way 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. Choose a way that allows you to sit with ease. It’s also ok to lay down if you can’t find a way to comfortably sit upright. Every body is different. You’ll learn what yours needs with practice.
2. 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.
3. I sit with my eyes open as is traditional for zazen. You can try eyes open and eyes closed and observe the effects.
When you notice that you’re leaning one way or another, or feel muscles tensing up, or have otherwise drifted away from your light, easy posture, just reset. You might notice that this drift away from ease in the body is connected to similar drift in the breathing and the mind. This is totally normal. 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.
It is not necessary to breathe in any particular way when meditating. I don’t typically put any special attention on breathing while sitting. 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 is joy in feeling what is true, joy in being sincere with oneself, and joy in abiding in the courage to just be yourself. This is Ordinary Heart, your heart of hearts. When I practice sincerely every day, over time, I find that clarity, joy, courage, grace, and compassion arise naturally in everyday life, and Right Action to reduce harm and have healthy relationships with others, the environment, and myself become apparent. Maybe you will, too. Sitting practice does not need to involve striving. It does not need to involve concentration. It is not reaching for any particular experience. What you sense and feel in any given moment arises automatically.
Thinking includes the stories you tell yourself, such as explanations, conclusions, justifications, narratives, and other ideas. These thoughts come from somewhere. Underneath them are feelings — reactions you have to inputs from the senses, including the mind. Allowing thinking to come to rest means allowing the thought-maker to coast to a natural stop, like a bowling ball rolling into sand. You can also think of this as setting them aside, or putting them down, as if they were a backpack full of rocks. You might notice that there’s a little bit of physical strain and muscle tension related to thinking. Allow this tension to soften a little bit and all of the things underneath the thought reveal themselves. You may notice a reluctance to acknowledge what is there. Allow yourself to unclench and be at ease with whatever is present and you may find that there is something under that, too. The Japanese Zen Master Dogen wrote, “Sit solidly in samadhi and think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? This is the art of zazen.”
Sitting practice is allowing what is in your experience 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 practice turning toward whatever is present and being honest with yourself. Facing what is present and accepting it is, as Dogen wrote, “the dharma gate of great ease and joy.” This is being at peace.
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
