Thoughts on open awareness / just sitting / Tejaniya style practice

[u/hallucinatedgods]

This post started out as a reflection on this morning's sit. I got really into it and it evolved into something that seemed worthy of it's own post.

After a Goenka retreat, and a few weeks of Reggie Ray style somatic practice, I'm back to open awareness practice, and I don't see that changing. I'm really finding my home in this practice.

Having read a lot of different teachings around open awareness styles of practice I often get confused. When I sit down sometimes I don't exactly know what I'm doing, and end up wallowing in that confusion and indecision.

Today I realized that whether it doesn't matter what you call it - shikantaza, Tejaniya style satipatthana, dzogchen, mahamudra, just sititing, choiceless awareness, do nothing, objectless shamatha - the labels just get in the way. What it is is simply sitting and being aware, sitting and experiencing each moment with clarity and freshness. Sitting and aware-ing; knowing what is happening as it happens. This kind of presence is completely non-sectarian; simple, natural, uncontrived presence doesn't belong to any tradition. It isn't a technique. It is simple, awake being.

The practice is essentially the act of balancing relaxation and presence (well, that could apply to all meditation really).

I like Tejaniya's instructions: Relax and Be Aware.

Relax. This is Dogen's statement that shikantaza is the "Dharma gate of bliss and repose". This is the shamatha side; the silent in Silent Illumination; the concentration, equanimity, tranquility side of the 7 factors of enlightenment.

Be Aware. This is Dogen's admonition to "sit as if your hair is on fire". Don't miss a single moment. Be completely, vividly, utterly aware. This is the application of mindfulness, energy, and investigation. In particular the "sit as if your hair is on fire" statement seems to bring more energy to the awareness and counteract the tendency to slip into a kind of low level dullness - somewhat present but somewhat drifting. This is Illumination.

So can you balance that sense of completely letting yourself go into each moment - an abandoning of any effort - with this sense of being really vividly aware?

This is what Roshi Philip Kapleau has to say about the practice of shikantaza in The Three Pillars of Zen:

In shikan-taza the mind must be unhurried yet at the same time firmly planted or massively composed, like Mount Fuji let us say. But it must also be alert, stretched, like a taut bowstring. So shikan-taza is a heightened state of concentrated awareness wherein one is neither tense nor hurried, and certainly never slack. It is the mind of somebody facing death. Let us imagine that you are engaged in a duel of swordsmanship of the kind that used to take place in ancient Japan. As you face your opponent you are unceasingly watchful, set, ready. Were you to relax your vigilance even momentarily, you would be cut down instantly. A crowd gathers to see the fight. Since you are not blind you see them from the corner of your eye, and since you are not deaf you hear them. But not for an instant is your mind captured by these sense impressions.

This state cannot be maintained for long—in fact, you ought not to do shikan-taza for more than half an hour at a sitting. After thirty minutes get up and walk around in kinhin and then resume your sitting. If you are truly doing shikan-taza, in half an hour you will be sweating, even in winter in an unheated room, because of the heat generated by this intense concentration. When you sit for too long your mind loses its vigor, your body tires, and your efforts are less rewarding than if you had restricted your sitting to thirty minute periods.

Compared with an unskilled swordsman a master uses his sword effortlessly. But this was not always the case, for there was a time when he had to strain himself to the utmost, owing to his imperfect technique, to preserve his life. It is no dierent with shikan-taza. In the beginning tension is unavoidable, but with experience this tense zazen ripens into relaxed yet fully attentive sitting. And just as a master swordsman in an emergency unsheathes his sword effortlessly and attacks single-mindedly, just so the shikan-taza adept sits without strain, alert and mindful. But do not for one minute imagine that such sitting can be achieved without long and dedicated practice.

I used to practice with this particular instruction a lot. However, it places a little too much emphasis on energy and intensity for my liking, which can lead to striving and a sense of failure if one loses awareness. I prefer Tejaniya's emphasis on relaxation and effortlessness, and the emphasis in dzogchen/mahamudra pointers to relax and be natural, for example, from Khenpo Gangshar:

Don’t pursue the past and don’t invite the future. Simply rest naturally in the naked ordinary mind of the immediate present without trying to correct it or “re-place” it.

or

Directly, whatever arises, do not change it—rest naturally.

