Body-Mind

Body-Mind — To quote from Dogen, “Body and Mind naturally drop off, and the original face appears.”

---

Dogen, mas­ter of ‘just sitting’

---

So cease the intel­lec­tu­al work of study­ing say­ings and chas­ing words. Learn the back­ward step of turn­ing and reflect­ing light. Body and Mind nat­u­ral­ly drop off, and the orig­i­nal face appears. If we want to attain the mat­ter of the inef­fa­ble, we should urgent­ly prac­tice the mat­ter of the inef­fa­ble.
In gen­er­al, a qui­et room is good for Zen prac­tice, and food and drink are tak­en in mod­er­a­tion. Aban­don all involve­ments. Give the myr­i­ad things a rest. Do not think of good and bad. Do not care about right and wrong. Stop the dri­ving move­ment of Mind, will, con­scious­ness. Cease intel­lec­tu­al con­sid­er­a­tion through images, thoughts, and reflec­tions. Do not aim to become a Bud­dha. How could it be con­nect­ed with sit­ting or lying down?

The above quote is Mike Cross’ trans­la­tion of a por­tion of Mas­ter Dogen’s (19 Jan­u­ary 1200 – 22 Sep­tem­ber 1253) text on Zazen, “Rules of Sit­ting-Zen for Every­body.” (Dogen was a Japan­ese Zen Bud­dhist teacher born in Kyoto, and the founder of the Soto school of Zen in Japan.)

Dogen is mak­ing a point we think is essen­tial. To use his words: “Body and Mind nat­u­ral­ly drop off, and the orig­i­nal face appears.”

Now, since this is Zen-speak, let me attempt an interpretation.

Orig­i­nal face — is all about what lies beneath who we (and the world) appear(s) to be. With­out “beneath” being a direc­tion, of course. We might describe Orig­i­nal face as our essen­tial nature, which gets obscured when our focus is on “things.”

“Show me your orig­i­nal face before your “you” was born.” Before you bought into your identity—into your “Not good enough.” Or into your “Not try­ing hard enough.” Or, “slow, dumb, per­se­cut­ed me.” 

Before your “you” was born, you sim­ply were.

Body and Mind drop off — to see through to Orig­i­nal face, our bare atten­tion must let go of our end­less focus on “me.”

Our sto­ries about life, and our deper­son­al­iza­tion of our bod­ies cause us to spend our days lost in thought, as opposed to actu­al­ly living.

We talk a lot about dropping Mind.

This does not mean den­i­grate Mind or elim­i­nate Mind. It means “let go of cling­ing to Mind.” Fritz Perls put it,

“Go out of your mind, and come to your senses.”

Our ten­den­cy is to equate think­ing with actu­al­ly liv­ing. For exam­ple, many peo­ple insist on the cor­rect­ness of their imag­i­nary, inter­nal sto­ries. They tell me, in graph­ic detail, that, for exam­ple, they can’t change any­thing in their lives until they have “…thought things through, so as not to make a wrong decision.”

To drop the Mind is to notice our tendency to do just this, to make Mind games superior to living. 

Or, as Dogen wrote,

“Aban­don all involve­ments. Give the myr­i­ad things a rest. Do not think of good and bad. Do not care about right and wrong. Stop the dri­ving move­ment of Mind, will, con­scious­ness. Cease intel­lec­tu­al con­sid­er­a­tion through images, thoughts, and reflections.”

• Involve­ments — this is short­hand for things we obsess about — cir­cum­stances and periph­er­al things, the things the Mind loves to “spin” about.
• Myr­i­ad things - the 10,000 things. This is “ori­en­tal speak” for “every­thing.” It means the end­less details of liv­ing — again, some­thing our Minds love to dig into.
• Good and bad, right and wrong — drop­ping labelling is the essence of liv­ing in the Now.
  To be present requires leav­ing judge­ment behind. Why? Most peo­ple judge (in their heads) while nev­er chang­ing a thing in their liv­ing. The essence of liv­ing in an embod­ied way is to do what is nec­es­sary, with­out spend­ing time in end­less analysis.
• Stop… cease… - the les­son here, again, is on let­ting go of cling­ing to the games the Mind plays. The Mind is Mind, and does what Mind does. Attach­ing our­selves to Mind leads to more thought, and no living.

Dropping off the Body

Many peo­ple are one step removed from their bodies. 

For exam­ple, peo­ple will say, “I have a headache.” As if there is a thing, a headache, that one has, like one has a book, or a cup. 

“My head aches” is more accu­rate. Or, “I am headachy.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, “He turns me on” is inac­cu­rate. “I turn me on” is so. “I’m so bored” is inac­cu­rate. “I am bor­ing myself” is so.

Let­ting to body drop off means “stop talk­ing about your body (and your Mind!) as if they are some­how sep­a­rate from you.”

Your body-Mind is how you experience being. They are not “separate.”

We are say­ing that think­ing about an expe­ri­ence and expe­ri­enc­ing are two dif­fer­ent things. Most­ly, we con­tent our­selves with think­ing, wish­ing, and hop­ing. Expe­ri­enc­ing, on the oth­er hand, is close to our orig­i­nal face.

How? By pay­ing exquis­ite atten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing right now, one is lost in the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing as a body-mind.

When tasting, taste, when hearing, hear.

Lose your­self in your liv­ing, and you will have found your illu­sive orig­i­nal face. It’s right there-in your body-mind. 

---