having trouble sitting

marvin2k

I am having some difficulty sitting in the correct position for zazen meditation .

I cant get my legs in the right way for either the half or full lotus .

I am young and have always been active , but my legs and thighs dont seem to have the flexability for these positions .

I am trying to work my way towards doing the splits , because if i can do this I think I will be able to pull offa half or full lotus .

I know that there are other ways to sit , like in a chair etc , but I have heard that these are no where near as productive (bad word to use , but you know what I mean ) .

I recently started trying to sit because of a book I read called , zen , punk rock and the truth about reality by a Brad Warner , He has a real no nonsense approach to sitting .

Please give me some advice on how I can get my legs right for a proper zazen posture

Asiaprod

Hi marvin2k

Unfortunatly I cannot help you here as I do not practise Zen. I would imagine that like anything, it is a case of practise, practise Try doing it for 5mins a couple of times a day, and increase from there. One person I know used to meditate after taking a hot bath. Apparently the heat helped relax the muscles causing them to loose their rigidity. I would imagine, like an athlete, doing some stretching excersises before you settle down to meditate should also help. I am sure some other posters here will be able to offer other ideas.
Asia

Blackhorse Slim

The position in which you sit is not the most important part of za zen, focus instead on your breathing, and your awareness.

Gentle stretching exercises will help with your flexibility, but take it slowly.

18AD

Blackhorse Slim wrote:

The position in which you sit is not the most important part of za zen, focus instead on your breathing, and your awareness.

Seconded.

Sit if you enjoy sitting. Meditate if you enjoy meditating.

marvin2k

the reason that I was focusing so much on sitting position was because of this article I read , by brad warner who I mentioned in my post . I m sorry to post such a long piece but the whole thing must be read to understand where i am coming from

he says that the sitting position is of the utmost importance and once it is correct everything else falls into place

I am only just getting into reading about and practicing zazen sitting , Id like to hear the opinions of other posters on this guys article .


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In Zero Defex we had a song called "Proper Attire Required" which was a rant about music clubs that wouldn't let you come in unless you wore a tie, as well as the whole mentality surrounding that kind of idea. The thought that anyone would even want to pay money to go to a place that required you to wear a tie -- that forced you to conform -- was appalling. So I shouldn't have been surprised when I got some angry responses to my statement in the last installment that zazen was a "proper posture required" practice, and that if you didn't do zazen in the proper posture you were missing out on 90% of the practice.

But I stand by what I said; proper posture is a requirement of zazen practice. I'm not the only one who says this, by the way. Check out the chapter "Posture" in Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind or Dogen's chapter "Fukanzazenji" (Guidelines for Practicing Zazen) in Shobogenzo or just about anything written by Gudo Nishijima. But I'm not going to try and bamboozle you with quotes from renowned authorities. It's what you discover for yourself that's important. And what I've discovered for myself is that proper posture in zazen is absolutely vital to the practice.

People want Zen to be an "anything goes" type of philosophy. Sometimes people mistake the Zen insistence that wherever you are and whatever you are right now is Reality itself for the idea that anything goes. But anything does not go. Buddhism is about discovering the things that "go," that really work and make our lives and the lives of others better and happier, and the things that do not "go," that make ourselves and others miserable. The fact that Zen Buddhism doesn't have any set lists of hard-and-fast rules which are supposed to work anywhere at anytime for anyone at all does not mean that everything is OK. Right and wrong still exist.

To extend the metaphor I used last time, if a professional bowler told you that using a bowling ball is the right way to bowl and using a big ball of yarn was the the wrong way, you'd probably take his advice. But for reasons I'll never fully comprehend, people don't seem interested in the same kind of advice when it's offered by a Zen teacher. And this is fine. If you want to make mistakes, I'm not going to stop you. Bowl a few frames with your ball of yarn and see how it works. When you're done with that maybe we can talk.

In the chapter on doing zazen in my book I mention only sitting on a cushion in the full lotus, half lotus and Burmese positions (what we used to call "sitting Indian style" when we were kids). I thought hard about adding some lines about doing zazen on a wooden bench they call a seiza bench or doing it while sitting in a chair, but I decided against it. I didn't do this lightly either. I had some very good reasons based upon practice and experience.

I know all the arguments against sitting in the correct position. I hear them almost any time I or any other teacher I happen to be listening to starts talking about the proper sitting posture. Folks always start wildly speculating about hypothetical situations. "What if someone was in a horrific gardening accident and lost both arms and legs?" "What about people who've had their leg bones replaced with thermoplastic implants that can't possibly be bent into the lotus position or they'll break and leak poisonous compounds into their bloodstream killing them instantly?" "What about paraplegics? Can't they get enlightened?" "What about people with birth defects, or crippling diseases? Don't they have the Buddha nature too?"

