Zen Meditation
Zen Meditation
BUKSBAZEN
The classic guide to
beginning instruction in Zen meditation. Zen Meditation
I N P L A I N E N G L I S H
“A fine introduction, grounded in tradition
Z E N M E D I TAT I O N I N P L A I N E N G L I S H
yet adapted to contemporary life.“
Publishers Weekly
John Daishin Buksbazen is a Zen Buddhist priest who trained for more
than a decade with Taizan Maezumi Roshi at the Zen Center of Los
Angeles, where he served as the publishing editor of ZCLA’s Zen Writings
Series and also as pastoral counselor. Daishin is also a psychotherapist
and psychoanalyst in private practice in Santa Monica, California.
We hope you will enjoy this Wisdom book. For your conven-
ience, this digital edition is delivered to you without “digital
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PRAISE FOR
ZEN MEDITATION IN PLAIN ENGLISH
“Here is a lucid guide to the first step of any serious spiritual journey.
All of the usual fat that accompanies works of this type has been
trimmed away, leaving the bones and marrow—the essentials that any
newcomer needs to know to enter the way.”
John Daido Loori Roshi
Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery
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Z E N M E D I TAT I O N
IN PLAIN ENGLISH
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Z E N M E D I TAT I O N
IN PLAIN ENGLISH
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Wisdom Publications
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Somerville, MA 02144 USA
www.wisdompubs.org
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic
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mission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN 0-86171-316-8
eBook ISBN 978-0-86171-948-8
First Edition
13 12 11 10 09
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Quotations from Maezumi Roshi are drawn from On Zen Practice: Body, Breath, and
Mind, edited by Bernie Glassman and Taizan Maezumi Roshi, ©Zen Center of Los
Angeles, Inc., and from Appreciate Your Life, by Taizan Maezumi Roshi © 2001 by
Zen Center of Los Angeles, Inc. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publi-
cations, Boston, www.shambhala.com.
Wisdom Publications’ books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guide-
lines for the permanecne and durability of the Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
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To my teachers,
Taizan Maezumi Roshi,
Roshi Bernie Glassman,
Sensei Wendy Egyoku Nakao;
to my wife
Concetta F. Alfano;
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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments 11
Foreword by Peter Matthiessen 13
Introduction 15
Using This Book 16
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Zen Meditation in Plain English
Starting to Sit 37
Laying the Foundations 39
Some Rules of Thumb 40
Sitting Supports 41
Positioning the Body 41
Positioning the Legs 42
Positioning the Rest of the Body 49
Zazen Checklist 56
Breathing 57
Breathing in Zazen 59
The Mind in Zazen 63
Afterword 92
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AC K N O W L E D G M E N T S
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FOREWORD
Peter Matthiessen
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Zen Meditation in Plain English
when heaven and a splendorous earth were one. For the new child
in the light of spring, there is no self to forget; the eye with which
he sees God, in Meister Eckhart’s phrase, is the eye with which God
sees him. But that clear eye is soon clouded over by ideas and opin-
ions, preconceptions and abstractions, and simple being becomes
encrusted with the armor of ego. Not until years later does an
instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The
sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment
of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise.
After that day, there is no beauty without pain, and at the bottom
of each breath, there is a hollow place that is filled with longing.
That day we become seekers without knowing that we seek, and at
first, we long for something “greater” than ourselves, something far
away. It is not a return to childhood, for childhood is not a truly
enlightened state; yet to seek one’s own true nature is, as one Zen
master has said, “a way to lead you to your long-lost home.”
Most of us cast about for years until something in our reading,
some stray word, points to the vague outlines of a path. Perhaps this
book is the beginning of your homeward way; if so, count yourself
lucky, for it offers no tangled analyses, no solutions, only the way to
forgetting the self, the way to zazen, to “just sitting.” Through zazen,
ideas dissolve, the mind becomes transparent, and in the great stillness
of samadhi (Melville called it, “that profound silence, that only voice
of God”), there comes an intuitive understanding that what we seek
lies nowhere else but in this present moment, right here now where
we have always been, in the common miracle of our own divinity. To
travel this path, one need not be a “Zen Buddhist”—call yourself a
zazen Buddhist if you like! “Zen Buddhist” is only another idea to be
discarded, like “enlightenment,” or “Buddha,” or “God.”
