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The Art of Just Sitting

Tom Otvos
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12 years 6 months ago #10757 by Tom Otvos

The Art of Just Sitting was created by Tom Otvos

I would like to start a topic on this book, as it has been mentioned a bunch of times here and has been on my TDL after book 3 of the Game Of Thrones pentalogy/marathon. I am only in the early stages, so this is a bit of a placeholder for me, but if anyone would like to chime in and get things rolling, feel free. I will say that it is starting out pretty...scholarly. But I am very interested in the various ways they are going to describe "thinking not-thinking", hoping that one of them will stick with me.

I don't know what is drawing me to this at this point in my practice, especially since some of my breakthroughs currently seem to be noting-related. But drawn to it, I am.

-- tomo

Shargrol
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12 years 6 months ago - 12 years 6 months ago #10760 by Shargrol

Replied by Shargrol on topic The Art of Just Sitting

I guess the pointer that makes most sense to me is rest in the experience "this moment is already happening". Kinda dumb to say, but it is allowing oneself to experience that so-obvious-it-is-dumb nature of this present moment. No technique, just looking at the obviousness of right now.

sorry, I misread the original post

Last edit: 12 years 6 months ago by Shargrol.

Chris Marti
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12 years 6 months ago - 12 years 6 months ago #10764 by Chris Marti

Replied by Chris Marti on topic The Art of Just Sitting

I read this book a long time ago so I don't remember much about it. I'll get it out again and skim through and see what strikes me. I was drawn to it, too, at one point but like Tom I'm not sure why.

Last edit: 12 years 6 months ago by Chris Marti.

Ona Kiser
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12 years 6 months ago #10765 by Ona Kiser

Replied by Ona Kiser on topic The Art of Just Sitting

I think it was Mike who mentioned it first (search "The Art of Just" and you'll see the several other threads where it came up in a flurry including some of my comments). Then someone else said something about it. So I went and got a kindle copy and read it cover to cover in just a few days. It was the first time I'd really immersed in a Zen book and I found it enthralling. I liked the diversity of essays - some seemed quite personal, others offered amusing anecdotes about famous teachers, others with commentary on well known teachings. I think I was so carried away at the time I recommended it to people left and right.

Your mileage may vary! I know I've had some interaction with Zen stuff in the past and often found it rather obscure, dry, complicated or boring. I think there's a t-shirt like that: "Zen: it's really boring 'til it's not." That was true in my case.

Russell
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12 years 6 months ago #10766 by Russell

Replied by Russell on topic The Art of Just Sitting

I have read about half of it. What I find funny about most Zen books is the cultural stuff that they usually reference that I just don't get. However, this book does a very good job of stripping that down a bit and make it more accessible. However, I have to say, earlier in my practice I would not have 'got it'. I find it fascinating that some of these traditions use a top down approach instead of a bottom up approach like most of the pragmatic dharma stuff. Well more like, ok, start at 3rd gear and never downshift (if you want to use Kenneth's model)

Shoshin
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12 years 6 months ago #10768 by Shoshin

Replied by Shoshin on topic The Art of Just Sitting

Russell wrote: However, I have to say, earlier in my practice I would not have 'got it'.

ditto!

Russell wrote: I find it fascinating that some of these traditions use a top down approach instead of a bottom up approach like most of the pragmatic dharma stuff. Well more like, ok, start at 3rd gear and never downshift (if you want to use Kenneth's model)

Yeah, that's an accurate characterization of the Zen approach, I think. Never thought of that before. I've always been attracted to Zen for aesthetic reasons, but it made no sense to me. Now it does, and I'm reading the Zen (modern) classic "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki - whence I was inspired to adopt the user name shoshin - oops. This book is great so far, I'm a little less than half way through it. I only read a few of the essays in The Art of Just Sitting; since some of you think it's so good maybe I'll pick it up again.

Andy
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12 years 6 months ago #10845 by Andy

Replied by Andy on topic The Art of Just Sitting

Shoshin wrote:
Russell wrote: However, I have to say, earlier in my practice I would not have 'got it'.

ditto!

