Zazen Meditation

You are simply sitting there, doing nothing … and all is silence and all is peace and all is bliss. You have entered godliness, you have entered truth.


The Zen people say just sit, don’t do anything. The most difficult thing in the world is just to sit doing nothing. But once you have got the knack of it, if you go on sitting for a few months doing nothing for a few hours every day, slowly, slowly many things will happen. You will feel sleepy, you will dream. Many thoughts will crowd your mind, many things. The mind will say, “Why are you wasting your time? You could have earned a little money. At least you could have gone to a film, entertained yourself, or you could have relaxed and gossiped. You could have watched the TV or listened to the radio, or at least you could have read the newspaper you have not seen. Why are you wasting your time?” Mind will give you a thousand and one arguments, but if you just go on listening without being bothered by the mind…it will do all kinds of tricks; it will hallucinate, it will dream, it will become sleepy. It will do all that is possible to drag you out of just sitting. But if you go on, if you persevere, one day the sun rises. One day it happens, you are not feeling sleepy, the mind has become tired of you, is fed up with you, has dropped the idea that you can be trapped, is simply finished with you! There is no sleep, no hallucination, no dream, no thought. You are simply sitting there, doing nothing … and all is silence and all is peace and all is bliss. You have entered God, you have entered truth. YOU CAN SIT ANYWHERE, but whatsoever you are looking at should not be too exciting. For example things should not be moving too much. They become a distraction. You can watch the trees—that is not a problem because they are not moving and the scene remains constant. You can watch the sky or just sit in the corner watching the wall. The second thing is, don’t look at anything in particular—just emptiness, because the eyes are there and one has to look at something, but you are not looking at anything in particular. Don’t focus or concentrate on anything—just a diffuse image. That relaxes very much.And the third thing, relax your breathing. Don’t do it, let it happen. Let it be natural and that will relax even more. The fourth thing is, let your body remain as immobile as possible. First find a good posture—you can sit on a pillow or mattress or whatsoever you feel to, but once you settle, remain immobile, because if the body does not move, the mind automatically falls silent. In a moving body, the mind also continues to move, because body-mind are not two things. They are one … it is one energy. In the beginning it will seem a little difficult but after a few days you will enjoy it tremendously. You will see, by and by, layer upon layer of the mind starting to drop. A moment comes when you are simply there with no mind.

Instructions
Sit facing a plain wall, approximately at your arm’s length away. Eyes should be half-open allowing the gaze to rest softly on the wall. Keep your back straight, and rest one hand inside the other with thumbs touching to form an oval. Stay as still as possible for 30 minutes. While sitting, just allow a choiceless awareness, not directing the attention anywhere in particular, but remaining as receptive and alert as possible, moment to moment.