Heady Buddhism, No Body
While perusing blogs recently, I came across the following comments from Brad Warner at Hardcore Zen:
“In spite of all the foregoing cautionary material, I still believe zazen can be a very good thing for survivors of traumatic experiences. Maybe even the best thing. It can put you directly in contact with the source of the trauma itself. By slowly and carefully removing the psychological barriers you’ve erected to protect yourself from these memories you can finally become aware that the memories themselves are just thoughts in your head. No matter what the content of your thoughts are, they are all just thoughts. This is easy to say but very difficult to truly understand because we’ve been taught since birth to believe in our own thoughts.”
Now, I agree with Brad that zazen can be a “good thing” for trauma survivors, but there is something in his comments that needs to be addressed. Specifically, where is the body?
I have noticed that male Buddhist teachers and students frequently forget, minimize, or simply ignore the body. Buddhism, for these folks, is reduced to working with thoughts, and moving beyond thoughts. Certainly, it can be said that working with your mind includes how your mind sees and reacts to your body. However, this isn’t necessarily the way practitioners might take teachings about their minds. It’s too easy to stay in the head, and not actually experience how your physical body actually is in a given moment. This is especially true of those who have had a lot of physical trauma, and who experience deep pain on a regular basis.
When you speak of rape survivors, abuse survivors, survivors of war—the body is just as important a point of focus as the mind. Maybe even more so in some cases. Saying that memories of violence lodged inside of someone are “just thoughts” is horribly dismissive, and creates a barrier to healing and awakening for those who believe such ideas. I’m not interested in slamming Brad here, because Brad’s words are fairly common in parts of the Buddhist world, both in convert communities and traditional Asian communities. And although I’m reluctant to make gender generalizations, and for the most part believe the way gender plays out is as along a continuum, in the case of directly addressing the body and dharma, I’ve seen more women teachers and students doing so than men.
Some of this disparity may be due to cultural conditioning. Men are frequently taught that how they think is more important that what they look like. Although at least in the U.S., there is an awful lot of emphasis on the superficial, physical looks of everyone, so it’s more complicated than that. However, what I have experienced myself, as well as have seen in other male practitioners—both in person and through their writings and talks—is a certain disconnect between Buddha’s teachings and bodily experience. Beyond a few comments about knee pain during zazen, and of course comments about paying attention to your breath, male practitioners often seem silent about their bodies.
When I reflect on some of the earlier Buddhist teachings I can recall concerning the body, what I remember is the body in the negative. The body as a source of affliction, of transient pleasure, and of causes of suffering. And while it’s certainly true that the body is a fleeting, ever changing object that isn’t reliable in the long run, focusing solely on the negative seems troublingly dualistic.
The great thing about having a large canon of Buddhist teachings available to reflect upon is that the imbalances of some teachings and teachers can be balanced by others.
Here are some lines from Dogen’s Fukanzazengi:
“At the site of your regular sitting, spread out thick matting and place a cushion above it. Sit either in the full-lotus or half-lotus position. In the full-lotus position, you first place your right foot on your left thigh and your left foot on your right thigh. In the half-lotus, you simply press your left foot against your right thigh. You should have your robes and belt loosely bound and arranged in order. Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left palm (facing upwards) on your right palm, thumb-tips touching. Thus sit upright in correct bodily posture, neither inclining to the left nor to the right, neither leaning forward nor backward. Be sure your ears are on a plane with your shoulders and your nose in line with your navel. Place your tongue against the front roof of your mouth, with teeth and lips both shut. Your eyes should always remain open, and you should breathe gently through your nose.
Once you have adjusted your posture, take a deep breath, inhale and exhale, rock your body right and left and settle into a steady, immobile sitting position. Think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen.”
Notice how much emphasis Dogen places on the body, including where exactly to place your limbs, tongue, eyes, and other body parts during zazen. What’s funny is that most of us, when first learning about meditation, get a focus like this on the body. The body, in other words, is our initial gateway. However, how easy it is to forget about it, or simply be annoyed by its various “complaints,” when most of the teachings you receive after it are about working with one’s mind. And yet, if you look at this passage from Dogen, you can see how body posture, body movement, and body non-movement are part of the path to enlightenment. Dogen wasn’t one to waste words; he only spoke of that which might provoke awakening for practitioners.
Going back to trauma, in my own experience, returning to those places in the body where physical pain is lodged again and again – that has been a path toward freedom. In fact, even after my thinking has cleared, and distorted patterns have broken up, there has still been physical manifestations of things that happened long ago. I can sit in zazen and breath into those places. I can do yoga poses to help shift the energy blockages, and strengthen my body in a healthy way. Or I can get a massage, or take herbal medicines, among other things, to address the physical issues. But the main point I’m trying to get at is that we have to stop splitting the body from the mind. And I’m especially speaking to all the men out there who were taught, either directly or indirectly, that the body is secondary, or a source only of pleasure and pain, or just a troublesome place in need of control by the mind.
