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ZEN TRAINING Ph! ^vKiUsuki Sc^kicici BQ 9288 .S4313 1975 THE LIBRARY >. . O^ NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA ^^-^^ 50 FELL STREET •AN rHANClSCO. CALIFORNIA MT02 A manual of self-instruction in Zen? Until the appearance of the present book the idea would have seemed improbable. But Zen Training manages to demystify religion without debunking it, to explain hitherto esoteric practices in lucid, everyday terms. It offers concrete guidelines especially to the sine qua non of all Zen training-zazen, seated medita- BQ528r'si??3' 1975^°"^" """^ ^^'^°'So7^ ''""- 'llillllillllliillllllll Posture, breathing, the function of the ab- I llllll illll lllll lllll lllll llll llli dominal muscles, muscle tone, and the mecha- Sekida, Katsuki , nisms of wakefulness and attention are clearh ^^^ ^O^LEGE OF CALIFORNIA (SF) and scientifically explained, so that one learns what actually happens in doing zazen, why it leads to certain psychological experiences, and what their significance is. There is also a chap- ter on koans that goes far to clarify what for many has seemed one of the most frustrating and baffling aspects of Zen. Again, the reader is told how actually to deal with koans and how they operate as catalysts of enlightenment. Mental operations and states of conscious- ness are rationally examined as well. The au- thor's brilliant analysis of the mechanism of cognition in terms of the interplay of three kinds of nen or "thought impulses" sheds valu- able light on mental activities, both normal and pathological, and on the nature of cognition, self-awareness, and levels of consciousness. The author also draws many significant paral- lels between Zen and Western philosophy and psychology, comparing traditional Zen con- cepts with the theories of being and cognition of such thinkers as Heidegger and Husserl. Zen Training departs from the bulkol West- ern Zen literature in its critical reevaluation of the enlightenment experience called kensho, which the author believes has often been em- phasized at the expense of other important aspects of Zen training. The aim of zazen is seen not as the achievement of such experi- ences as satori or kensho but as the attainment of absolute samadhi, that condition of utter ^ (continued on inside back cover j This book is available in both hard and soft covers. ^ DUE DATE _ORNlA -JO BQ 9288 .S4313 1975 Sekida, Katsuki , 189i Zen training BQ 9288 S4313 1975 #14550 Sekida, Katsuki, 1893- ^,t«„„«v.^ Zen training : methods and philosophy / Katsuki Sekida ; edited, with an introduction, by A. V. brimstone. — 1st ed. — New York : leatherhill, 258 p. : ill* ; 22 cm. An expanded English version o:f An introduction to Zen lor beginners, originally written in Japanese. Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-254) and index. CONTENIS.—Orientations — Zazcn posture — The physiology of attention -- Breathing in zazen — Counting and following the breath Working on Mu — The tanden^etx — Samadhi — K.oans — Three nen- n a actions and one-eon _^rt T'vic^te* ' nee and moo*^ — 28 ISb 94 1592346 NF^Cxc SEE NFXT CRD #14550 Reclass $ • . ISBN 0-8348-0114-0 ( pbk. ) 1. Meditation—Zen Buddhism. 2. Zen Buddhism Discipline. I. Title 28 FE^ 94 1502346 NFVCxc 75-17573r89 ZEN TRAINING ZEN Katsuki Sekida TRAINING METHODS AND PHILOSOPHY edited, with an introduction, by A, V, Grimstone o New York • WEATHERHILL • Tokyo First edition, 1975 Second printing, 1975 Published by John Weatherhill, Inc., 149 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016, with editorial offices at 7-6-13 Roppon^i, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106, Japan. Copyright © 1975 bv Katsuki Sekida and A. V. Grim- stone; all rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data : Sekida, Katsuki, 1893—/ Zen training. / An expanded English version of An introduction to Zen for beginners, originally written in Japanese. / Includes bibliographical refer- ences and index. / 1. Meditation (Zen Buddhism) 2. Zen Buddhism—Dis- cipline. / 1. Title. / BQ9288.S4313 / 294.3'4'43 / 75-17573 j ISBN 0- 8348-01 11-6/ ISBN 0-8348-01 14-0 pbk. Contents Preface 7 Editor's Introduction 9 1 Orientations 29 2 Zazen Posture 38 3 The Physiology of Attention 47 4 Breathing in Zazen 53 5 Counting and Following the Breath 60 6 Working on Mu 66 1 The Tanden 83 8 Samadhi 9/ 9 Koans 98 10 Three Nen-Actions and One-Eon Nen 108 11 Existence and Mood 128 12 Laughter and Zen 147 13 Pure Existence 160 14 Pure Cognition and Kensho ]73 15 Kensho Experiences 193 16 A Personal Narrative ^^^ 17 Stages in Zen Training ^^^ Reference Notes ^^^ Index ^^^ Pref;ace I SHOULD LIKE to cxpress here my thanks to all those who have helped and encouraged me in the