Zazen: Basic Shapes

Before I get started, I want to acknowledge that I’m addressing the issues as best I can from my experience and using traditional sources soemtimes to clarify or amplify. I don’t suggest that you believe what I’m saying or the source. I suggest you focus on verifying the truth of the buddhadharma. Being of whatever assistance I can on this road is the purpose of these posts.

Belief does have a role but it shouldn’t replace verification – and verification is usually not quick and easy. To verify you gotta be like a person who doesn’t flinch when struck on the head by a board. Or at least like the person who gets back up shaking his/her head and cussing and then continuing.

Occurs to me now that one way to reframe practice-enlightenment (i.e., verification) is belief-verification. When these foci are engaged in intense, intimate dialogue, then your rice is getting cooked.

Okay, here goes.

Question: I have entered into short periods of non-thinking only to have my awareness of the state trigger a thought about it.. (This is interesting, I’m not thinking.. oops!) This has happened everyday off and on for about six years. I seem to be able to enter a nonthinking state readily enough now but it only lasts a short time before thinking again and then stopping and repeating the cycle.. 

My question is, When you say Completely Dropped, Do you mean dropped for the length of the sitting, or dropped completely for short periods within the time of the sitting?

Response: Sounds to me like you are tasting deep quiet but not quite not-thinking. The more the mind quiets down, the more we can appreciate how incredibly subtle thinking is. With not-thinking there are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no witness. However, as Shi-Tou says, “Merging with sameness is still not enlightenment.”

It is an iterative process – so what you report is normal and necessary. Keep exploring and keep letting go of excitement and laxity as they appear.

Passing through not-thinking, non-thinking is unobstructed by comments like, “Wow! Cool….” Complete dropping can last from very brief to long periods of time – I’ve heard reports of many hours. For the person who has dropped, of course, there is no time. If you wonder if you’ve dropped completely, then you haven’t. The experience is distinct. Dongshan says, “A hairsbreadth’s deviation, and you are out of tune.”

Question: Do you feel that it might be accurate to also consider this ‘dropping off’ as happening from moment to moment: arising/dropping off, arising/dropping off, arising/dropping off…i.e. as an on-going function?

Response: Yes. Arising and dropping in profusion. 

Question: “Thinking can be completely dropped, a.k.a., not-thinking. Vital to know this for oneself. It isn’t enlightenment, but we can drop body and mind.”



Yes, there’s nothing there to be enlightened.
What’s missing?

Response: Hmmm.

Question: What is it that is enlightened?



Response: The 10,000 things.

Question: As you see it, is non-thinking freely coming forth in not-thinking the ‘Big E’ then?

Response: Could be big, could be not so big. Size doesn’t matter.

May we all together realize the Buddha Way.