The Posture of Meditation Read online

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  When it comes to meditation practices, the body is as important as the mind—a fact that may come as a surprise to the many people who regard meditation as a strictly mental activity. But, as Will Johnson shows, the physical aspect of the practice is far too often underemphasized. The alert-yet-relaxed sitting posture that is the common denominator of so many meditative techniques is a wonderful aid for clearing the mind and opening the heart, but it also works to activate the natural healing energies of both body and mind. The author offers guidance and exercises for working with the posture of meditation and advice on how to carry its benefits on into all the rest of life.

  WILL JOHNSON is a certified bodyworker and director of the Institute for Embodiment Training in his hometown of Cobble Hill, British Columbia.

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  © 1996 by Will Johnson

  Cover art: Glazed ceramic figure of Luohan (A.D. 907–1125), copyright British Museum.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Johnson, Will, 1946–

  The posture of meditation: a practical manual for meditators of all traditions/by Will Johnson.

  p. cm.

  eISBN 978-0-8348-2510-9

  ISBN 978-1-57062-232-8

  1. Meditation. I. Title.

  BL624.2.J65 1996 96-7535

  158′.12—dc20 CIP

  This book is dedicated to all those people who have had the good fortune to bring a sitting meditation practice into their lives, in hopes that the information here may further assist and support them in their practice.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Part One: Formal Practice

  1. Preliminary Attitudes

  2. Alignment

  EXERCISES

  3. Relaxation

  EXERCISES

  4. Resilience

  EXERCISES

  5. Integration

  Part Two: Informal Practice

  Moving through Life

  Afterword

  E-mail Sign-Up

  Acknowledgments

  I WOULD LIKE to express my thanks and appreciation to all my teachers of sitting meditation: Koon Kum Heng, Tarthang Tulku, Ruth Denison, Hari Das Baba, Yogi Bhajan, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, S. N. Goenka, and Namkhai Norbu. Special thanks and acknowledgment must go to Ida Rolf, who led me to understand that the harmonizing of the energy field of the body with the gravitational field of the earth is a prerequisite for spiritual unfolding, and to Judith Aston, who inspired me to take that harmonization a step further and to explore how an aligned body moves. I would like to thank Emily Hilburn Sell and Dave O’Neal of Shambhala Publications for shepherding this book so smoothly through the stages of publication. I would also like to thank Lis Erling Bailly for creating the elegant drawings and symbols.

  Many of the structural principles and ideas in this book were first presented in my Balance of Body, Balance of Mind: A Rolfer’s Vision of Buddhist Practice in the West (Atlanta: Humanics, 1994), and the interested reader who would like to pursue the implications of the posture of meditation further would do well to look there.

  Introduction

  ORDINARILY WE think of meditation as an activity involving our minds, but in truth meditation is initiated by assuming a specific gesture with our bodies. This gesture or posture forms the literal base on which the focused inquiry of meditation ultimately rests and depends. If we build a house with a faulty foundation, we create great difficulties for ourselves when we later take up residence. In the same way, if we do not focus our attention initially on establishing a posture that naturally supports and aids the process of meditation, we create many difficulties for ourselves as we attempt to make progress in our meditative quest.

  The word “posture” comes from the Latin positura, which means “a position,” and ponere, “to place.” Applied as it customarily is to the structure and appearance of our body, it refers to how we position or place our body in space and to how the different segments of the body relate to one another. In addition, posture or posturing may refer to an attitude or self-image that we self-consciously create, identify with, and project. The determined slouch of an alienated or angry person, the overly developed musculature that attempts to conceal insecurity, the affectation of casual confidence by a lawyer attempting to win over a jury—all of these self-images ultimately depend on holding our bodies in different ways to create a desired effect. By holding our bodies, we create different postures that express different attitudes.

  Mostly this kind of posturing or posing carries with it a connotation of unnaturalness. We can tense the muscles in our body and hold ourselves in different postures to manufacture a desired persona or self-image. This is precisely what actors do as they attempt to enter into a role, and consequently theater schools spend a great deal of time focusing on the purely physical aspect of the actor’s craft. However, the natural state of the human being, as with any animal, is to be balanced and relaxed. By consciously manipulating our bodies so that we can create and project a specific self-image, we limit our range of expression, restrict the natural movement of energy within our bodies and minds, and forfeit the natural ease of balance and relaxation that is our true birthright.