The trouble is, I've never heard a question like this from someone who actually had a crippling disease, a birth defect, or who'd had both legs lobbed off by a madman in a samurai costume. In fact these questions always -- always -- come from people who are perfectly capable of doing proper zazen, but who would like an excuse not to.

The few times I've encountered people who had conditions that prevented them from doing zazen in the correct posture have been quite different. At the first place I practiced zazen there was a quadriplegic guy who used to sit with us. He just used his chin to push on this little lever on his motorized chair, wheeled himself up to the wall and faced it until the bell rang, at which point he'd use that lever to spin the chair around and make a little nod with his head when the rest of us bowed. Once a tennis pro visited one of our summer retreats. As athletic as he was, his legs had stiffened up to the point where no matter how hard he tried he could not make his knees touch the floor when he sat on a cushion. His solution was to grab another two cushions to support his knees while sitting. Afterwards he started working on some exercises to improve his lack of flexibility which, as an athlete, he regarded with some concern. These people did not look for excuses, but found ways to beat their own limitations.

There is no good reason why someone who writes about Zen absolutely needs to address a lot of hypothetical maybe type situations which might preclude someone from sitting in the proper position. People who really can't do those positions know it already and don't need to be told. If you're serious about zazen you will find a way to do it no matter what physical condition you're in. When a teacher meets someone with some specific condition that needs to be addressed, he or she can assess that person's situation and advise that person how best to do the practice in light of their unique situation. No problem. If you have any problems like that feel free to write me about it. But in cases like these, a face-to-face consultation is much more effective. Just don't be surprised if your teacher takes a look and says, "Stop making excuses and sit in the right position!"

It might sound very politically correct to address these kinds of things. But it leads to more problems than it solves because it allows people who really could do zazen properly to make excuses for themselves and do it wrong. How do I know this, you ask? Because I am one of those people. For many years, I fooled myself into believing I was simply incapable of sitting in the lotus position. This in spite of the fact that I knew very well that I could twist my legs up in that position and hold it for several minutes at a time. My teachers were both so tough that when they saw me doing zazen wrong they didn't hit me with a stick or shout. In fact they did not say a word. They'd already explained how zazen was supposed to be done. They knew I understood. And yet I wasn't doing it right. So they just let me keep right on doing it that way.

Those kinds of teachers are the toughest around. They'll let their students spend years and years doing things wrong until the students discover their own mistakes for themselves because they know there is nothing more convincing than when you discover your own mistakes for yourself. I wish life wasn't this hard. But sometimes it just is. And here I am, an old softie, telling you how to do it right. Just call me Master Marshmallow.

After a few years of sitting zazen wrong, I finally buckled down and started doing it right and noticed a tremendous difference, not just physically, but mentally as well. You will too if you try it.

Since I discovered what real sitting was I must have encountered a couple dozen other lame-o's just like me who actually could manage the posture if they made a little bit of effort, but who begged out of it with all kinds of half-assed excuses. These guys (who seem to all be American and male, by the way, for what that's worth) all seem to be saying, "Hey, look at me, I'm not one of those cross-legged schmucks. Cuz I have a unique problem with my legs/back/neck, you see..." It reminds me of the character on the old Second City TV show who could walk, but rode around in a wheelchair to get sympathy. It's like looking at your friend who's suicidally depressed because of repeated abuse she suffered as a child who's gotten better by taking Prozac® and thinking that maybe you should try taking some because you're kinda down in the dumps since your girlfriend dumped you to go out with a professional Pogo Stick® champion. But, hey, if that's what you really want to do, fine by me.

Zazen is not a "spiritual" practice. It is the effort of mind and body. Body and mind are one and the same. If you were not born with eighteen slimy green tentacles instead of legs -- or whatever -- and you still cannot manage the lotus position, this is evidence that you have abused your body for many, many years. If you don't believe me, find me one able bodied three year old who cannot do the lotus position or indeed bend her body in ways most accomplished yogis or gymnasts would envy. You had that ability too when you were that age and you lost it. No, let me be more direct. You threw it away. And if the body is not right, neither is the mind.

Zazen is very much a physical practice. As with any physical practice, there are right ways and wrong ways to do it. Keeping the spine straight using your own ability to balance the vertebrae on top of each other without any effort is the key to good zazen. Zazen is all about achieving physical as well as mental balance because they are the same thing. While sitting in zazen you're trying to maintain balance in your posture. Sit like you would if you had one of your rich Aunt Betty's antique porcelain dishes worth a couple hundred bucks balanced on top of your head. Stay straight and your mind will settle of its own accord. You won't need to count your breath or think about a koan or any of that silliness if you just keep your posture right.