writing and publishing of this book. Parts of it originally appeared in Diamond Sangha, the publication of the Zen group of Honolulu, and I must first express my feeling of gratitude to Mr. Robert Aitken, who initially edited my articles and prepared them for publication in Diamond Sangha, and to Mrs. Anne Aitken, who typed my manuscripts and generally spared no effort in the work of getting them printed. Without their helping hands, encourage- ment, and the hospitality of the pages of Diamond Sangha, those arti- cles would never have appeared. This also is the place to express my gratitude to the readers of Diamond Sangha for their steady encourage- ment; it has meant much to me. The articles that appeared at that time were independent of each other and were published separately. The work of organizing those articles into book form, of editing the material that I added later, and of writing the introduction was undertaken by Dr. A. V. Grim- stone, in Cambridge, England. I wish to thank him most warmly for the care he has devoted to the task, and for his many helpful sug- gestions. He has worked on the book as if it were his own. I also wish to thank Miss Debra Graynom, of the Maui Zendo, who helped me by typing some parts of the manuscript, and more generally I want to express my gratitude for the encouragement given me by the members of the Zen groups of Honolulu and Maui, and the mem- 7 PREFACE bers of the London Zen Society. Among the latter I particularly want to thank Mr. Geoffrey Hargett for suggesting Figure 20. I hope that this book will be of interest and help to those who wish to study Zen. Good luck in your Zen practice! Katsuki Sekida Kochi Prefecture, Japan, 1975 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author and editor wish to express their gratitude to the fol- lowing for granting permission to reprint published material : Chatto and Windus, Random House, and the literary estate of C. K. Scott- Moncrieff for extracts from Scott-Moncrieff's translation of Marcel Proust's Svvann's Way and Within a Budding Grove; the University of Illinois Press for a figure from the American Journal of Tsychology; R. D, Laing and Penguin Books for an extract from The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, © 1967 by R. D. Laing; David Magarshack and Penguin Books for passages from the former's translations of Dostoev- ski's I^e/Jiot and The Devils, ©^9S3, 1955 by David Magarshack; A. C. Guyton and W. B. Saunders Company for material from Function of the Human Body; Iris Murdoch and Routledge and Kegan Paul for pas- sages from The Sovereignty of Good; Manchester University Press and the University of Chicago Press for an extract from Karl Jaspers' Gen- eral Psychopathology, translated by J. Hoenig and Marian W. Hamilton; and Macmillan Publishing Company and Allen and Unwin for a pas- sage from Edmund Husserl's Idea of Phenomenology , translated by W. P. Alston and G. Nakhnikian in Readings in Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Editor's Introduction The author ofthis book, Katsuki Sekida, was born in Kochi, a town in the southwest of Japan, in 1893, He began the practice and study of Zen in his early twenties, in circumstances that are partly described in chapter 16 of this book, and has continued this uninterrupted ever since. His experience therefore extends over almost sixty years. Although his study and practice of Zen have been intense and pro- found, and although he lived and studied for some years in a Zen monastery, Ryutaku-ji, he has always remained a layman, earning his living as a schoolteacher until his retirement in 1945. In his later years he has become greatly respected as a teacher of Zen. These few biographical facts are important to the reader, I believe, since they help to establish that this book is the work of a man who can write of Zen with the authority of prolonged experience and deep study. In 1963, Mr. Sekida accepted an invitation to go to Honolulu to join a Zen group that had been founded there at the initiative of Rob- ert Aitken, and he remained in Hawaii until 1970. It was in Hono- lulu that Mr. Sekida began working on an expanded English version of a book he had written in Japanese, An Introduction to Zen for Begin- ners, and early drafts of various chapters of this book were circulated with a newsletter. Diamond Sangha, published by the Honolulu Zen group. I met Mr. Sekida in 1968, when I was working in Honolulu for a time, and again in 1971, when he came to England for several months at the invitation of the London Zen Society. At that time he asked me if I would assist him in the final preparation of his manuscript 9 EDITOR S INTRODUCTION for publication, I gladly agreed to do this, since it seems to nie that his ideas