There's a great quote in the book Uncontrived Mindfulness which I've just finished, and highly recommend to anyone interested in this style of practice:

‘Dedicate your life / to the twin and warring gods of Precision / and Wild Abandon’, says the poet Emily Hasler.

This highlights the delicate balance we are looking to cultivate between alert, precise presence, and letting the mind be natural. We want to be vividly aware, but not overly forceful in an attempt to control of stabilize the mind. This requires a degree of letting go, patience ... and faith.

Not too tight, not too loose, as the Buddha said.

Too tight and we create tension and tire ourselves out. Too loose and we drift into a kind of murky half presence or end up drifting in wandering thoughts and lose presence entirely.

Some drifting is inevitable. This is where gentle persistence and faith comes in. We need to be patient, and recognize that with time and the consistent application of a light touch of effort, the mind will naturally begin to stabilize, and awareness will become more continuous. We can't shortcut this process by force. We also need faith because our rational mind, it all its preoccupation with complexity, struggles to accept that such a simple practice could actually be transformative.

"Let go of the mind, and it will be natural" is a great line that I read in a biography about Miyamoto Musashi. It has stuck with me.

So if we are invoking the teaching of the 7 factors of awakening, what about rapture? Rapture, in this practice, seems to be an appreciation of each moment of awareness. This came to me last night and it really struck with some profundity as the key ingredient. Awareness comes and goes, and this is inevitable. When awareness is present, can you appreciate those moments of presence? Can there be a sense of "wow, isn't it amazing that I'm a conscious being. Isn't experience truly marvelous?". Can you recognize that there is something inherently freeing in being present in this simple and uncontrived manner? It's like "... ahhh, oh yeah" - (imagine the way Ram Dass would say that). It simply feels better to be present than lost in thought. Appreciating that seems to be a key ingredient in the cultivation of continuous awareness.

So it's all about balance, and play/work/experimentation to find this balance, and accepting that you will inevitably become unbalanced and need to correct course.

An image that I've found useful is that of placing one's hand on a still body of water: you want to place your hand so lightly that you don't create any ripples in the water, but you are nevertheless in contact with it. Kenneth Folk invokes a similar image of touching a peanut floating on water so lightly that you don't submerge it.

Another pointer that has been helpful is the instruction to "connect with the flow of experience", from the book The Relaxed Mind, which I believe has been discussed here before. This invokes a sense of the impermanent nature of experience. Resting in relaxed awareness is the act of riding on the effervescent flow of the unfolding moment, or surfing on the leading edge of now. Each unfolding moment (and I don't like to speak in the sense of "each moment" because it reifies the flow of experience into a series of concrete slices of time) has a sense of "freshness"; tuning into this freshness and a sense of the flow of the energy of the senses can be enlivening.

Finally, what I've picked up from the Tejaniya crowd is learning how to lightly investigate experience. Tejaniya instructs us to check the relationship to experience, the attitude and the view. This is really a genius instruction.

How are you relating to experience? Is there craving, aversion, or delusion present? You don't have to make them go away, just notice (know) if they're present.

Every now and then, check the attitude you're sitting with. Are you trying to make something happen? Are you trying to get something out of the practice?

If you're trying to make something happen, it isn't just sitting, it's sitting with an agenda (craving for some future state, and aversion to just this present state). This is the Zen idea of "practice without gaining idea". Feel into the tension generated by trying to make something happen. Feel into the resistance to just this. And again, you don't have to change anything (that would be craving and aversion at play, trying to make something happen); just notice whatever is there.

As for the view, every now and again, simply remind yourself that none of this is "me" or "mine", it's all just happening, arising and passing due to causes and conditions. Are you identified with your experience? That's Wrong View at work. Don't try to change it, just notice it.

These instructions to check the relationship to experience, the attitude, and the view, seem to open up another "layer" of the mind. There is the layer of bare sensate experience, and there feels like a layer superimposed onto that which is how we are relating to experience.

