Can You Meditate 15% Better??

Rinzai Zen: Tough Samurai!! Soto Zen: Laid-Back Farmer . . .

These are the stereotypes. Yet there's a bit of truth in them, I've found, when it comes to the approaches the two different schools take to Zazen. Soto practitioners have told me, "You Rinzai monks can be kind of, um, intense in your approach to Zazen," and to their point, various Rinzai monks have instructed me to: "SIT LIKE YOUR HAIR IS ON FIRE, RUBE!!!"

So, is effort helpful when it comes to meditation? Or is it counterproductive?

I once had a monk tell me, "Exhale 15% more than what you think is natural when you sit." This, because, "What you think is natural is not natural. Your breathing is constricted due to all the trauma and problems you've experienced in your life. To get to natural, you need to give 15% more."

To some extent I've found it helpful to think this way about Zen practice -- and maybe even life -- in general. Give 15% more, because what I think of as "natural" is maybe just "personal," which is to say provincial or limited.

A lot of my beliefs and preconceptions and hangups and issues, well, they feel perfectly natural! My mind as I sit on the cushion and it begins to wander . . . this feels organic sometimes! I'm thinking about cool good interesting ME-type stuff! This is natural, right??

Depends how you define natural. I've found that repeated attention given to a distracted mind causes suffering. Period.

T.S. Elliot has a great poem where he talks about "the still point of the turning world" He claims that "Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance. And there is only the dance."

Zazen has more to do with Elliot's "still point," from which all thought and action issue, than with some of our let's call them "lesser" motivations. I'm talkin' 'bout revenge fantasies, endless inner complaints, or concerns about what we'll be eating for lunch. Not that I've ever experienced any of these on the cushion . . .

So, lately that's what I've been doing. Putting in that extra 15% on the cushion. It takes a little work sometimes to be natural!! It's kind of like what Dolly Parton said about dressing up:

"It takes a lot of money to look this cheap."

I offer these videos for free, but you can support my work here:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?busine...

You can find essays, blogs, and videos here:

patreon.com/ShozanJackHaubner

And buy my books here:

https://www.amazon.com/Shozan-Jack-Ha...

0:00 Intro
5:22 The 15% Teaching
8:33 Natural or Merely Personal?
11:53 Doing Nothing, Moment after Moment
15:58 Catch Yourself Being Yourself
19:45 The Still Point of the Turning World
22:23 Don't. Beat. Yourself. UP!!!!