There is a common thread that runs through many Buddhist and Taoist traditions. In each tradition it is often regarded as a culminating or crowning practice. Yet despite its centrality, it remains largely unknown; subtle, and easily overlooked.
To share more about this practice it may be helpful to return to its origins within my own path, and to share a few stories of how it gradually revealed itself.
Practicing with ADHD
My first exposure to Buddhist practice was through a mentor that I had as a young man, an Aikido Sensei that was quite steeped in Japanese culture.
I had developed ADHD at a young age, and had noticed that my attention got “lost” very easily and quite often. He introduced me to some foundational Zen practices to help me develop some focus and clarity.
I took the practices that he prescribed quite seriously (or as seriously as I could take them as ADHD as I was at that time), due to how chaotic my internal mental experience felt. They were quite difficult for me, but much to my surprise, after some years I began to notice significant changes in the ADHD and how it was perceived and worked with.
Two big shifts that I noticed were:
- An ability to let things come and go seemed to have developed.
- When strong impulses arose there was an increased capacity to release from them instead of getting lost.
It was after sitting Zen somewhat intensively for about 8 years that I began to feel quite familiar with some things that would occur during formal sitting practice. One of these was that the experience would grow very quiet, and very clear. When it was like this, the core sense of being felt quite different.
However, it wasn’t until later, after delving into the practice of Anapanasati (Buddhist breath meditation), that I was surprised to feel some of these same familiar things happening, though with what seemed like quite a different context.
Curiosity grew. It took many more years before what I had been noticing was met with the clarity, words and context that has lead to what I am attempting to share now.
Chih Kuan
My early training in meditation was heavily influenced by three primary ways of training.
- Zen
- Tiantai Buddhism
- Chan
One approach that ended up becoming quite formative was first introduced to me as a Tiantai way of approaching practice; that of working with chih (stopping) and kuan (clearly seeing).
Throughout the years of practice, it became increasingly apparent that chih and kuan seemed to show up quite a bit during seated meditation, both as a manual way to try to balance the practice as well as spontaneously occurring throughout sessions.
Coming from an ADHD background, the proper balance of tranquility and clarity seemed somewhat vital to making it through a practice without the feeling of attention getting lost.
When sitting and either mentally or physically feeling restless, or like there was a lot of activity happening internally, it became quite obvious how beneficial it was when soothing and tranquility would become increasingly present.
When feeling lost, dreamy or without much clarity, the benefits of clearer seeing, inquiry and curiosity would change things in quite a palpable way.
At this point I would often meditate by feel, attempting to sort of work manually with these two qualities based on how the experience seemed to be going.
I also noticed that when practicing in busier environments, these same qualities could each be used as a sort of medicine to help things feel more balanced and clear throughout the day.
Often I would sit or be practicing and just feel how it felt. If it felt tense, (it often did) then I would first emphasize tranquility and soothing.
If the felt sense was more one of feeling distracted, preoccupied, or a more sluggish wandering mind, then I would emphasize curiosity and inquiry.
When chih and kuan arrived at a certain balanced feeling, the whole quality of practice would change. I noticed that, at times, silent illumination or shikantaza practices felt quite related to what was happening when working with chih and kuan, though not quite the same. I couldn’t yet quite put a finger on what was different.
It also became increasingly apparent that often when chih and kuan came into a sort of “strengthened balance” that then the silent illumination or shikantaza style of practice would just sort of “spontaneously manifest” and it felt amazing, and quite different from anything that I was able to do on purpose.
Eventually this exploration lead to some quite tangible changes taking place in how I felt and operated. This all made perfect sense experientially, but there was also intense curiosity around learning more about what was happening, why, and if others experienced something similar.
Samatha and vipassana
While I maintained practice in the ways that I had been, I also began to explore the other schools of Buddhism (which I had almost zero familiarity with). At first this exploration lead me through many forms of Theravada practice, including but not limited to Burmese style practices like those taught by Mahasi Sayadaw and Sayadaw U Tejaniya, some approaches that came out of Sri Lanka, and various Thai Buddhist methods including those taught by Ajahn Buddhadasa, Ajahn Lee Dhammadharo, various approaches to using the Buddho kammathana taught by Ajahn Mun and Ajahn Mahaboowa, and some esoteric Theravada practices as well.
During this time I also became quite interested in studying the Pali Suttas as many were translated into English and much of what was in them seemed to speak about the phenomena of practice in ways that seemed quite fascinating.
It was here I began to encounter the terms samatha and vipassana, and after some time it became apparent that these were connected to both the soothing quality (chih/samatha) and clear seeing (kuan/vipassana) that I had been experiencing.
Though many modern teachers seemed to call certain meditation techniques samatha, vipassana, or samadhi, the language in the suttas seemed to point much more toward these being qualities or elements of practice, not just names of certain techniques.
Eventually this sutta exploration lead again to the practice and descriptions of anapanasati. I had read Ajahn Buddhadasa’s book; “Mindfulness with Breathing: A Manual for Serious Beginners”, and found some parts of what was described very familiar. These felt like clear descriptions of some of what often happened naturally during formal practice. Also contained in there were many steps and phases that felt like practice had touched upon or been in the neighborhood of, many times yet they had not been consciously contextualized or experienced from the exact perspectives he described exploring.
