No Dead Sitting

This dharma talk examines the Japanese Zen monk, Hakuin's, concept of "No Dead Sitting" in light of the psychological concept of "flow" and Carl Jung's advice to "do the next most necessary thing". We explore how to make your daily routine a meditation, or a koan.

Transcript

No Dead Sitting Today I want to talk about an idea that was emphasized by a Japanese Zen monk named Hakuin.

Hakuin lived in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Generations of Zen masters had come before him,

And Zen practice and ideology were already well-defined by the time he began teaching.

Once all the paths seemed to have been walked,

What's a Zen master to do besides tell people to study their kōans and meditate?

Hakuin lived during a time in Japanese history when a warlord had taken control of the country,

And some stability had finally settled over Japan.

After long years of fighting and unrest,

A middle class had emerged that was interested in Zen practice.

But after centuries of monastic practice,

So much of Zen had become inaccessible to parents,

Shopkeepers,

Fishermen,

And everyone else in the community except for monks.

We can relate to this sentiment today.

How many people have told you that they want to learn to meditate,

Or that they're trying to learn?

And how many books,

Apps,

And other programs out there claim to teach people to meditate?

In some ways,

Mindfulness has become the psychological or spiritual equivalent of yo-yo dieting.

Every time you turn around,

There's a new program or product that this time,

For real,

Will help you learn to meditate,

And keep meditating.

Scholars and practitioners like to link meditation or mindfulness with flow,

The idea developed and popularized by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1990s,

In which we tend to lose ourselves in something that absorbs us,

Whether that's playing a sport,

Meditating,

Or doing an activity like knitting or playing a musical instrument.

Minutes or hours can go by before we come back to ourselves,

So to speak,

And realize that things have been going on,

We've been doing an activity,

And we haven't,

Strictly speaking,

Been aware of it.

One of the Zen masters in Hakuin's tradition,

Ta Hui,

Made a similar point about meditation.

Meditation in the midst of activity is immeasurably superior to the quietistic approach,

Which is sitting on your meditation seat,

Hands folded in your lap,

Focusing on the object of your meditation.

What is most worthy of respect is a pure koan meditation that neither knows,

Nor is conscious of the two aspects,

The quiet and the active.

This is why it has been said that the true practicing monk walks,

But does not know he is walking,

Sits,

But does not know he is sitting.

Ta Hui does seem to be advocating something like a state of flow with this type of meditation.

But how do we do it?

What is this meditation if it's not quietistic or active?

I think if you ask this question of a Zen master,

You might not get a verbal answer in reply.

What we're looking for is some kind of action.

As Hakuin puts it,

What is this true meditation?

It is to make everything,

Coughing,

Swallowing,

Motion,

Stillness,

Words,

The evil and the good,

Prosperity and shame,

Gain and loss into one single koan.

That's a pretty tall order.

Make your life into a koan.

In other words,

Make your life into an interaction,

A question,

A moment that stops the turning of your mind and opens yourself to enlightenment.

We can think about this as being present,

Which if you've spent much time reading any books about meditation or attending classes,

You've heard before.

But we need to compare that with Ta Hui's quote from earlier.

We need to walk without knowing we're walking.

We need to sit without knowing we're sitting.

Just being present while chopping onions for dinner isn't the same as not knowing your chopping onions.

Moreover,

If you're using a sharp knife,

You probably should know your chopping onions.

You should pay attention to that.

But the bigger question is what is meant here by not knowing?

We should feel a great doubt in our chests when we think about going through our daily routines while meditating.

It's not a simple task.

You're being asked to bring meditation to the affairs of your life.

Can that even be done?

Can you hold a business meeting while meditating?

One way we can make sense of this is with a story from the Mahabharata,

That epic poem from northern India.

In one section,

The weapons master Drona asks the five Pandava brothers to take aim with their bows and arrows at a bird decoy in a tree.

Drona then asks each brother what they see as they're taking aim and preparing to shoot.

The first four brothers describe the garden,

Their teacher and the brothers surrounding them,

The tree,

And the branches holding the bird decoy.

Drona tells each of the first four brothers to drop their bow and arrow and step aside.

They're not ready to take the shot.

But Arjuna,

The fifth brother,

Tells Drona that he sees only one thing,

The bird's eye.

Drona asks Arjuna to tell him about the tree that the bird is in.

Arjuna says,

I only see the bird's eye.

I do not see the tree.

Drona asks Arjuna to tell him about the feathers on the bird's head.

Arjuna says,

I do not see the bird's head or the bird's feathers.

I only see the bird's eye.

And once Drona is satisfied that that is truly what Arjuna sees,

He's told to take the shot.

And of course,

His arrow hits the bird's eye.

At the end of his book,

Time Management for Mortals,

Oliver Berkman quotes Carl Jung,

Who is writing a letter in response to a woman asking him for life advice about how she should live,

About how to live the good life.

Carl Jung admits that he can't tell her how to do that because it's specific and special to her.

But he does offer one piece of advice,

And I think it's something we can use here.

Do the next most necessary thing.

What if we tried that as a recipe or an algorithm to get into a state of flow?

Doing the next most necessary thing would certainly get us to aim at that bird's eye if our teacher had asked us to aim at the bird's eye.

Doing the next most necessary thing takes us to the threshold or the doorstep of entering a state of flow,

Of walking without knowing we're walking,

Of sitting without knowing we're sitting.

Perhaps one question that can turn our life into a koan is what is the next most necessary thing?

Reviews

I’m glad I decided that randomly listening to this was the next necessary thing 🤩. (I set it as the new featured favourite on my profile.) Thank you!