Evening 26/02/09 – 30 mins zazen (posted 08:47,  updated 11.05)

1. The judging / discursive thoughts that intervene between awareness that the mind has wandered and the intention of returning to the breath seem to be the kicker.  It’s impossible to return to the breath and body without dropping the judging / evaluating thoughts as they subvert the intention and keep the chain of thoughts going.
2. But … should returning to the breath / body be intentional at all?  Probably it is intentionality that is the seed for the judging / discursive thoughts.  Rather than intention there should be more a dropping / letting go / opening … like ‘entrusting’ in Shinshu (non-practice practice).  Uchiyama’s  ‘opening the hand of thought’.
3. A deep, brief, almost blissful, calm often comes about 15 – 20 mins in but doesn’t last.  Afterwards there is more of a stability and less physical sensations of restlessness.
4. Occasionally one catches glimpses of the body-mind without the overlay of self-image / narrative, or in the process of constructing self-image.  Wonder if this is connected / related to Dōgen’s shinjin datsuraku?

Regarding note (1) I looked up the subject of intentionality and found the following:

Without-thinking (hishiryo) is distinct from thinking and not-thinking precisely in its assuming no intentional attitude whatsoever: it neither affirms nor denies, accepts nor rejects, believe nor disbelieves.  In fact it does not objectify either implicitly or explicitly. (Thomas Kasulis)

Thinking and not-thinking come and go against the backdrop or sky of without-thinking but when I find myself thinking I start to think about not-thinking (directing intention towards a construct) rather than leaving things up to without-thinking.

When we refer to the qualities of…beyond thinking (hishiryo) … we mean that sitting posture is [itself] beyond thinking and has no thought,…not that we ourselves are. We will never be beyond thinking…. What we can do is sit with the faith that zazen posture itself is Buddha, that zazen posture itself is beyond thinking.” “We tend to think that we are sitting zazen. This is not the case. The entire universe is sitting zazen.”
(Fujita Sensei)

Regarding note-taking itself … I wrote previously that Uchiyama warns against self-observation but I think that he means self-observation that is judging / discursive / attached to gaining and results.  I guess what he means by ‘self observation’ is awareness + ego-self (‘self creating self’).  Non-gaining observation / awareness seems both necessary and to be apparent in the words and teachings of all Zen masters.  Any thoughts?

No more zazen notes for a while …