Zazen - When to Meditate - Dharma Rain Zen Center

Zazen

When to meditate

It is more effective to meditate regularly for shorter periods of time than once a week for a few hours. Regardless of whether we want to or not, making a disciplined effort to sit every day is very valuable. Consistency teaches us to meditate in the midst of all the internal conditions we experience in our lives. We learn how to sit when we can’t wait to meditate, how to sit when we are angry with someone, and how to sit when we just want to fall asleep.

Ideally, we make time to sit a few times each day, but it is important to meet the needs of daily life and not simply conform to a rule. Sometimes right effort is meditating for a minute, or meditating while lying down, or meditating for a few breaths before starting the car.

Many of us tend to have cycles in practice. We might make heroic efforts at certain times, and then forget the practice when our attention is caught by daily affairs. It is important not to indulge our preferences about when and where to practice too much. This can distort our sense of ourselves and our lives. We can avoid looking at something about ourselves we really don’t want to see. When we cultivate zazen as a practice, the willingness to look at the mind even when it isn’t attractive develops. This is how we really begin to learn about ourselves.

A typical period of meditation is twenty to forty minutes long. Of course, any meditation is helpful, but sitting for at least thirty minutes allows more of the momentum from the day’s events to drop away. When there is time, it is useful to push a little bit and sit longer.

This doesn’t mean sitting perfectly still in spite of pain; gently and quietly adjusting one’s posture without getting up teaches the mind and the body to sit still for longer. Gradually extending the length of sitting allows the body to relax into longer periods of sitting without injury or pain, and keeps the mind from resisting too much sudden change.

Another aspect of deepening meditation is making time for sesshin (silent retreat). These are periods of retreat when we come together as a community and cultivate stillness and clarity together. There are different types of sesshins over the course of the year. Some are more relaxed, with about six hours of sitting spread throughout a day. Others are more intense and formal, with about ten hours of zazen.

Having long periods set aside for sitting, especially over a number of days, helps to develop depth in meditation, and is an important aspect of Zen practice.

“In this sitting meditation, zazen, everything is at rest and you penetrate everywhere — thus it is like returning home to sit in peace. ”
Keizan 1

 

top