Eventually this lead to my seeking out Santikaro, a student of Ajahn Buddhadasa, a quite devoted practitioner (and explorer) of anapanasati.
Sixteen domains
Within the practice of anapanasati can be found sixteen domains, or areas of practice. These can be grouped into four groups or themes, each containing four domains.
- Kaya (body)
- Breathing long
- Breathing short
- Sensitivity to the entire body
- Calming bodily fabrication
- Vedana (feeling tones)
- Sensitivity to rapture
- Sensitivity to bliss
- Sensitivity to mental fabrication
- Calming mental fabrication
- Citta (feelings, moods and mental states)
- Sensitivity to mind
- Gladdening mind
- Steadying mind
- Releasing mind
- Dhammas (thoughts or phenomena)
- Sensitivity to inconstancy
- Sensitivity to fading
- Sensitivity to quenching
- Tossing everything back what was wrongly taken to be I or mine
I have, and still do find exploring these sixteen areas of practice to be an incredible system. It leads directly to both a broad understanding of many Buddhist teachings, as well as ways to explore very deeply. We are told that the Buddha, post-awakening, may have spent retreat time practicing this system as well.
What I also realized somewhat quickly is that this incredibly broad and deep system of practice is perhaps quite a bit more involved than what most modern meditators I encounter in the West are ready, or willing to take the time to learn, develop, and flesh out.
This began to illuminate some potential advantages of the extremely direct practices found in Zen, Chan and related schools, as well as some perspectives that might be helpful to help frame these schools of practice.
A more compact approach
If we examine the earliest accounts, at their heart, Zen and Chan are very direct and also quite formless practices. It seems quite common that many modern (as well as historical) practitioners may not have a clear idea of what role Zen/Chan potentially hold in the bigger picture of Dharma practice. Many also seem to lack a clear understanding of how these schools work, what they emphasize and why they presented what they do in the way that they do.
I found in the book by Ajahn Buddhadasa something that seemed to connect these worlds between the seemingly broad and complicated sixteen-step anapanasati training and the often one or two-step training found in many types of Zen and Chan.
Ajahn Buddhadasa mentioned after detailing all sixteen stages that there was a short way of practicing anapanasati. He described working with calming the body experience sufficiently, then shifting to clearly experiencing one of the liberating perspectives (change and uncertainty, unsatisfactory-ness, not-self, dependent co-arising, this/that conditionality, etc).
This felt very true to my own experiences. In essence this was again the chih/samatha kuan/vipassana concept being employed. When framed from this perspective, many of the permutations of practice over the years made so much sense. But one part was clarified here that had not been clarified elsewhere.
True Renunciation and tossing back
Ajahn Buddhadasa had described a process where, with the body experience sufficiently calmed, a liberating perspective could became the foreground experience.
In the anapanasati suttas the effects of working with a liberating perspective could be described as going through four phases.
- The liberating perspective becomes predominant
- Continuing this process leads to fading of the feeling of “self”
- Continuing further leads to quenching of the feeling of “self”
- This leads to patinissagga, sincere renunciation or “tossing back what has wrongfully taken to be I, me or mine”
When I first heard about this description of patinissagga, and its ties to the three phases that had proceeded it, it brought to mind many years of practice and how something like this had been experienced again and again. It had been a sort of “thing” that I could never seem to describe in language, but which was experienced quite intimately and palpably.
Once mind became sufficiently free, thoughts (and eventually all activities) would come and go freely. This process lead to some extraordinary shifts over time, and also seemed to speed up and become more potent the further it developed.
I eventually learned enough Buddhist language to begin to attempt to communicate what seemed to be happening.
- First the physical experience would calm and grow tranquil. This would then bleed over into how the mental experience felt as well.
- This would bring to light that what was coming to mind was not on-purpose, as well as that it came and went. Its coming and going freely was experienced as so relieving, in direct contrast to how life generally had felt and been handled.
- This, when permitted to continue, would eventually lead to incredible light, clarity, and unstirrability.
- Once this crossed a certain threshold, then karma would begin to arise spontaneously within this unstirrable environment. It would arise, spin out and not create anything new in the process. Over time this would grow increasingly incredible to experience, and difficult to put into words. This patinissagga process seemed to naturally open into tathata…suchness.
The missing connection with Zen and Chan
This is one of the primary liberating processes found within Zen and Chan training.
The practitioner is encouraged to uncover something very similar to patinissagga (handing everything back to nature). If this is not available then they are pointed to various skillful means and a liberating perspective (like not-self, which leads to patinissagga when developed sufficiently).
The approaches to these practices include zuochan/zazen, silent illumination, shikantaza as well as huatuo (getting ahead of words), and can be quite varied. They are found not only in Buddhism, but also as methods within Taoist traditions such has the golden flower and mysterious pass practices.
Regardless of which approach is used, this formula, when taught and employed skillfully, leads to patinissagga in a very direct fashion.
Patinissagga in turn leads to direct experience and realization of suchness, and the transformative power of experiencing suchness while engaged with life is what we find described all throughout the Zen and Chan texts, ranging from Bodhidharma to Huangpo to Bankei.
Namo Guan Shi Yin Pusa
Namo Ben Shi Shi Jia Mo Ni Fo