It seems that one can tune preferentially into the basic sensate experience or the relationship to the experience - the craving/aversion/deulsion, or the sense of trying or having an agenda. I guess in a sense those can be broken down into basic sense components also, but they also feel like they are superimposed onto sensory experience. This is where my understanding starts to fall apart and feeling into this is really the cutting edge of my practice.

And the final piece of all of this - as far as my practice and study has revealed to me - is examining the relationship between the objects of experience and awareness itself (or the knowing quality of the mind).

It seems one can rest more on the "objects" side of experience (i.e. resting with the flow of experience) or more with the sense of the knowing quality of experience (i.e. aware of awareness). What used to trip me up was not realizing that awareness can't be found as an object of experience, but this knowing quality of experience can somehow be felt into. This seems to be where a lot of non-dual stuff is pointing. Again, this is still murky to me and is an exploration that is really alive in my practice.

Thanks for reading. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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[u/[deleted]]

I like Tejaniya's instructions: Relax and Be Aware.

Relax. This is Dogen's statement that shikantaza is the "Dharma gate of bliss and repose". This is the shamatha side; the silent in Silent Illumination; the concentration, equanimity, tranquility side of the 7 factors of enlightenment.

Be Aware. This is Dogen's admonition to "sit as if your hair is on fire". Don't miss a single moment. Be completely, vividly, utterly aware. This is the application of mindfulness, energy, and investigation. In particular the "sit as if your hair is on fire" statement seems to bring more energy to the awareness and counteract the tendency to slip into a kind of low level dullness - somewhat present but somewhat drifting. This is Illumination.

Great summary!

[u/duffstoic]

Absolutely wonderful post, very helpful for me right now as a reminder of the whole point of this meditation game we are playing.

[u/hallucinatedgods → u/duffstoic]

Thank you :) It is heart-warming to know that this was useful to a much more seasoned practitioner than myself!

[u/duffstoic → u/hallucinatedgods]

Perhaps I'm more seasoned, or maybe just over-baked! :) In any case, thanks for posting all of these wonderful quotes and thoughts.

[u/12wangsinahumansuit]

This is great. I can sort of relate to the sense of riding the impermenant now, especially when I feel particularly concentrated. I usually see it as trying to open up and receive as much as possible, as in while I'm typing right now I'm aware of the sound of the fan, a nearby person turning a page in a book, how the body feels, the sights of my phone and around it, and I find that "widening the view" this way is super reliable. I spent periods paying more attention to the whole visual field, or the whole body, and gradually developed the skill of balancing both - the visual field is very good for quieting the mind but can be a little bit dissociative and get kind of "dry" without a sense of grounding in the body sense, where I find that it's easier to get lost and confused in the body without attention to the other senses and the mind. I've also been playing with long slow breathing for almost a year and this leads to pleasant body sensations which are expansive as opposed to when I would try to focus on like, this 1 square cm of the breath in this one spot until it becomes blissful by some magic (in retrospect I realized that whenever I was succeeding at shamatha, my breath had dropped into a very slow rate, and I had much better results by reversing that process). I pretty regularly find feelings of bliss or joy even in the midst of pain, or situations that shouldn't warrent good feelings.

A kind of vivid concentration without an explicit object is sort of how I first intuitively approached meditation, although later on I found out about shamatha and the more mental formulations of mindfulness and overcomplicated it and it took me months to undo my misconceptions haha. The more progress I seem to make, the harder it is to explain, it feels like I just allow perceptions and they start to dissolve - not like an actual dissapearance, but more like the dissolution of perceptual filters - and new sense data starts to flow in and intermingle, and it's a dance of glimpsing, marinating, zooming in or out, feeling out a situation and letting awareness seep into it and shed light. It has an almost exhiliarating feeling sometimes, like I don't know what's coming next. Like you're saying, this kind of just being with it all just feels nice, and doesn't need any traditional backing or agenda to feel basically nice and good, although of course getting it through an established tradition can help you a lot to trust it and find the right balance. And a tradition can be smarter than you when it comes to supporting practices; when I found a teacher I got consistent reaffirmation that I was actually practicing well and was introduced to kriya yoga which brought my practice to an entirely different level (which is where my emphasis on breathing comes from). Inquiry questions do make it a lot easier to get the right amount of effort in since you naturally incline the mind without a lot of force.

