Traditional Approaches to Zazen | Zen Meditation

The earliest Chinese translations of Buddhist sutras that described methods for achieving a unified mind (samādhi) appeared around the end of the second century A.D. In the beginning of the fifth century, Kumārājiva translated into Chinese several more sutras on the practice of meditation, such as the Sutra on Zazen and Samadhi (Tso-ch’an san-mei ching). During these early centuries many Chinese monks practiced zazen to achieve samādhi in the Indian manner. During the Sui dynasty (589-6l7), the T’ien-t’ai master Chih-I wrote two seminal works on meditation. He described zazen in terms of three aspects: regulating the body, the breath, and the mind. He also presented four methods for attaining samadhi: constant sitting; constant walking; half walking, half sitting; and neither walking nor sitting. Thus several centuries before the emergence of the Ch’an school in the seventh century, zazen had already reached a high state of development in China, both as a practice and as a scriptural topic. We also note the close association between zazen and samadhi in Chinese Buddhist practice prior to Ch’an.

What is samādhi?

Though Indian tradition defines nine levels of samadhi, each with its own identifying characteristics, a general definition will suffice here. Samadhi is a unified state of mind in which there is no distinction between self and environment, no sense of time or place. This is not a state of no-thought or no-mind, since there is still an awareness of the self experiencing samadhi. Rather, it is a state of one-thought or one-mind. In Ch’an, an important distinction is made between samadhi and enlightenment, as seen in the spiritual path of Shakyamuni Buddha. After years of austere practice as a yogi, Shakyamuni had attained the highest level of samadhi, but he knew that his realization was still incomplete. He sat under the bodhi tree, vowing not to get up until he had fully resolved the question of death and rebirth. Only when he became enlightened, after seeing the morning star, did he rise. His experience became the paradigm of zazen practice.

The First Patriarch of Ch’an, the Indian monk Bodhidharma, reached China around A.D. 520 and established himself in Shaolin temple. While the historical facts of Bodhidharma’s life are scant, there is little doubt that he was enlightened before arriving in China. Even so, he continued zazen practice. According to legend, Bodhidharma sat facing a wall for nine years, in the same posture used by previous masters to attain samadhi. However, he did not use Hinayana methods (such as visualizing parts of the body), and his goal was different–to attain liberation without necessarily going through samadhi. Bodhidharma’s great contribution to Ch’an was his insistence on directly experiencing Buddha-nature through zazen.

The Fourth Patriarch, Tao-hsin (580-65l), similarly stressed the importance of zazen. For the novice, he advocated contemplation of the five aggregates of human existence: corporeality. feeling, perception, mental formation, and consciousness. In his Methods for Entering the Path and Calming the Mind (Ju-tao an-hsin yao fang-pien men), Tao-hsin quoted an earlier text;
One should contemplate the five aggregates as originally empty, quiescent, non-arising, non-perishing, equal, and without differentiation. Constantly thus practicing, day or night, whether sitting, walking, standing, or lying down, one finally reaches an inconceivable state without any obstruction or form. This is called the Samadhi of One Act.

Tao-hsin’s disciple, the Fifth Patriarch Hung-jen (600-674), is said to have foregone sleep to meditate all night. In his essay “Treatise on the Essentials of Cultivating the Mind” (Hsiu-hsin yao lun) he taught, “When the mind is placed at one point, there is nothing that cannot be attained.” The one-pointedness to which he referred was not samadhi, but one’s original or true mind.
The Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng (638-7l3) offered some novel formulations of zazen. In his Platform Sutra (Liu-tsu t’an ching), he says that if one were to stay free from attachment to any mental or physical realms and to refrain from discriminating, neither thoughts nor mind would arise. This is the true “sitting” of Ch’an. Here the term “sitting” is not limited to physical sitting but refers to a practice where the mind is not influenced or disturbed by anything that arises, internally or in the environment. For Hui-neng, the direct experience of Self-nature, the seeing of one’s own unmoving Buddha-nature, is called “Ch’an.” One could say that true sitting is the method, Ch’an the result. Yet since Ch’an is sudden enlightenment, when it occurs it is simultaneous with zazen. Hui-neng was critical of certain attitudes in practice which did not conform to his criteria of the true zazen that leads to Ch’an. Such “outer path” approaches to sitting are illustrated in the following two anecdotes.

The first story involves a disciple of Hui-neng, Nan-yueh Huai-jang (677-744). Huai-jang observed a monk named Ma-tsu (709-788), who had a habit of doing zazen all day long. Realizing this was no ordinary monk, Huai-jang asked Ma-tsu, “Why are you constantly doing zazen?” Ma-tsu answered, “To attain buddhahood.” Huai-iang picked up a brick and started rubbing it vigorously. After a while Ma-tsu asked, “What are you doing?” Huai-jang said, “I’m making a mirror from this brick.” Ma-tsu said, “That’s absurd. You can’t make a mirror from a brick.” Huai-jang said, “Indeed. And how is it possible to become a budgha by doing zazen?” Thereupon Ma-tsu asked, “What should I do?” Huai-jang said, “When the ox won’t pull the cart, do you beat the cart or the ox?” Ma-tsu did not know how to reply. So Huai-jang said, “Are you doing zazen to attain Ch’an or to become a buddha? If it’s Ch’an, Ch’an is neither sitting nor lying dawn; if it’s buddhahood, Buddha has no form. Since the Dharma has no abiding form, there should be no grasping, no rejection. Your attachment to sitting prevents you from realizing buddhahood, and it kills Buddha besides.” Ma-tsu became a disciple of Huai-jang and eventually a great master himself.

This story teaches that true zazen is not just a matter of sitting, however dedicated or perfected. To do zazen with Ma-tsu’s original understanding will bring some benefits. But it is impossible to attain Ch’an simply by perfecting the external form of zazen. Self-nature is to be found in what Huai-jang called the “mind-ground,’, not in the realm of form. Later Ma-tsu reiterated this point in his concept of “ordinary mind” (p’ing-ch’ang). One sense of this expression is a mind that is involved in the ordinary world, moving as usual but not clinging to anything. Another sense comes from the root meanings of p’ing and ch’ang, which suggest a mind that is “level” and “constant,” or in a state of constant equanimity. In either sense, there is no attachment.

The second “outer path” anecdote also involves disciples of Hui-neng. When Shih-t’ou Hsi-ch’ien (700-790) was a young monk, he approached the dying Hui-neng and asked, “Master, after you pass away, what should I do?” Hui-neng said, “You should go to Hsing-ssu.” Shih-t’ou understood him to say “hsun-ssu ” which means “seek thoughts.” So he assumed that the master told him to practice watching his thoughts, a known method of meditation. Shih-t’ou was unaware that there was intensely even after becoming enlightened. The descriptions of the earliest Ch’an monasteries in the Biographies of Eminent Monks (Kao-seng chuan) confirm that monks were supposed to spend most of their time in zazen.

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