If you're too fat to do zazen, try losing some weight. If your legs are too stiff, try doing what I did and learning some other yoga exercises to loosen those muscles up. Nothing worthwhile comes without effort. People who tell you you can do zazen just as well lying down or in a chair or on a kneeling bench are fooling you. Those kinds of practices are only for people who absolutely can't do anything else. They're effective practices for people who really, truly need them. That doesn't mean they'll work just as well for someone who doesn't.

You can achieve some kinds of wowie-zowie type spiritual states lying down or floating in tanks of heated water and all that. But that's not zazen and what you discover by those practices is not Reality. Sitting in your La-Z-Boy® and spacing out is not zazen.

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Asiaprod

Wow, to be honest, I would chuck that book strait in the Bin. The guy comes across as being arrogant and all knowing. And he is wrong. The reason that body position is so important in Zen is to enable the Diaphragm to move freely. I recommend you use the Seiza position. I use this all the time. The longest I have done this is for a continuous 6 hours period and had no problem at the end of it. Here is a very good link from which I took the following http://www.mro.org/zmm/teachings/meditation.php

The importance of keeping the back straight is to allow the diaphragm to move freely. The breathing you will be doing in zazen becomes very, very deep. Your abdomen will rise and fall much the same way an infant's belly rises and falls. In general, as we mature, our breathing becomes restricted, and less and less complete. We tend to take shallow breaths in the upper part of the chest. Usually, we've got our belts on very tight or we wear tight clothing around the waist. As a result, deep, complete breathing rarely occurs. In zazen it is important to loosen up anything that is tight around the waist and to wear clothing that is non-binding. For instance, material should not gather behind the knees when you cross the legs, inhibiting circulation. Allow the diaphragm to move freely so that the breathing can be deep, easy, and natural. You don't have to control it. You don't have to make it happen. It will happen by itself if you assume the right posture and position your body properly.

yomchi

I also prefer the Seiza postion and find itmore comfortable. There is a Buddhist teacher I did talks with one time who said the position is not important as long as you are comfortable and breathing correctly. Also Zen Buddhist practice walking meditation - you could try that!

yomchi

I am trying to work my way towards doing the splits , because if i can do this I think I will be able to pull offa half or full lotus

Hi Marvin, I just saw this bit. I've been doing martial arts since I was a boy and I am quite flexible, having the splits both side and front. I still feel pain trying to sit in the full or even half lotus position. What I find works best is to sit as close to the prefered position as possible for an amount of time and pretty soon your legs will accustom to it. What helped me starting off was not meditate for extremely long periods of time but say in ten minute sittings which gave my body the opportunity to get used to these new positions at ease and also it helped my mind and sanity as I was forever running off after my thoughts and being wrapped up in them - of course nothing has changed yet
Don't be too hard on yourself trying to achieve the sitting positions they will come with patience and practice. - i hope

Asiaprod

Asiaprod wrote:

Wow, to be honest, I would chuck that book strait in the Bin. The guy comes across as being arrogant and all knowing. And he is wrong.

Ayup.
I find that sitting half lotus helps me keep my back straighter than sitting crosslegged, which in turn means I won't get so much of a backache from sitting up like that for a while and I don't have to lean against something. I'd say that's also a main reason.
It's about your mind, not what positions you can contort yourself into. If you want the latter, do yoga. Not that yoga's a bad form of meditating either really

But anyway, sitting in the right position is just important to make sure you are comfortable, can maintain it for a little while, and can breathe without distractions of aches and pains so much
you could sit up straight on the edge of a chair

Asiaprod

bluewolf wrote:

Ayup.

I am not referring to the position. I took time out to read more from the book. I am talking about the book:)

Asiaprod

Asiaprod wrote:

I am not referring to the position. I took time out to read more from the book. I am talking about the book:)

I just scanned through the position bit since that's what the thread was about
=(

The_Scary_Man

I have a pretty hard time getting anywhere near half lotus myself but I found a meditation seat that helps me to ease myself closer as time goes by.



I got one of these seats from http://www.zenthings.com and it has helped me a fair bit. It takes some of the pressure off the back by tilting the pelvis forward a little.

I have also used a meditation stool;



again this has a tilted seat but allows you to kneel while meditating, a practice popular in Japan or so I've been led to believe

I have used both and found them helpful in different ways.

As Jon said it can affect your meditation practice for a while as you get used to sitting in this way so maybe practicing sitting separate from meditating until you get comfortable is the answer?

Asiaprod

The_Scary_Man wrote:

I have also used a meditation stool;



again this has a tilted seat but allows you to kneel while meditating, a practice popular in Japan or so I've been led to believe

I sure know that one. Very popular over here, I found it really hurts the knees:)