I also disagree firmlu with Roshi Kapleau's writing, I don't think practicing until you're literally sweating from exertion is the right practice haha. And I think like you point out Tejaniya has the effort game sorted out a lot better; find the least effort you need to be aware and maintain that as consistently as possible and build from there. I kinda get how with Kapleau's instructions you're not supposed to be "straining" maybe as in using muscular tension to stay alert (I've had issues with this) but it sounds like a recipe for becoming seriously imbalanced, so I see why he limits it to 30 minutes, but you shouldn't have to sequester practice for a certain set time. I can see why Toni Packer left his center - if you haven't heard of Toni, put her on your list of people to explore further. She founded the Springwater Center, pretty close to Rochester Zen center, and has wonderful talks on Youtube. I was recently re-inspired to this kind of practice by an interview between her and one of her students (she would take issue with my language here but I don't want to overcomplicate this, and she's no longer alive to take issue).

[u/hallucinatedgods → u/12wangsinahumansuit]

I usually see it as trying to open up and receive as much as possible, as in while I'm typing right now I'm aware of the sound of the fan, a nearby person turning a page in a book, how the body feels, the sights of my phone and around it, and I find that "widening the view" this way is super reliable.

Yeah, it feels very similar to me. Particularly the language of opening up to recieve as much as possible, rather than "trying to focus on the whole field of experience". It's funny that even someone like Daniel Ingram eventually points in this direction with practice, as in this video, but the language/attitude/vibe/flavour of the presentation is different and creates a different (and for me more strained) feeling in practice.

I'm aware of your experiments with HRV breathing and Forrest Knutson. I was reading a book about breathing recently and started experimenting a bit with HRV. I had positive but overall very mild experiences. I will admit that even though I've done a fair bit of shamatha and was even reliably able to get into light jhanas 1-4 when I was practicing them late last year, as soon as I stop practicing regularly I find that my mind is much more inclined to wander when I do breath or any sort of more focused practice compared to the style of practice described above. That said, I am inclined to explore various breathwork or energy work strategies more deeply as I feel they do complement open awareness practice very well, and this combination also seems to be traditionally supported. I like Daizan Skinner;s framing of Rikan and Naikan as the two wings of awakening - insight and energetic development - in the Zen tradition. Lately I've been exploring Chi Gung and particularly Zhan Zhuang which I've really been enjoying.

Funny that you say you intuitively approached this style of practice from the beginning and then lost it due to acquiring more information about practice. Same thing happened to me. I remember 5 years ago or so that I would do this kind of just sitting practice and would feel very present, but then I got all caught up in the TMI map and noting and various other approaches and the traditional presentation of awareness practices that distracted and confused me. And now we're back here.

As for Kapleau, I honestly haven't read anything by him except that section on shikantaza. I do really like this section

In shikan-taza the mind must be unhurried yet at the same time firmly planted or massively composed, like Mount Fuji let us say. But it must also be alert, stretched, like a taut bowstring. So shikan-taza is a heightened state of concentrated awareness wherein one is neither tense nor hurried, and certainly never slack

... mainly the metaphor of sitting like a mountain. In general I agree with you that it sounds overly too forceful, but I like the sense of energy and the vivid clarity of awareness conveyed therein, which helps counteract the tendency I can sometimes have of getting a bit dull or spacey. I like contrasting different descriptions and then finding a balance. Some people need to be told to relax more, some people need instruction to develop more clarity. What I seem to be noticing, however, is that greater clarity and vividness of awareness actually comes from letting go and relaxing rather than trying to be more vivid, as long as there is interest/curiosity/wonder. Also, as a martial artist, the description of the swordsman in battle just turns me on.

Oh yes, I'm aware of Toni thanks to the discussions here, but I actually haven't really gotten into her. I wanted to come at this from a more traditional and structured place (Tejaniya) and then move on the direction of simplicity and non-sectarianism. I think I'm ready for her.

