Please Take a Seat – Yamada Mumon Roshi on the Power of Sitting Meditation

‘Sitting can be a very serious matter,’ according to the Japanese Zen master Yamada Mumon Roshi, who passed away in 1988 and whose teachings have been brought together in a new book called Hakuin’s Song of Zazen. In this excerpt, Mumon contrasts the dynamic, chair-bound posture of the West with the introspective stillness of Eastern zazen – seated meditation – and how our ways of sitting mirror deeper philosophical differences between the two cultures. In explaining a primary tenet of Buddhism, Mumon says it is not a tradition that looks up to the sky and longs for heaven, rather it is a pratice rooted firmly in the earth, in serene and transformative merger.

When you are invited to “take a seat,” and a cup of fragrant tea and a piece of cake are placed before you, you will no doubt experience a pleasant, relaxed feeling. You settle comfortably into a soft chair, perhaps lighting a cigarette, sinking into your own thoughts. But if you are required to sit formally, with your legs folded under you, the experience will be different. You will probably feel a sense of constraint, as if sitting face-to-face for a scolding. When you are urged to take the special seat of honor before the tokonoma, and you sit solemnly as tea and sweets are set before you—that does not engender an altogether carefree state of mind either. Sitting can be a very serious matter.

The posture assumed when you sit in a chair is one that allows you to get up and walk around at any time. In that sense, it is a dynamic posture. In contrast, the posture you assume when sitting on a Japanese-style cushion inclines you to remain as you are—to stay put. It has the disadvantage of promoting inactivity. I think this may help explain why Western civilization has strongly materialistic, dynamic, energetic quality, while Eastern culture is to the last spiritual, impassive, solemn, and serene.

A well-known kabuki actor once said, “It is more difficult to make people who are seated in chairs cry than those seated Japanese- style. Bringing tears to someone who is standing is even more difficult than to someone seated in a chair.” So perhaps even on an emotional level, sitting Japanese-style can be a matter of serious import.

“Might we not say that the people who created Western culture did their thinking seated in chairs, while those who gave rise to Eastern culture were stably seated in straight and upright posture?”

This all suggests that the way in which you sit is of considerable importance. Might we not say that the people who created Western culture did their thinking seated in chairs, while those who gave rise to Eastern culture were stably seated in straight and upright posture?

Buddhism speaks of “four kinds of solemn attitude” (shi-igi), construed as referring to the four bearings the human body assumes: walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. Among the four, the seated posture undoubtedly offers the greatest stability and mental composure. Statues and paintings of Buddhist figures show them in different ways; there are both standing and seated buddhas and bodhisattvas, and also bodhisattvas depicted seated on elephants and lions, symbolizing their dauntless strength. As a rule, however, buddhas are shown sitting. The Buddha Dharma is a religion that began from a seated posture.

There are many ways in which to sit—folding one leg under you and drawing up the other; cross-legged, tailor fashion; with your legs thrown out to the side; or with both legs folded under you, Japanese-style. The way buddhas sit is the posture known as zazen.

Simply stated, the way to do zazen is to seat yourself on a cushion, bend your right leg and place it over the base of your left thigh, and bend your left leg and place it over the base of your right thigh. You then place your hands, palms upward, above your left thigh with your thumb-tips touching. Hips and spine should be aligned straight and upright, with your chin and head aligned directly above them. It is essential that the body be positioned vertically in this way, like a five-story pagoda, each story placed above the one below it. The old teachers had a humorous way of explaining this: “Sit perfectly straight, like a bamboo trunk with all its joints removed, so that a copper coin on the top of your head falls with a clink into your anus.” You allow your body to completely relax, letting all your energy concentrate naturally in the tanden, the “cinnabar field” below your navel. You leave your eyes partially open with your gaze loosely focused a few feet ahead. When your body is positioned in this way, you must then regulate your breaths. It is important that you breathe quietly and regularly. You exist and you do not exist. There should be no sounds, no gurks or wheezing in your throat; your breaths should not be hurried or disordered. Chuang Tzu said, “The true man breathes through his heels; the ordinary man through his throat.”

“Buddhism is a religion that plants itself solidly on the great earth, heedless of the dust, not brushing off the defilements, unconcerned with sins; it strikes deep, deep down into the self, seeking to tap the vital life welling constantly up within it.”

Once you have regulated your breaths, you must next regulate your mind. This is the most difficult part. It means, briefly stated, to think of nothing at all; to sit in a state of mushin, “nomind.” And when you have settled your mind in this way, you must next regulate the external world. An example on a minor scale of regulating the external world is seen in aligning the geta when you leave them in the entrance hall; at a greater level, it is regulating the country and the world at large. You regulate your body, regulate your breathing, regulate your mind, regulate your geta, and regulate the world as a whole. I believe that the meaning of zazen may be summarized in the single word regulate. It is in this way that you become one and breathe in harmony with the great earth, and live timelessly together with it.

Buddhism is not a religion that stands unsteadily looking up at the sky, praising the earth and yearning for Heaven. It sits, deeply rooted in the great earth, gazing at it, its eyes cast downward, and proceeds to merge with it. From a Western way of thinking, the earth is a dusty place, defiled and sinful. Buddhism is a religion that plants itself solidly on the great earth, heedless of the dust, not brushing off the defilements, unconcerned with sins; it strikes deep, deep down into the self, seeking to tap the vital life welling constantly up within it.

Sitting in zazen makes the mind and phenomena one, fully integrating the self and the world, immersing the self in the harmonious life of the great all-encompassing universe. There is from the outset no inclination whatever to complicate this with logic or reasoning, using phrases such as “self and Buddha are one” or “heaven and earth are the same root as my self; all the myriad things are a single body with my self.” It is a realm of absolute oneness, where “seeing, hearing, feeling, and the rest are not disparate or independent functions”; where “mountains and streams are not reflected in the mirror of mind.” It is a realm of incomparable loftiness. As the Blue Cliff Record (Case 40) has it, “The moon, in the depths of night, sets in the frigid winter sky. Whose shadows could reflect coldly on the clear pool?”

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