Question
Hello Master. First, let me offer my sincere respects and deep friendship. For some time I have been watering down my practice with doubts that persist despite my presence and joy in living, and return at the slightest bout of the blues or dissatisfaction. Despite my research, much remains conceptual. Should we relax completely and let everything go? Practicing that way, my hands could not maintain the mudra, my posture leaned backward, and in daily life I felt like a vegetable, no longer feeling joy, laughing, or smiling, becoming serious, as though practice became a goal or we shut ourselves inside a concept, a kind of hermitage where we hide without saying anything and no longer feel love, that extraordinary feeling that makes a face authentic.
Since I started practicing with a middle posture, neither relaxing nor tensing but staying in the middle, my posture seems correct. My exhalation follows Master Deshimaru's description: powerful and long, pressing down on the intestines and making my posture stable. In this state of mind, I smile all the time as long as I keep this conscious breathing, wherever I am. Is it normal to feel positive emotions, or should we remain neutral and let everything pass, even love?
When I watch masters who never smile and relax as though lost in their consciousness, it makes me doubt my practice despite my conviction. I have not managed to see beyond appearances. Are they happy? If so, why don't they express it with a broad smile as they look at all the wonders around them and feel intense love? Is love excluded during zazen? When I do zazen, I sometimes feel this infinite love in which everything is wonderful at this very moment, nothing is missing, and joy fills me until I become a source of radiance for every being I meet. Should we feel nothing and remain neutral? Does equanimity mean an absence of emotion, or accepting pleasures and displeasures and embracing them with a heart full of positive emotions such as gratitude, love, joy, compassion, and so on? Personally I would lean toward the second, but people speak of feeling neither joy nor sorrow. I do not know whether that means attachment or rejection toward external joys and sorrows, rather than a healthy joy arising naturally from our nature.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Thanking you in advance, I send you all my positive thoughts.
Morgan76
Master Kosen’s answer
Be natural and accept what comes. ♬♪♩♩♫♬♬✿✿✿
Kosen