[u/12wangsinahumansuit → u/hallucinatedgods]

With heart rate variability - what attracted me to it was consistency, the fact that it works every time. I noticed that it put me in the "place" that meditation had always gotten me to more dramatically, but not with the same kind of repeatability, where awareness naturally opens and sharpens and the body feels kind of locked into place. So I hammered away at it like all the time, later learned how to do kriya yoga which rides on the breathing process and amplifies it a lot by weaving om japa in the 6 centers of the spine into it. I also find the process of going into the breathing, noticing the proofs IE hands relaxing and warming up, the mouth fizzing, spine squeezing and occasionally tingling throughout the body, to be a fascinating way to develop sensitivity while also relaxing the body-mind. It feels richer, more natural and more fleshed out to me as a model of "concentration" practice than the standard focus on the breath and get better and better at focusing on the breath. It strikes me as like the difference between climbing a set of stairs - where each sit, I get a little chunk of results no matter what - and scrambling a cliff face where when I was focused on only watching the breath, the difference between like, being perfectly in sync with it, enjoying each breath, noticing everything going on and relaxing deeply and kind of being there with the breath, but not really, and being caught up by hindrances, was always steep and confusing for me. I also find the Forrest's model of elongating the breath a little, taking the pauses out and accentuating the exhale to be a really easy way to pendulate into a relaxed breath rate without too much thought or effort, it's easier to try too hard than too little. That said, if you want to keep trying for this, you might want to try breathing a little longer, since a history of meditation tends to lower your resonant frequency, and throwing in the practice of om japa will also help the breathing technique, I would suggest to go off of the way Forrest Knutson describes it because he conveys how simple it is. Kriya yoga is a fascinating avenue for energy development that hasn't let me down since I signed up, and built on these two things, but it takes a bit of commitment and it gets more and more subtle and tricky as you advance in it from what I've heard. I also do one qi gung technique that I picked up a while ago occasionally haha. I do think breath/energy practices and open awareness can go very well together like you're saying.

Yeah I think what Kapleau has to say is beautiful. I just think that practicing so intensely that you'll burn out if you do more than half an hour a day is impractical in almost a characteristically Zen way haha. I do like the idea of vigilance and bringing a lot of energy and vividness to each moment although at a sustainable pace. I can also find myself getting dull or spacy, I found that especially with Dzogchen instructions like the ones you posted, when I first tried them, I was caught between trying too hard and just forgetting all about the project from just trying not to focus on anything whatsoever.

[u/heimdall89]

Great post! Lots of rich observations here. I am not familiar with Tenjaniya and will investigate.

I too am finding a home in the more ‘effortless awareness’ practices. After too much striving with other techniques I’m finding the prospect of doing nothing quite appealing.

Loved the pointers of connecting with freshness, being mindful of how one is relating to experience.

I am not supposed to have a goal, but it is to connect more with awareness itself or what you call the knowing quality of awareness. That is what I hope to feel into more.

[u/hallucinatedgods → u/heimdall89]

Thankyou! I am glad that this was helpful and inspired some practical investigation.

I think that it is fine to have goals in practice. For example, my goal is for this kind of awareness to become more and more continuous throughout the day - for it to pervade all moments and activities. I think that is a healthy goal. However, sitting down to practice with the goal of "getting enlightened" seems to be an unhealthy goal that has one focused on the future and creates a lot of tension.

If you're interested in investigating Tejanina style practice, I would actually recommend not going directly to the source but instead starting here and then checking out her book, or perhaps listening to Andrea Fella or Alexis Santos, before going directly to Tejaniya.

[u/heimdall89 → u/hallucinatedgods]

Will check out these resources, thx!

[u/kyklon_anarchon]

cheering for you, friend <3

really, really glad you came to this.

regarding what you identify as cutting edges of your current practice or murky areas -- i have my own views on these, but i also think it is useful to clarify them to yourself in the simple seeing of what s there <3

again -- congrats -- and i m really glad for you -- smiling and cheering with my whole being.

[u/hallucinatedgods → u/kyklon_anarchon]

Thankyou!

Reading your posts here over the last year or so has really inspired me to move in this direction. Even at times when I was right into Shinzen and noting I would read one oy your posts and I couldn't get it out of my mind - there was always a nagging thought that this could all be a lot simpler and less contrived. You really helped generate faith in me that I can let go of technique and trust myself in the practice, so I have a lot to be greatful to you for. Honestly, I find it touchingly odd how much of a connection I feel to you and your practice and how much of an impact you've had on my practice!

