In his “Universally Recommended Instructions for Practicing Zazen,” the Fukanzazengi, Dogen tells us to seek out a quiet place. A quiet place; not a silent place. Zazen is not a sensory deprivation chamber.
We practice with all of our senses intact. This is one way we know we are alive, one of the five skandhas. We are not aiming to put ourselves in a trance. We are only locating ourselves in the here and now.
Yes, we soften the sensory inputs. We find a quiet place. We turn the lights down low, neither too bright nor too dark, so that we are neither distracted nor tempted to fall asleep. We keep our eyes half closed, neither wide open nor squeezed shut. We avoid extremes of temperature, so that we don’t shiver from cold or sweat from heat. We burn incense to flatten the smells in the room. We neither fast nor overeat, so that our stomachs don’t growl at us or others.
But it is sound that often disturbs people most of all.
When I first started doing zazen, even before I started going to the temple on Camp Street, I would sit among the rafters of our creole cottage at the corner of Dauphine and St. Roch in the Faubourg Marigny. Right outside my window, the Desire bus would stop to drop or to pick up passengers. It was very noisy, but it was the quietest place in the house. For a while I would imagine that I would pack up my thoughts, like unruly school children, into the bus, and it would take them to the Desire projects down the road. Soon I didn’t hear the bus anymore, or at least it didn’t bother me.
That’s how we should treat distractions. Note them, give them a meaning if you must, and send them away.
At the temple, where the dojo was fairly well isolated from the streets, there would still be other sounds. The bells of St Patrick’s Church. The crows on the roof. The sirens on the street.
When we moved to Royal Street for a while, I once found one of our more zealous members meditating in the closet. To escape the noise, I suppose, since he had the whole dojo to himself. (By the way, zealotry is not Zen.) The bodhisattva doesn’t isolate himself or herself from the world. He would have done better to do zazen in the park or on a bus.
Today, here in the Napoleon dojo, we have had coughing and sneezing, clearing of throats, cracking of knees, traffic outside, the hot water heater sighing behind the walls, the dog barking upstairs. The noise of the others in the dojo means we are not practicing alone. The traffic is taking others to work; be thankful that it’s not you who has to go to work right now. The dog barking means she’s saying hello to other dogs passing on the street; she’s not trying to disturb your concentration. Remember: it’s not about you. Neither the traffic nor the dog’s hello is directed at you.
But our discriminating minds tell us one sound is good and another is bad, one sound soothes us and another disturbs us. There is not much difference between the sweep of a car on the street and the soughing of the wind in the trees. But we are quick to say, “traffic bad, wind in trees good.” During zazen we drop these distinctions.
At the Alexandria dojo, we had one woman who was very sensitive to the sound of the ticking clock on the wall. We finally had to remove the clock. It was either the clock or her. One of them had to go. But if it was not the clock, it would have been something else.
The opening lines of the Shinjinmei tell us, just don’t choose! Once you start choosing, having preferences, putting clocks out of the room, it never stops. There will always be something to make us unhappy. The clock will drive you crazy. The dog will drive you crazy. Your own breathing will drive you crazy. My voice giving this kusen will drive you crazy. If it’s not one thing, it will be another. Just don’t choose.
— Richard Collins