I felt drawn to this book after reading only a little bit of it, but it was (and still is) fascinating to me the stuff that "I got" and the stuff I didn't. Some essays seemed extremely opaque, even after reading them several times, only to have a sentence or a paragraph suddenly pop out at me with almost a tangible a palm-meets-forehead thump. Other ones seemed much easier, but got noticeably deeper on reflection.

Finally, many essays I just flat out didn't get at all, even on re-reading or reflection.

I had ordered the book through my local library exchange program, and have to return it in a week or so. I will likely be buying a copy at some point.

Russell
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12 years 6 months ago #10846 by Russell

Replied by Russell on topic The Art of Just Sitting

The ones that don't usually resonate with me are the ones that don't translate well culturally.

Shoshin
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12 years 6 months ago #10848 by Shoshin

Replied by Shoshin on topic The Art of Just Sitting

andy wrote: Finally, many essays I just flat out didn't get at all, even on re-reading or reflection.

In these cases I tend to assume that the problem is with the writer and not the reader - maybe I shouldn't do that! Russell's comment about stuff lost in translation probably sums it up though.

Chris Marti
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12 years 6 months ago - 12 years 6 months ago #10867 by Chris Marti

Replied by Chris Marti on topic The Art of Just Sitting

Re-visiting this book reminds me that the Zen take on "understanding" (as in, "I get it") is not what we normally think that word means. So in reading Zen essays like Dogen's, or a book of koans like The Blue Cliff Record, I find it's not about an intellectual aha! but an instinctive "think not-thinking" aha! kind of thing. The former comes through the head and the latter emerges through the gut. The Zen method is direct, cuts right to the meat of the thing, whereas a lot of us here are used to the menu-driven, methodical Theravada approach. They both have value but, as someone here already said, as I got further along in practice the Zen method made more and more sense to me.

Last edit: 12 years 6 months ago by Chris Marti.

Kate Gowen
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12 years 6 months ago #10869 by Kate Gowen

Replied by Kate Gowen on topic The Art of Just Sitting

"The Zen method is direct, cuts right to the meat of the thing, whereas a lot of here are used to the menu-driven, methodical Theravada approach. They both have value but, as someone here already said, as I got further along in practice the Zen method made more and more sense to me. "-- Chris

This confirms a suspicion I've had, from early in my encounter with MCTB, that "what cannot be said" is that there is an objective reality to the basic 3-Yana schema; and all the trying to describe "higher" yanas in terms of the entry yana (Theravada, for the most part) is bound to result in confusion. As Reggie Ray describes it, each yana has its basis, path, and result. The ground-floor yana (and therefore most accessible for most people) has as its base suspicion about the functionality of our ordinary lives as we habitually conduct them; its result/ accomplishment is recognizing emptiness. That "ceiling" is the "floor"/ prerequisite of the Mahayana-- so it's where Zen starts.

Tom Otvos
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12 years 6 months ago - 12 years 6 months ago #10878 by Tom Otvos

Replied by Tom Otvos on topic The Art of Just Sitting

The Zen vs. Not-Zen discussion is interesting...I have been "out of" Zen for quite a while now. But to go back to the book for a moment, I'll say that some of the early essays are *very* dense, and I don't think it has as much to do with Zen concepts as the Zen style of circular arguments. It may make sense eventually, but I have to think that there is a significant "lost in translation" ("more....intensity!") component to this. There was an entire page on beating the ox vs. beating the cart!

Bring on the details of what "just sitting" really means, I say.

-- tomo

Last edit: 12 years 6 months ago by Tom Otvos.

Chris Marti
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12 years 6 months ago - 12 years 6 months ago #10879 by Chris Marti

Replied by Chris Marti on topic The Art of Just Sitting

I have to differ here -- the arguments are not circular from a certain POV and that's the point of Zen (or Chan to the Chinese). Direct. The discussion of the beating of the ox versus the beating of the cart - those things actually do mean something that is well beyond Japanese culture.