  The French word poseur describes this condition quite accurately. It refers to someone who is trying to be something other than what he or she naturally is, an imposter. Contrasted with this unnatural way of being in the body, the posture of meditation aligns our bodies and minds in the most comfortable, guileless way with the greater forces of nature that condition us. In this way we accept ourselves as we are in truth and experience no need to be anything other than what we naturally are already. As we learn to let go of some of our unnatural posturings and posings and enter more comfortably into the posture of meditation, we find that what we naturally are is very wonderful indeed. We experience a comfort and relaxation that reveal ever deeper insights into our true nature.

  Just as the gradual, but consistent, evolution of the human species toward an ever more upright and vertical posture has been accompanied by a parallel growth and expansion in consciousness, so too do the “higher” states of consciousness that can be contacted through the process of meditation themselves depend on the continued refinement of verticality and relaxed balance in the body. This preliminary act of coming to balance as the primary condition on which the inquiry of meditation can proceed is often overlooked, however. Meditation, instead, is mostly presented as a variety of different techniques or activities in which we engage our minds and on which we focus our attention. We may, for example, be instructed to sit and silently repeat a word or phrase or to visualize and merge with the image of a deity. We may be told to sit and pay attention to the passage of breath as it moves in and out of the body or to observe the ever-changing contents of our bodies and minds. We may be asked to sit and attempt to come up with an answer to an insoluble riddle or to imagine a cord of expanding white light in our spines. We may be instructed to sit and listen to the inner sounds of the body or to focus on one particular point in the body to the exclusion of all others. We may
sit down and contemplate the meaning of a specific passage from a book we value, or we may simply be instructed to sit and do “nothing at all.”

  Meditation techniques are extremely varied. The Buddha enumerated approximately forty different techniques, and the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra (which Paul Reps translated in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones) lists one hundred eight different forms of practice, any of which is capable of taking the practitioner to the highest stages of realization. It is entirely appropriate that there is such a diverse offering of meditation techniques as we all have different temperaments and inclinations that may make one technique a more suitable avenue of exploration for us than others. Many roads can lead to the same place, and ultimately it makes little difference which one we choose as long as it suits our temperament and abilities and allows us to reach our goal. In the end, the best technique is the one we adopt for ourselves.

  While the specific techniques of meditation are extremely varied, there exists a denominator common to all of them, and that is the sitting posture itself. It would be very difficult for an observer, even someone who was familiar with the process of meditation, to discern which particular technique a meditator may be practicing. All that the observer can know for sure is that what that person is doing is sitting. Ultimately, the act of sitting itself may become even more important than the technique we are supposedly practicing while sitting. Put another way, techniques themselves may be necessary ways to occupy ourselves as our bodies and minds slowly learn to assume the posture of meditation. Seen this way, the posture of meditation can be viewed as the starting point of the practice as well as its ultimate goal.

  Most teachers of meditation do give initial instructions about the importance of posture. These instructions generally take the form of: “Sit with the back straight and the body relaxed. Sit quite still, and breathe comfortably and naturally.” The first part of this little volume will be an examination of each part of these instructions and is undertaken in the hopes that it may become much easier for you to put these instructions into practice. As simple as these instructions may be, they also represent one of the most challenging actions that we can attempt to perform. Often if we concentrate on sitting up straight or sitting quite still, we find ourselves becoming rigid, and it becomes very difficult to relax. Or, if we consciously focus on relaxation, we may find that the structure of our bodies slowly begins to collapse. The head begins to hang forward, the front of the body shortens while the back becomes overly elongated, and we lose our verticality. In either of these common positions the natural and comfortable flow of the breath is seriously compromised and impeded. The posture of meditation shows us how to balance and integrate each of these bodily instructions into our sitting practice.

  The posture of meditation depends on three primary attributes: alignment, relaxation, and resilience. Each of these attributes is equally important, and each supports the others’ manifestation. Appearing together in harmonious relationship to one another, they generate a powerfully catalytic effect on the process of meditation. In this posture the healing energies of the body and mind are naturally activated, and the process of transformation begins spontaneously. Indeed the posture of meditation could be viewed as a mudra of transformation, a bodily gesture or attitude through which the process of transformation has no choice but to begin. Whatever personal postural habits of body and mind serve to obscure the truth of our enlightened nature are gradually dissolved through the assumption of this posture, just as the constant unimpeded flow of water gradually dissolves sandstone. We naturally experience this powerfully catalyzing effect as the deepening of our meditation. Body and mind become progressively integrated, and the artificial division between our inner and outer worlds begins to fall away. If any one of these three primary attributes is lacking, the process of meditation may still proceed, but it will do so much more slowly.

