" Within every moment of thought you should see yourself that your fundamental nature is pure. You should cultivate for yourself, pratice for yourself, and accomplish for yourself the enlightenment of buddhahood."
--Huineng [1]

So how do I do Zazen? Part 6: When

   More important than logging hours of meditation is regularity. Regardless of whether we want to or not, making a discipline of sitting 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 create space to sit a couple times each day, but it is a matter of meeting our lives, not conforming to a rule. Sometimes right effort is meditating for a minute, or lying down, or for a few breaths before starting the car.

   Many of us tend to have cycles in practice, and to make heroic efforts when we want to and forget it when the need for spiritual cultivation is obscured by our affairs. Indulging preferences about when is a good time to practice leads to a distorted view of who we are; it becomes easy not to look when we don’t want to see something about ourselves. When we cultivate zazen as a practice, over time it becomes more accessible and relevant, but if we only watch our mind at certain times, we are left unprepared for other states of mind.

   The length of time to meditate is generally 20-40 minutes. Of course, any meditation is helpful, but sitting for 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. 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 discovering when to sit is making time for sesshin. These are periods of retreat when we come together as a community and cultivate stillness and clarity together. There are different types of sesshin over the course of the year, some are more relaxed, with six hours of sitting a day, others are very intense and formal, with ten hours a day 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.

Posture
   ---Legs
   ---Torso
   ---Hands and head
Breath
Bowing
Mind
Where
>When
Continue with: Why sit Zazen?


[1]Hui-Neng, pgs 60-61 in The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Chinese Patriarch, trans. by J., McRae. (2000) Numata Center, Berkeley CA.