I find meditation very difficult. It’s not really ‘zoning out’ or being lost in some sort of reverie, but for me it’s akin to balancing an upturned broom on your fingertip or spinning plated on a cane!
I keep my eyes half-open and gently looking at a spot 2 metres before me on the floor, but my vision spread out laterally and vertically to avoid falling asleep and silencing the mind’s chatter a little. I sit in a Zen-prescribed manner, body aligned, pelvis rotated anteriorly, hands held in the Rinzai manner. Then I start by mentally counting the breaths…in various ways, sometimes in Japanese so it can’t be done mindlessly and automatically...hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu etc if thoughts enter my mind, I don’t attach to them but let them float away. If I engage with them…I’m hungry…what’s for breakfast…oh I like breakfast…breakfast TV is rubbish though…weather girl is sexy, though…dammit! ‘One, two, three…’ I start again. After 30 minutes or so and some kinhin or some Ah-un breathing, I sit again but don’t count my breaths. Just sit in silence and ask myself, ‘Who am I?’ and wait to see what arise. ‘Who am I?’, ‘Who am I ?’ again any extraneous thoughts are let go of, released and I ask, ‘Who am I?’ into the silence.
It’s hard for me to do and until my garden dojo is finally built, I don’t have a very pleasant place to sit. But for some reason I continue doing it…