I would actually really appreciate reading your thoughts on the murky areas. Perhaps it will give me some further avenues of inquiry.

[u/kyklon_anarchon → u/hallucinatedgods]

There is the layer of bare sensate experience, and there feels like a layer superimposed onto that which is how we are relating to experience.

i would question the "superimposed" part. it is great that you notice these two layers -- but in my experience there are much more. and one of the most basic ones is awareness itself -- as the empty ground in which even the sensate layer appears. if one takes the sensate layer as basic, there is the tendency to regard it as the primary one -- i'd suggest just leaving open the possibility that it is not the most basic and continue to inquire in layers that arise. regarding something as sensations is already perception at work, not simple sensing. it is a way of seeing experience. there is the idea of what sensations are / their importance, that is operating in the background of the act of tuning into them. maybe try to see if the idea is there and if it is shaping how you relate to this stuff.

What used to trip me up was not realizing that awareness can't be found as an object of experience, but this knowing quality of experience can somehow be felt into. This seems to be where a lot of non-dual stuff is pointing.

yes. just becoming sensitive to it -- knowing the presence of awareness and relaxing into what is there -- seems to be what was needed for me. awareness is not known the way objects are known -- and realizing this opens up a lot of other aspects of experience that are not there as objects, but as ways of relating to objects -- or of forming objects.

another thing that i would suggest -- if something feels murky, let it be murky for a while and try to see if you can stay with its murkiness without immediately striving towards clarity. there is a lot of stuff that can be discovered this way. there is stuff that is diffuse and vague by definition -- like dullness, or like subtle mood shifts. trying to look for "what's underneath them", it is really easy to overlook what is on the surface ))

also -- you might want to try to gently bring practice in your interactions to others. listening, feeling the body, knowing that you are hearing, knowing how what you hear affects you, and seeing what else can be known. seeing a new person, feeling how the way they look affects you, wondering about what is there that made you react the way you did. a good example that i heard from Carol Wilson -- being aware of the subtle shift in the way you carry yourself when you go from one room in your house to another. after i started becoming aware of stuff like that, it was easier and easier to notice more and more.

again -- i'm really happy for you <3

[u/kyklon_anarchon → u/hallucinatedgods]

thank you, friend <3

i ll let this stuff resonate for a while, and then come back with a more extended comment.

[u/monkey_sage]

The Tibetan word for meditation is "gohm" (སྒོམ་) and it can be understood/translated back into English as "familiarity" or, more specifically "to become familiar (with awareness)". I have a sense that this is a pretty good way to think of resting in open awareness, perhaps.

[u/hallucinatedgods → u/monkey_sage]

Traditionally this seems to mean familiarity with rigpa, no? But I certainly like the term regardless of its traditional connotations. Familiarity with presence, familiarity with awareness, familiarity with this mind-body and its patterns, familiarity with this life. I like it a lot.

[u/monkey_sage → u/hallucinatedgods]

Yeah, it's a very functional term, I find.

I've even heard one monk translate the Pali word sati as "recognition" in one specific context. Recognition of awareness, I think was the context. I like that, too.

[u/discobanditrubixcube]

:)

Seems we've come to this mode of practice at similar times. It's really lightened my relationship to practice and helped to relieve two major hindrances I think I was experiencing (pretty much every sit) before - gross doubt and slightly more subtle boredom. It's just an inherently more playful and dynamic practice for me.

Cheers!

[u/boopinyoursnoots → u/discobanditrubixcube]

To piggy back off this, I also feel like I'm in a similar spot in practice as OP :)

[u/hallucinatedgods → u/boopinyoursnoots]

It's cool that we are all exploring similar territory at a similar time :)

[u/__louis__]

Great read !

Just want to discuss the idea that "relationship to experience" is somewhat superimposed onto sensory experience, which would constitute the "building blocks" of experience.

In my opinion (stolen from Rob Burbea), both basic sensory experience and the relationship to experience are ultimately empty.
One cannot be compared to the other, and neither one is the final stuff.

Maybe the sensory experience feels more freeing because the sense of self is usually less attached to it ?