Question
Hi,
I work in a therapeutic center for psychoanalytic research. I present clinical cases of autistic and psychotic patients. The center where I work relies heavily on Lacan’s work, but I must admit that sometimes my interpretations take over again.
Can zazen help me go beyond that? And how can I stop hearing all these signifiers?
Florence
Master Kosen’s answer
Just as Lacan tells us that words are the supporting point of the unconscious, everything in the universe needs a supporting point in order to exist, to be revealed, and must rest on one.
For example, movement rests on stillness; that is why we must not move in zazen. During zazen, if we want to discover the inner world, the world of mind, the supporting point is the body. Likewise, without light as a supporting point, darkness could not exist, and without darkness, light would mean nothing. Mind always rests on the body in order to be revealed. The very substance of the body and matter is itself mind, since we cannot distinguish matter from mind.
If we distinguish things, it is to obtain supporting points. For example, a right leg and a left leg to move forward, to walk: if you do not have one leg moving backward, neither do you have a leg moving forward. We must also understand and discern things clearly. For example, in zazen it quickly becomes evident that we feel things through the body, through the matter of our being. Without a body, we would not feel things. The body is the supporting point of sensations.
In particular, when you begin Zen, it is quite difficult. This posture is difficult, and the first thing you discover is that the material body is painful. Then we distinguish different sensations as pleasure or pain. Some people take pleasure in pain, people who like suffering or are masochists. Eventually we realize that fundamentally the body’s different sensations are just notions. So we must center sensation as a whole. Once again, to do that we need a supporting point.
The zazen posture is strict. It is a posture humanity has practiced for a length of time we cannot determine exactly, but at least 5,000 years, probably 10,000 or 100,000 years. In every tradition we have found, descriptions of this posture are alike, exact, precise. A person sits on a cushion, which may be a pile of grass, or sometimes even on a stone, slightly raises the buttocks, tilts the pelvis forward, extends the spine straight, with the back straight and the head upright. They push the sky with the head, with legs crossed in lotus or half lotus and knees planted on the ground. The absolute supporting point, where we can both relax and surrender completely, while at the same time retaining enough muscle tone to remain perfectly alert and not fall asleep. There we observe body and mind.
Then you will ask me: do I believe in mind, in the presence of spirit? The body, well, we can see and touch it. What is mind? Where is it? Is it in the brain? Of all that we have been able to examine in the body, we see skin, flesh, blood, bones, marrow, organs, all that, but the substance of spirit is difficult to detect. People have carried out experiments on this. For example, they weighed a dying person before and after death. They estimated the weight of this substance at about 30 grams. In other words, when we die, we lose 30 grams.
So spirit also has a substance. Can we say the body after passing away, after death, is not spiritual? Is no longer spiritual and is only material? Certainly not: cells keep living, atoms keep turning. Even death is still life. So zazen means discovering yourself and becoming intimate with yourself. Learning to balance, to remain still, to breathe, to discover body and mind. To let go, to discover the immense freedom that belongs to us.
Kosen