EDIT: I spend some time every year reading parts of Moon in a Dewdrop, which is an anthology of Dogen's writings on Zen. The essays and koans are rife with these kinds of koans, metaphor and symbols. Maybe I'm nuts but it's fun to read through and grok the stuff because taken from a purely intellectual standpoint it does appear circular, dense and nonsensical. I don't believe many of these things are meant to be taken from an intellectual standpoint. It's a weird binary kind of thing, and it either strikes you as true or seems like gibberish.

Last edit: 12 years 6 months ago by Chris Marti.

Tom Otvos
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12 years 6 months ago #10886 by Tom Otvos

Replied by Tom Otvos on topic The Art of Just Sitting

Chris Marti wrote: I spend some time every year reading parts of Moon in a Dewdrop, which is an anthology of Dogen's writings on Zen. The essays and koans are rife with these kinds of koans, metaphor and symbols. Maybe I'm nuts but it's fun to read through and grok the stuff because taken from a purely intellectual standpoint it does appear circular, dense and nonsensical. I don't believe many of these things are meant to be taken from an intellectual standpoint. It's a weird binary kind of thing, and it either strikes you as true or seems like gibberish.

Based on your repeated references to it, I do plan to get a copy of that book. Interestingly, not available as an eBook that I could find, so I need to actually go to a bookstore.

-- tomo

Tom Otvos
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12 years 6 months ago - 12 years 6 months ago #10887 by Tom Otvos

Replied by Tom Otvos on topic The Art of Just Sitting

Nan-yüeh replied, “When a man is driving a cart, if the cart doesn’t go, should he beat the cart or beat the ox?”

Now, when we say the cart doesn’t go, what do we mean by the cart’s going or not going? For example, is the cart going [analogous to] water flowing, or is it [analogous to] water not flowing? [There is a sense in which] we can say that flowing is water’s not going, and that water’s going is not its flowing. Therefore, when we investigate the words “the cart doesn’t go,” we should approach them both in terms of not going and in terms of not not going; for it is a question of time. The words, “if [the cart] doesn’t go,” do not mean simply that it does not go.

Should he beat the cart or beat the ox? Does this mean there is a beating of the cart as well as a beating of the ox? Are beating the cart and beating the ox the same or not? In the world, there is no method of beating the cart; but, though ordinary men have no such method, we know that on the path of the Buddha there is a method of beating the cart, and this is the very eye of [Buddhist] study. Even though we study that there is a method of beating the cart, we should give concentrated effort to understanding in detail that this is not the same as beating the ox. And even though the method of beating the ox is common in the world, we should go on to study the beating of the ox on the path of the Buddha. Is this ox-beating the water buffalo, or ox-beating the iron bull or the clay ox? Is this beating with a whip, with the entire world, the entire mind? Is this to beat by using the marrow? Should we beat with the fist? The fist should beat the fist, and the ox beat the ox.
Ta-chi did not reply.

-- tomo

Last edit: 12 years 6 months ago by Tom Otvos.

Tom Otvos
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12 years 6 months ago - 12 years 6 months ago #10889 by Tom Otvos

Replied by Tom Otvos on topic The Art of Just Sitting

And completely aside from the stuff which I call "circular", there are the numerous translation artifacts of parenthetical fill-ins or, in other essays, the insistence on referencing every historical name with its Chinese [and Japanese] counterparts, which is making this student beat his head with his fist.

-- tomo

Last edit: 12 years 6 months ago by Tom Otvos.

Chris Marti
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12 years 6 months ago - 12 years 6 months ago #10890 by Chris Marti

Replied by Chris Marti on topic The Art of Just Sitting

ox = mind

cart = body

If that helps.... I mean, how do you make an ox pull a cart? These two things are attached, inexorably, as mind/body, right? So do you do something to the ox, or to the cart? When you practice meditation, which thing are you acting upon?

Last edit: 12 years 6 months ago by Chris Marti.