We all should continue to dig into the history of Buddhist teachings with a critical eye to places where the body is overly de-emphasized, or treated in a way that places it far below the mind in terms of value or importance. Doing so does not, in my view, diminish the very essential Buddhist teachings about the impermanence of, and ultimately unreliability of, the body. I’m grateful to some of the feminist Buddhist scholars out there, such as Rita Gross and Jan Willis, who have dug into some of these issues in recent years. And to men like Jon Kabit-Zinn and Reggie Ray, who do focus on the body as an integral part of practice. We must remember that initial gateway into practice. Zazen, walking meditation, and simply being alive are all done in a body, which is our vehicle to awakening.
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Touché! Good piece:)
And then there's Douglas Harding!
Great post! We shouldn't privilege any of the objects of awareness, and we should take care to figure out what we happen to be privileging and try to restore a balanced, unified approach. In other words, are you a jock or a nerd, and how does that shape your practice?! LOL.
It seems to me in favoring the mind over the body there is a lack of equanimity. The buddha nearly killed himself through denial of his physical needs and then abandoned that approach because it simply didn't work for him. Great post. We can be fully human and fully awake.
Buddhist Geeks – I've always heard of this website but never visited. Exceeds all my expectations (how often do we get to say that, eh?).
Reggie Ray, my teacher, has developed a whole course of study on adding the body back into disembodied Buddhism. In fact, he wrote a book about it. You can read most of it free on Google Books:http://books.google.com/books?id=pMTm4_xP5oIC&…
May it bring many people back to the earth, which we can only touch through our bodies.
Hello,
I am not a Buddhist, but a Christian. I’ve been listening to the podcasts for quite a while. Congratulations and thank you Vincent and any others responsible, for a very informative and well done effort. It really helps me to understand Buddhism from the perspective of the participants.
Now for a spiritual body response description. I read Dogen’s description in the post concerning proper body set-up for zazen. I gave it a whirl – modified for comfort, I'm too middle aged for the leg thing- eyes open and gently focused on the space before, breathing gently, mind not really blanked, but open and there. I began to smile, the life giving presence of the Holy Spirit I often feel in prayer manifested in my body and around me. It was like He had been waiting for me to get my mind off of other things so He could show up. I felt energetic and happy, to be frank it felt in my body like the brightening effect of caffeine in a good cup of strong tea with a slight touch of the calming effect of a shot of good liquor! I felt like getting up and dancing, but instead I did my end of day at work clean up of my class room and wrote this comment.
Wow, a very thought provoking article!
Thoughts: We always want to be careful not to “pop the head off the dandelion” by discarding the mind and it’s key role in human experience- even experiences of the body.
The experience of suffering will always find it’s root in the mind, and our storyline about what’s happening, vs what actually is. Or “projecting” scenarious that are long gone, or have yet to come. So I certainly see the wisdom in Brad’s thoughts of the mind being the universal ordering principle.
BUT, when suffering (the struggle with what is) is happening in this moment, in the leg, or the back, or in an organ let’s say, then to truly “be with” what is being experiened, one should strongly consider diving into that experience right where it is being felt – in the body.
The body and mind are so intimately connected, perhaps more than we are presently aware. To truly have an integral methodology, we must bring both to the table. Wherever the struggle arises, be it in our tense shoulders, aching back, or mental worry, the goal of practice is always to “meet it where it is at” in this very moment. To call forth our courage, stand at the precipace of the dragon’s lair, and boldly walk in.
Where does the notion that mind and body can be absolutely distinguished one from the other come from, anyway? The body and mind are not 'connected': they are aspects of the same organism; we can talk about them one at a time, but only allude to their complex and subtle function as a whole, largely because of limitations of language. At least, I am convinced that I have ever experienced one without the other. Thoughts are one function of mind, but not the only one; maybe not even the most important one.
Good point
The “separation” or gap of distinction between body and mind depends on how we are defining “mind,” and if we believe it dependently arises from the body or independably of it. (argument for “the soul”, etc.) If we are speaking in a Western context we are likely talking about mind as the meatloaf between our ears (the brain). If we are speaking mostly in an Eastern context then we are likely speaking more of “consciousness;” something phenominally more subtle and harder to pinpoint. Our language surrounding this topic, it seems, will always fall short of the mark no matter how hard we try. What we are all speaking of, “mind” or body, is quite the illusive and transitory object of attention. And it’s challenging to even call it an object. Ah the mystery of it all.
Again, a great point of inquiry.
Enjoyed the post. But if men are less concerned about the body, how come half the web sites I visit of 'masters' have a picture of the guy naked sitting sazen? maybe it is an ego thing. Maybe men feel more entitled to be able to show off their body, but a women risks being labeled negatively.
Anyway, good read. Thanks ylime for the book link>
Nice. An example of ….No division. No separation. All.
Thank you.
Good article. However, this is the first time I’ve witnessed someone criticize Brad for focusing on the mind instead of the body. He is more commonly accused of the opposite. I’ve heard him give meditation instructions many times, and he hardly ever mentions “what to do” with your thinking, just what to do with your body. When asked, he gives the Dogen quote “Think not-thinking,” that you reference. If you maintain your physical posture, you are inevitably maintaining your “mental” posture as well because your mind and body are the same thing. Or two perspectives of the same thing.
So that either shoots a whole in your male teacher theory, or it means Brad is more in tough with his feminine side than you suspected.