The Somaesthetics of Heaviness and Hara in Zen Buddhist Meditation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35469/poligrafi.2023.397Keywords:
zazen, duḥkha, gravity, grief, somaesthetics, hara breathingAbstract
Breath is a grounding phenomenon present in many forms of Buddhist meditation. In traditional Buddhist meditations (including ānāpānasati and vipassanā), the practitioner observes the breath, surveys various physical and mental phenomena, and from there realizes that suffering (duḥkha) is not ultimately binding (and along the way, they may experience the nonduality of body and mind). Similarly, the seated meditation practice (zazen) deployed by Rinzai Zen begins with attention to breath, refines one’s attention to psycho-physical sensations, and fosters a realization of mind-body unity that enables the practitioner to face duḥkha. But this form of Zen recasts the respiratory philosophy of early Buddhism in some important respects. This paper explores how these adaptations take place in terms of an explicitly somaesthetic orientation. Emphasizing the postural form of the body, the capacity to sense the pull of gravity, and the performance of breathing from the hara (lower belly), zazen seeks to awaken the somatic body by transforming the weight of suffering into nondual, vital energy.
References
Adey, Peter. Levitation: The Science, Myth and Magic of Suspension. Edinburgh: Reaktion Books, 2017.
Ashton, Geoffrey. “Losing my Mind and Loving Mosquitoes, Crickets, and other Jungle Inhabitants: Reflections on Field Research and its Frustrations at a Buddhist Meditation Retreat in Southern Thailand.” In At Home and In the Field: Ethnographic Encounters in Asia and the Pacific Islands, edited by Suzanne S. Finney, Mary Mostafanezhad, Guido Carlo Pigliasco, and Forrest Wade Young, 278–284. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015.
Buddhadāsa. Getting Started in Mindfulness with Breathing: Accessible, Beginning Steps for Ordinary People. Translated by Santikaro. Bangkok: The Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives and Liberation Park, 2015.
“Chosei Zen.” Accessed October 15th, 2023. https://choseizen.org/.
Conze, Edward. Buddhist Meditation. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1969.
Dogen, Hosokawa. Omori Sogen: The Art of a Zen Master. London: Routledge, 2011.
Goenka, S. N. Discourse Summaries. Onalaska, WA: Pariyatti Press, 2000.
Gombrich, Richard F. How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings. Oxford: Routledge, 2006.
Greene, Gordon M. “The Weight of Suffering.” Gordon Greene (blog), April 24, 2018. https://gordongreene.org/2018/05/02/the-weight-of-suffering/.
Griffiths, Paul. “Indian Buddhist Meditation.” In Buddhist Spirituality: Indian, Southeast Asian, Tibetan, Early Chinese, edited by Takeuchi Yoshinori et al., 34–66. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1993.
Hart, William. The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S. N. Goenka. San Francisco: Harper One, 2009.
Hershock, Peter. Chan Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005.
Kaelber, Walter O. “Tapas, Birth, and Spiritual Rebirth in the Veda.” History of Religions 15, no. 4 (May 1976): 349–350. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1062153.
MacArthur, John. The MacArthur Study Bible. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 2006.
The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 1995.
Monier-Williams, Monier. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press, 1899.
Partridge, Eric. Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. London: Routledge, 2006.
Rahula, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. London: The Gordon Fraser Gallery, Ltd, 1978.
Samuels, Jeffrey. “The Bodhisattva ideal in Theravāda Buddhist Theory and Practice: A Reevaluation of the Bodhisattva-Śrāvaka Opposition.” Philosophy East and West 47, no. 3 (July 1997): 399–415.
Sargeant, Winthrop. The Bhagavad Gita. New York: SUNY Press, 2009.
Sharf, Robert H. “Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience.” Numen 42, no. 3 (1995): 228–283. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3270219.
Shusterman, Richard. Thinking through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Sogen, Omori. An Introduction to Zen Training: A Translation of Sanzen Nyumon. Translated by Dogen Hosokawa and Roy Yoshimoto. London: Kegan Paul International, 1996.
Taft, Michael W. “How to Do Nondual Vipashyana.” Deconstructing Yourself, June 4, 2021. https://deconstructingyourself.com/how-to-do-nondual-vipashyana.html.
Wang, Robin. Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Warren, Henry Clark. Buddhism in Translations. New York: Atheneum, 1963.
Williams, Paul, and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London: Routledge, 2002.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Open Access Policy and Copyright
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors grant the publisher commercial rights to produce hardcopy volumes of the journal for sale to libraries and individuals.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