Shargrol
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12 years 6 months ago #10893 by Shargrol

Replied by Shargrol on topic The Art of Just Sitting

It strikes me that Nan-yüeh question is profound... and the rest of the questions are more academic, potentially useful, but mostly just putting too fine a point on things.

Of course Nan-yüeh could say "look at the root of the problem", but that would be too straight forward.

Tom Otvos
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12 years 6 months ago #10894 by Tom Otvos

Replied by Tom Otvos on topic The Art of Just Sitting

I get that ox/cart is a metaphor, but even with that, the description that follows really does not lend itself to any easy understanding of what that metaphor is intended to mean. If you say, "well, that is the point of Zen", I would throw up my hands. I would bet that if you, Chris Marti, were to take those two paragraphs, you would be able to say what is meant to be said, even if the concepts are difficult, but say them in a way that leads someone to eventual understanding. To say "the fist should beat the fist, and the ox beat the ox" is just being deliberately obtuse, IMO.

Gauntlet thrown.

-- tomo

Tom Otvos
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12 years 6 months ago #10895 by Tom Otvos

Replied by Tom Otvos on topic The Art of Just Sitting

shargrol wrote: It strikes me that Nan-yüeh question is profound... and the rest of the questions are more academic, potentially useful, but mostly just putting too fine a point on things.

Of course Nan-yüeh could say "look at the root of the problem", but that would be too straight forward.

YES!

-- tomo

Ona Kiser
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12 years 6 months ago #10897 by Ona Kiser

Replied by Ona Kiser on topic The Art of Just Sitting

It also suggests that our typical response (as proposed in the initial question) is "if something isn't working what part of it should I clobber in frustration" - but clobbering things in frustration is our dualistic approach to problem solving, and not really applicable in meditation. "The fist should beat the fist..." - but? how? that doesn't work in the way I know? A fist can't beat a fist? --> student falls into stymied silence and has to ponder whether maybe meditation isn't about clobbering things in frustration after all, but about learning to rest in a sort of wondering silence, openness to new ideas, and sense of not knowing the answers...?

(My non-zen-educated gut reaction.)

Ona Kiser
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12 years 6 months ago #10898 by Ona Kiser

Replied by Ona Kiser on topic The Art of Just Sitting

I think many zen stories and many Christian parables are not intended to make you see an answer, but to make you rest in a sort of shocked bafflement. That mindstate - of wonder, curiosity, bafflement - is intended to be like a bucket of cold water, to break you from constantly trying to intellectualize answers and instead rest in that mindstate and see the world with that mindstate - each moment fresh, strange, never seen before, unknown. That is often the practice, rather than puzzle-solving.

Chris Marti
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12 years 6 months ago - 12 years 6 months ago #10899 by Chris Marti

Replied by Chris Marti on topic The Art of Just Sitting

"To say "the fist should beat the fist, and the ox beat the ox" is just being deliberately obtuse, IMO."

Well, there is some of that going on here, Tom, no doubt about it. However, the obtuseness is also intentional and part of the Zen philosophy of practice. IMHO. It is there to contribute to a non-intellectual understanding of things. Zen would not be Zen (direct!) if it were intellectually understood.

I like the way Ona put this in her last post:

"...student falls into stymied silence and has to ponder whether maybe meditation isn't about clobbering things in frustration after all, but about learning to rest in a sort of wondering silence, openness to new ideas, and sense of not knowing the answers...?"

Last edit: 12 years 6 months ago by Chris Marti.

Shargrol
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12 years 6 months ago #10900 by Shargrol

Replied by Shargrol on topic The Art of Just Sitting

I don't think of Zen as non-intellectual understanding. I think of it as poetry-code for deep, nuanced understanding. Zen is 300 baud dharma. Condensed/compacted info into low bandwidth.

Understanding is (this is so obvious so why am I saying it?) non-intellectual. Understanding is <forehead smack> understanding!

Shargrol
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12 years 6 months ago #10901 by Shargrol

Replied by Shargrol on topic The Art of Just Sitting

(That was not meant to be combative -- I'm rereading and it seems a bit harsh.)

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The Art of Just Sitting