Question
Salut,
Je travaille dans un centre thérapeutique de recherche en analytique. Je fais des présentations cliniques à propos d'autistes et de psychotiques, le centre où je travaille fonctionne beaucoup avec les travaux de Lacan, mais je dois avouer que parfois mes interprétations reprennent le dessus.
Est-ce que zazen peut m'aider à aller au delà ? Et comment arrêter d'entendre tous ces signifiants ?
Je travaille dans un centre thérapeutique de recherche en analytique. Je fais des présentations cliniques à propos d'autistes et de psychotiques, le centre où je travaille fonctionne beaucoup avec les travaux de Lacan, mais je dois avouer que parfois mes interprétations reprennent le dessus.
Est-ce que zazen peut m'aider à aller au delà ? Et comment arrêter d'entendre tous ces signifiants ?
Answer from Master Kosen
As Lacan tells us that the words are the cornerstone of the unconsciousness, everything in the universe is just a question of cornerstone to exist, to be revealed andeverything must rest on a cornerstone.
For example, movement rests on immobility; that explains why in zazen we should not move. During zazen, if we wish to discover the inside world, the world of mind, the cornerstone is the body. Also, without light as cornerstone, obscurity could not exist and without obscurity, light would not mean anything.
Always the mind takes its support from the body to be revealed. The substance itself of the body and of matter is mind, as we cannot distinguish between matter and mind. If we distinguish in between things, it is to get cornerstones. For example right leg, left leg to go forward, to walk, if you do not have a leg going backward, you do not have either a leg going forward.
Also we should well understand, distinguish things. For example to sit in zazen is very rapidly obvious with our body, with the matter of our being, we feel things. If we would not have a body, we would not feel anything. The body is the cornerstone of sensations. Incidentally, when you start zazen, it is pretty difficult. This posture is difficult and the first thing that you discover is that the body which is made of matter is hurting. After, we will differentiate the various sensations in pleasure and suffering.
There are some people who take pleasure in suffering. People who like to suffer or who are masochistic. Finally we will understand that basically the various sensations of the body are only notions. Consequently we should center the sensation in its totality. For that, one more time, we should take a support. The posture of zazen is strict.
This posture is practiced in humankind from a time that we cannot fully evaluate but at the minimum 5000 years, even probably 10, 100 thousands of years. In all the traditions that we have rediscovered, all the descriptions of this posture are similar, exact, and precise. The human being sits on a cushion which could be a pile of grass or even sometimes he sits on a stone, he takes his bottom slightly upwards, he pushes his hips forwards, stretches his spine well straight, the back well straight, the head straight. He pushes the sky with his head; he has the legs crossed in lotus or in semi-lotus, the knees well planted in the ground. The absolute cornerstone where we have the possibility at the same time to relax and to totally abandon ourselves; but at the same time there exist a sufficient muscular tonus to stay perfectly in awareness, not to go asleep.
And there, we observe our body and our mind. Then you are going to tell me, do I believe in mind, in the presence of mind? The body, well, we can see it, we can touch it. What is the mind? Where is it? Is it in the brain?
Of everything we could look at in the body, we see the skin, we see the flesh, we see the blood, we see the bones, we see the marrow, the guts, all that, but the substance of mind is hard to detect.
There are people making experiments concerning it. For example, they have weighted a person in the process of dying before and after death. They have evaluated the weight of this substance to roughly 30 g. That means that when we die, we loose 30 g. So mind also has a substance. Can we say that the body, after death, is not spiritual? Is not spiritual anymore, and is only material? Certainly not, our cells continue to live, the atoms continue to turn. Even the death is still the life. So zazen is to discover ourselves and becoming intimate with ourselves. It is to learn to stay in equilibrium, to hold still, to breathe, and to discover our body and our mind. It is to let things go, to discover the immense freedom which belongs to us.
For example, movement rests on immobility; that explains why in zazen we should not move. During zazen, if we wish to discover the inside world, the world of mind, the cornerstone is the body. Also, without light as cornerstone, obscurity could not exist and without obscurity, light would not mean anything.
Always the mind takes its support from the body to be revealed. The substance itself of the body and of matter is mind, as we cannot distinguish between matter and mind. If we distinguish in between things, it is to get cornerstones. For example right leg, left leg to go forward, to walk, if you do not have a leg going backward, you do not have either a leg going forward.
Also we should well understand, distinguish things. For example to sit in zazen is very rapidly obvious with our body, with the matter of our being, we feel things. If we would not have a body, we would not feel anything. The body is the cornerstone of sensations. Incidentally, when you start zazen, it is pretty difficult. This posture is difficult and the first thing that you discover is that the body which is made of matter is hurting. After, we will differentiate the various sensations in pleasure and suffering.
There are some people who take pleasure in suffering. People who like to suffer or who are masochistic. Finally we will understand that basically the various sensations of the body are only notions. Consequently we should center the sensation in its totality. For that, one more time, we should take a support. The posture of zazen is strict.
This posture is practiced in humankind from a time that we cannot fully evaluate but at the minimum 5000 years, even probably 10, 100 thousands of years. In all the traditions that we have rediscovered, all the descriptions of this posture are similar, exact, and precise. The human being sits on a cushion which could be a pile of grass or even sometimes he sits on a stone, he takes his bottom slightly upwards, he pushes his hips forwards, stretches his spine well straight, the back well straight, the head straight. He pushes the sky with his head; he has the legs crossed in lotus or in semi-lotus, the knees well planted in the ground. The absolute cornerstone where we have the possibility at the same time to relax and to totally abandon ourselves; but at the same time there exist a sufficient muscular tonus to stay perfectly in awareness, not to go asleep.
And there, we observe our body and our mind. Then you are going to tell me, do I believe in mind, in the presence of mind? The body, well, we can see it, we can touch it. What is the mind? Where is it? Is it in the brain?
Of everything we could look at in the body, we see the skin, we see the flesh, we see the blood, we see the bones, we see the marrow, the guts, all that, but the substance of mind is hard to detect.
There are people making experiments concerning it. For example, they have weighted a person in the process of dying before and after death. They have evaluated the weight of this substance to roughly 30 g. That means that when we die, we loose 30 g. So mind also has a substance. Can we say that the body, after death, is not spiritual? Is not spiritual anymore, and is only material? Certainly not, our cells continue to live, the atoms continue to turn. Even the death is still the life. So zazen is to discover ourselves and becoming intimate with ourselves. It is to learn to stay in equilibrium, to hold still, to breathe, and to discover our body and our mind. It is to let things go, to discover the immense freedom which belongs to us.
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