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INTRODUCTION
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Zen Meditation in Plain English
Beyond reading this book and thinking about it, there is another
way to use it.
I’ve written it as conversationally as possible, so that you can
imagine you’re at a Zen center receiving the kind of introductory
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PA R T O N E :
BUDDHAS
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B A C KG R O U N D
THE STORY OF
SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA
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Zen Meditation in Plain English
motionless hour after hour, looking deeply into his own mind. Now
he knew he was on the right track; he could feel it as he grew stead-
ier and stronger in his meditation. But even though he was deter-
mined, it still took a lot of hard work for him not to become
discouraged and not to wander off into some other activity.
But he kept at it steadily and one day sensed that he was reach-
ing a crisis. He simply had to break through whatever it was that sep-
arated him from realization of the Truth. And so it was, in that frame
of mind, that he sat down under a tree and vowed to not rise until
he had either answered his burning question or died in the attempt.
Sitting there, he focused his whole attention upon that question
and became so absorbed in his consuming inquiry that he lost track
of everything else. He didn’t even think of himself or about the
nature of the question; he was too busy questioning. He and the
question no longer seemed to be two different things. It was as
though he had totally become one with the question, had become
the questioning itself.
On the morning of December the eighth, as he sat there in deep
meditation, he caught a glimpse of the morning star—the planet
Venus—alone in the empty sky at dawn. And at that moment,
something tremendous happened. He suddenly was that morning
star, suddenly was the whole universe itself. Of course, this expe-
rience could have been precipitated by almost anything else: a
chirping bird, a passing dog, a stubbed toe. In fact, almost any phe-
nomenon could have triggered his breakthrough once he had
become sufficiently concentrated and focused upon his question.
But in the case of the man called Siddhartha Gotama Shakyamuni,
the stimulus was seeing the planet Venus. At that point, his ques-
tion vanished, and he knew. It was as though he had suddenly
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Part One: Buddhas
awakened from a dream and was able to see reality directly for the
first time.
And from then on, people called him Buddha, which simply
means “The One Who Woke Up.”
We must see our life clearly.
The existence of this very moment—
what is it?
Maezumi Roshi
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THE LINEAGE
The Buddha spent the rest of his life, nearly fifty years more, telling
and showing people how they too could wake up by making the
same discovery he had made. Gradually others came to practice sit-
ting in meditation as he had taught it and found for themselves the
experience of realizing who they truly were and what life and death
were about on the most fundamental level.
Through the years following his breakthrough, many of his fol-
lowers made the same discovery. But it was not until late in his teach-
ing career that the Buddha was satisfied that one of his disciples had
really deepened and clarified his understanding sufficiently to carry
on the teaching independently. Once he had found this person, a
man named Mahakashyapa, the Buddha publicly named him as the
successor to his own understanding, to his own state of mind.
This man, Mahakashyapa, in turn waited until he too could con-
fidently name one of his disciples as successor, able to provide fully
reliable instruction and guidance to future students.
And so it went, each successor in turn training many students
and always looking for one or more of them who would have a deep
and clear enough understanding and the right personal qualities to
carry on the teaching.
This went on for twenty-eight generations in India, before one of
these successors, Bodhidharma, finally found his way to China,
bringing with him the practice of sitting. After six generations in
China, the teaching spread to Korea, the rest of Asia, and eventually
to Japan. What’s most important to keep in mind about this contin-
uation of the teachings is that it was never based upon purely intel-
lectual study or secondhand understanding; always the individuals
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Part One: Buddhas
No one can live your life except you.
No one can live my life except me.
You are responsible. I am responsible.
But what is our life? What is our death?
Maezumi Roshi
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BUDDHAS IN AMERICA
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Part One: Buddhas
Zazen is the practice and realization
of manifesting our body as bodhi, as enlightenment.
It is both the practice and the realization, for when we truly do zazen,
there is no distinction between practice and realization. It is wisdom
as is, as things are. This zazen, the practice of the Buddha Way,
is none other than the practice of one’s life.
Maezumi Roshi
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