  The first part of this book will deal with the mechanics of the posture of meditation as they specifically apply to our formal sitting practice. In the second part of this book we will expand our arena of practice and see how these same principles can be applied to what might be called informal practice, our everyday movements through life. The sections at the end of the chapters are exercises designed to help the reader experience the aspect of the posture of meditation that chapter addresses. A final note: the author’s personal form of sitting practice has been strongly influenced by the rich and varied tradition of Buddhism, and indeed references to that tradition will appear from time to time within the text. Even so, the principles underlying the posture of meditation are universal in their application. They apply equally to the meditator who is working with a Theravadin mindfulness practice, a Christian form of contemplation, or a Hindu mystical practice. They apply to all of us who have had the good fortune to recognize that simply to come to sitting can be one of the most potent gestures we are capable of assuming.

  1

  Preliminary Attitudes

  IT IS customary to begin a course in meditation by making a formal acknowledgment of the attitudes and forces that can best support the often highly challenging task being undertaken. Within the Buddhist tradition this acknowledgment has taken the form of a declaration that is known as Taking Refuge in the Triple Gem, the three precious jewels or attitudes being the Buddha, or the innate enlightened mind; the Dharma, or the teachings that help us to recontact the enlightened nature of mind; and the Sangha, or the community of fellow practitioners who are treading this path in our company. Whether voiced in the traditional Pali language in which the teachings were first presented or in the contemporary language of the present-day practitioner, the student is asked to recite three times:

  I take refuge in the Buddha.

  I take refuge in the Dharma.

  I take refuge in the Sangha.

  With this apparently simple preliminary announcement the practice is begun. The implications of the declaration, however, go far beyond the deceptive simplicity of its form. Contained within this elementary formula are some of the most fundamental of all the teachings that will subsequently be presented. When examined carefully, each of these three components can be seen not only to reveal a correct attitude through which the teachings will reveal themselves, but also to provide hints at the physical postures that will best allow us to embody these attitudes.

  The purpose of taking refuge is to seek shelter and protection, to secure the conditions under which we can live safely. While the physical survival of the human body depends on different kinds of physical shelters and conditions, the further nurturance, growth, and maturation of the human being depend on a variety of attitudinal factors that can be cultivated and made manifest through the body and the mind. Just as we must first work to build our homes and secure the foods that protect and nurture our body, so too can we then apply ourselves to creating the conditions that will allow us to experience the fullest potential available to a human being. The preliminary Buddhist act of taking refuge implies that the safety of a human being, seen from the point of view of our personal sanity and well-being, is to be found within the attitudes and forces defined by the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Without the protection that is offered by our willingness to open to and embrace these attitudes and forces we stand exposed and in some degree of peril.

  Buddha, the first of the three precious attitudes, is not only the appellation given to the historical figure Siddhartha Gautama, a prince from northern India who lived twenty-five hundred years ago and who experienced an extraordinary transformation out of which grew an entire philosophical and psychological system of teaching. It also refers to the enlightened nature of mind and experience that Gautama uncovered in himself and that he knew existed in the form of a seed within every other man and woman as well. While it is normal for every practitioner at some point to develop a profound sense of gratitude and admiration for the pioneering work of the Buddha (or for the primary teacher of whatever lineage of practice they may be exploring), it is the potentially enlig
htened nature of his or her own mind and experience, not that of the historical Buddha, in which the practitioner is encouraged to take refuge. Indeed Gautama warned against the cult of personality that often develops around a particularly dynamic figure. A reverence for that figure may even interfere with the task facing the individual, the task of becoming a Buddha for oneself. Only through individual perseverance and diligent application of the teachings and techniques can that transformation have a chance of occurring.

  Buddha, or the enlightened nature of mind, exists within every one of us. It is not something that we have to manufacture from nothing. It is already there, simply awaiting the conditions that will allow it to appear. Much like the sun that waits patiently to pierce through a dense cloud layer, this aspect of mind waits patiently for our understanding to mature and for the habit patterns that keep its brilliance obscured to drop away. If it did not already exist, it would be hypocritical to expect a student at the very beginning of practice to acknowledge its existence as a refuge and haven of safety. The paradox here is that although the appearance of this aspect of mind is rightly seen as the goal of the practice being undertaken, it is properly viewed as our starting point as well, the point of departure from which the practice is able to unfold.

  The justifiable question arises that if this aspect of mind already exists within us, why do we not have freer access to it, why do we not experience it more of the time? Since different states of mind are directly dependent on and produced by specific bodily postures, one answer that presents itself is that we are as yet unable to create and maintain the posture of meditation that naturally supports this condition of mind. When we are able to secure this posture with ease, our conventional state of mind gives way and Buddha, the enlightened nature of mind and experience, suddenly appears. Suzuki Roshi, one of the most respected Buddhist teachers of the twentieth century, has emphasized this correlation between posture and our condition of mind: