Zazen: Learning and Teaching

Kyudo Roshi taught me zazen. I’d sort of learned to sit on my own, enough to sit the 30-minute period required by the Soho Zendo for membership. When I met Kyudo a few months later at my first sesshin, he taught me to sit. Posture first. He wouldn’t even talk to me about breathing until he was satisfied with my posture. Only then did he teach me to breath. Thirty years later, I’m still learning zazen.

Kyudo’s basic posture principle was simple. In sitting, you shouldn’t be using any muscles. Just sit still. Muscle soreness happens because you’re tensing. You’re turning zazen into an isometric exercise. For me, posture practice is endless. I may go for a while without soreness, maybe even years, but then there it is again, my old friend. Maybe I’ve slipped back into bad habits or maybe my aging body is discovering new pains. I follow Kyudo Roshi’s instruction, Notice the tension, adjust the posture, relax the aching muscles. Learning to sit, you are learning to listen to your body.

You know when you are getting it, Kyudo told me, when you just naturally breathe from your hara, the lower abdomen. When Kyudo was satisfied, he moved on to my breathing. I’m still practicing. It’s amazing and wonderful; my breath is still getting deeper.

I have followed Kyudo’s way in teaching zazen. First, you sit still. Next, you work with the pain that arises in the stillness. For me, there is no Zen without zazen. I am not a philosophy teacher. Don’t come to me for Zen talk. Bernie wasn’t interested, either, in talk without practice.

But even before he left Greyston, Bernie had begun to question the necessity of zazen. Zazen wasn’t for everyone. There were many other beautiful paths. Bernie was working with some wonderful people in the bakery and in other Greyston projects who looked to him for spiritual guidance, and yet zazen was not for them. Were there aspects of their religious training or other cultural factors which blocked their access to zazen? Bernie was always searching for new upayas, fresh skillful means, to point people toward the realization and the actualization of the Oneness of Life.

As we built our network of charter schools, I too had the experience of working with wonderful people for whom zazen was inaccessible. We had some wonderful teachers, born-again Christians, who believed that to empty their minds in zazen was to invite the devil in. Zazen was a gateway to damnation. But even without zazen, some manifested a deep awareness of the Oneness of Life.

Bernie was right, of course. There are many pathways to enlightenment. Zen is only one pathway. All pathways are empty and equal. What does a Zen teacher do? My answer has been very simple. I have been trained only in this one spiritual path. It is only in this path that I am authorized to teach. Some people have trained in multiple paths. Roshi Bob is empowered as a Zen teacher and as a Catholic priest. He can guide people on either path.

I have my limitations. I am not the teacher for everyone. I am not even the teacher for everyone for whom Zen is the path. There are many wonderful paths and many wonderful Zen teachers. It is still up to the student to find their teacher. Or to recognize their teacher when their teacher appears.