Over the last month or so my periods of sitting in zazen have lengthened from 10-15 to 30+, with daily morning sittings being broken into two 25-30 sessions, so about 50 minutes before anything else in the day. This started out from participating in online zazenkai, one of the few benefits of the pandemic. Living in a very rural location there is no opportunity to get to a zendo, but having people on the other end of a zoom meeting is surprisingly helpful.
When I started this extended sittings I was faced with my own impatience. Previously, sittings tended to be fairly short and even as a zelator I rarely sat more than 20 minutes except for the hour required to pass my exam for that grade which I did by effort of will. Now, having embraced the zen Buddhist method of shikan taza, things have changed, one of which is my sense of time while sitting.
I had unconsciously trained myself to essentially sit still until a bell rang, allowing me to stop. I would mark this time by counting the breath and my frustration would mount until I heard the bell as a signal that it was over. One morning I was sat for the first of a two part sitting, supposed to be 2 sets of 25 minutes with a 5 minute break in the middle. I was sitting, expecting the bell, knowing full well that it had to be any moment. I sit facing a wall so there is no way to check without craning my neck so I sat patiently, slowly realising that it wasn't going to come. What I also noticed was that now that I was certain that no bell was going to ring I had stopped waiting for it and a lot of the tension I had built up had dissipated, I was fine just sitting there, not waiting for anything, not expecting anything.
The lesson here I think, is that setting up zazen as a chore that has to be got through just puts up resistance. On the other hand if I put aside thoughts of how much longer I need to sit there, assuming my posture is good and the body not in pain then I am happy to sit there as long as necessary. The real resistance is in my mind. I think this attitude can be taken into other areas of life, for example work hours; instead of worrying about time to go to lunch, just carry on until it is time without fretting about it.
Often in morning zazen, my mind will naturally turn towards the days tasks. Planning as usual, running mental lists. This is ok I think, as long as I don't get absorbed into it, but is really another symptom of impatience, a sense of having something pending. A better approach would be to view zazen as time to myself, not as a chore but as a rest, a rest even from my hobbies and other distractions, checking emails, reading, watching YouTube or whatever I might do as a form of escapism.
I have also dropped any sort of breath counting in zazen. Once I realised that I was using it to mark the time I could see that it was being put into the service of my impatience (how many cycles of 10 do I need to do before I am finished?). What I notice is that after a while the breath gets naturally deep and slow, only being interrupted when I notice this and the mind turns towards it and automatically tries to control it, a symptom of long years doing pranayama.
Zazen then has become an exercise in just being, not trying to control anything, much less an attempt to muscle through enforced stasis on the cushion. I'm starting to quite look forward to the morning sittings as a period of quiescence before the business of the day. While I am aware that zazen is essentially a goalless practice something obscurely satisfying has arisen out of just taking the time to slowly watch the dawn come in each morning in silence and real attentiveness to the here and now.
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