are interesting and important and his book is a most valuable one. I can claim no profound knowledge or experience of Zen myself, but in the course of my professional activities as a scientist I have acquired a certain experience of writing and editing, and it seemed to me that it was this that Mr. Sekida chiefly needed, rather than a deep knowledge of his subject. Mr. Sekida completed his manuscript in 1972, and the final version is now before the reader. Mr. Sekida also asked if, in addition to editing the book, I would write an introduction to it. With some diffidence, I agreed to do this. The book is, I believe, well able to stand by itself, and the reader will lose little if he proceeds straight to chapter 1. However, Mr. Sekida's view of Zen is different in many respects from that which has pre- viously been presented to Western readers, and a few words of ex- planation at the outset may help some readers to orient themselves in unfamiliar territory and to relate what is said here to what is to be found in other books. In particular, I think it may be useful to state explicitly some of the things that Mr. Sekida takes for granted and does not comment on. For Mr. Sekida the unquestioned basis of any serious practice of Zen is zazen, the exercise in which the student sits and learns to control his body and mind. A substantial part of the book is devoted to de- scribing how zazen is performed and what its effects are. Perhaps for some readers this concentration on zazen will need justification, for in DaisetzT. Suzuki's writings, which were chiefly responsible for introducing Zen to the West, no such emphasis is to be found, and this inevitably influenced those introductory books on Zen that were largely based on his work.i Suzuki wrote about Zen largely from a theoretical and cultural viewpoint and was not much concerned with the practical aspects of Zen training. Traditionally, the practice of Zen has been taught to students personally, usually in a monastery. Suzuki took this for granted and perhaps assumed that it would always be the case. At any rate, his books contain little mention oi zazen, and certainly nothing by way of instructions on how to perform it. It needs, therefore, to be emphasized at the outset that the experi- 10 EDITOR S INTRODUCTION ences and insights that Suzuki described are, and always have been, gained by the assiduous practice ot zazen. This point has already been made by PhiHp Kapleau,^ whose book went further than any that had hitherto appeared—in the West, at least—in describing how Zen is actually practiced. Kapleau's book is undoubtedly a most valuable and interesting one. Largely consist- ing of translations of lectures and other material by contemporary Zen teachers, some older Zen texts, and autobiographical accounts by a number of Zen students, it comes nearer than any other book in English to describing how Zen functions as a religion. But still it falls short of being the book that is so badly needed in the West : nowhere does it give the reader the kind of precise instructions for performing zazen that he will need if he is to practice—as most West- erners inevitably will—without the guidance of a Zen teacher. Like Suzuki and the writers of the classical Zen texts, the authors of the material that Kapleau translates did not see the necessity of giv- ing highly detailed practical instructions of this kind. As far as I know, such information has not so far been published in any European lan- guage. The first great merit of Mr. Sekida's book, then, is that it tells us exactly how zazen is to be performed. When we read what Mr. Sekida has to say on this topic, however, we discover that he is not content to confine himself to the essential practical requirements. He goes far beyond this, for he undertakes a remarkable analysis of the whole exercise of zazen, conducted large- ly in physiological terms. Posture, breathing, the function of the ab- dominal muscles, muscle tone, the mechanisms of wakefulness and attention—all are discussed in detail in the language of the physiolo- gist. The value of this, it seems to me, is twofold. In the first place, it helps the student to understand what he is trying to do when he sits doing zazen. He is not merely instructed to sit and concentrate on, shall we say, counting his breath or saying "Mu," but is told precisely why, if he manipulates his body in certain ways, he will find himself better able to carry out such an exercise. Secondly—and for some people this will be even more important—Mr. Sekida's analysis, logi- cal and scientific as it is, helps to make the whole matter of practicing zazen more reasonable. For many people, and especially those with any

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