When I heard that this week’s focus was “the art of starting over”, I knew immediately what I wanted to share for my blog post today – my favourite technique for “starting over”.
Starting over has always been somewhat of a challenge for me in meditation. I find it all too easy to get caught up in self-judgement, many times without even realizing it, when I am focusing on the breath and my mind ends up walking down some other path. This is even more apparent when I try to apply mindfulness to my everyday life. I often find myself spending the majority of the day in walking sleep, with only brief periods of awareness. When I do awaken, the first thought that appears is some self-chastisement for not being aware for so long. I needed a kind way of re-directing myself back to this moment, without attaching any unnecessary baggage to it.
I found the perfect technique for this in Ezra Bayda’s book, Being Zen. The practice is to simply ask the zen koan “what is this?”, whenever we come out of waking sleep. Just like other zen koans, there is no answer to be found in the conceptual mind. Instead, it lies in our current experience, whatever that may be, a twinge in the neck, tightness in the chest, or the cascade of sound frequencies detected by our ears. Not only does this technique draw us back into the present moment experience without getting caught in self-judgement, it encourages us to approach the present with “beginner’s mind”. This is a concept in Zen that means approaching the moment with sincere curiosity and without preconceptions (see below for more ways to cultivate this). It is from this place that we can come to see our experience for what it actually is, instead of all the interpretation and significance we are adding on to it.
So, next time you awaken after being caught up in your stories and emotions, I encourage you to ask “what is this?” to bring you back into the here and now. I hope that, whatever the answer is, it is illuminating for you in some way.
All the best with your practice this week!
Keith
P.S. I was not able to find any online articles about this technique by Ezra Bayda. However, there is a ZenCast Episode by Gil Fronsdal where he talks about meditating using a very similar technique. He simply asks himself, “how are you?” Here’s a link to that talk:
https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/4722.html.
Here’s a link to an article with some other useful tips for cultivating beginner’s mind: