On SUBSTACK | Spiritual Training Begins In The Body

Last week, I wrote about the need for people to treat this moment of pandemic and protest as a time to begin (or continue) our spiritual training in earnest. This is a time to “fortify our houses” as Killer Mike said, rather than burn them down.

So, let us begin. Spiritual training starts in a place that may be unexpected and that many of us are out of touch with, but that’s still accessible to us all: the body. 

The body as a vehicle for spiritual cultivation is a bit unfamiliar to us in the West. The idea straddles the two worlds of religion and physical fitness, and does not fit neatly into either. Even yoga and Tai Chi are now often more sport or hobbies than rigorous spiritual disciplines. But living at Chozen-ji, I know that training one’s spirit through the body is reliably effective all the same. 

In these times, it’s much easier to comprehend why a spiritual discipline borne out of physical rigor could help us and help the world. Many more of us can now relate to how important our bodies are compared to six months ago. Finally, non-Black folks are internalizing the fact that the pigmentation of our bodies could mean the difference between life and death at the hands of the police or a vigilante. Those of us who are able bodied and not sick have accepted that our physical distance from each other could mean safety or susceptibility to a deadly pathogen. And we have all seen how thousands of us together in the streets are finally tearing down monuments to racism and dismantling institutions inflicting terror on Black and Brown bodies. 

There is also a heightened understanding today of why spiritual strength—and not just intellect, accolades, wealth, or a great Instagram presence—is so valuable. Even if we are watching the world’s events unfold from inside quarantine, we feel intensely about what is happening in our streets and communities. We know we need more than our usual tools to be the people we want to be for those around us. We feel the nagging knowledge that we must be ordinary people ready to perform extraordinary acts.

When Ezra Klein interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates recently, they talked about the seemingly superhuman standards to which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr held himself and his followers during the Civil Rights Movement. To be beaten by police without fighting back, march dignified into an angry mob, walk to work every day for years, and give up basic luxuries and leisure for involvement in the movement was what Dr. King referred to when he said, “we shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force.”

We don’t have so many examples of soul force today. Take, for example, Democratic members of the US House and Senate kneeling in an eight minute and 46 second moment of silence for George Floyd and other Black Americans killed by police violence. To be honest with you, I don’t think the moment was very well thought through. The kente cloth stoles the members wore have already been widely criticized as muddling the discussion on racism and racial violence. However, the kneeling itself is worth examining, too. 

Here’s a full video of the press event, starting with the moment the Representatives and Senators take a knee. Maybe a minute in, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is already checking her watch. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t realize how painful putting their weight on a bony knee on a marble floor would be! (Try it, you’ll see. And probably have bruises afterwards.)  It’s not long before different members are shifting their weight, looking around, adjusting their skirts or switching legs. To her credit, Speaker Pelosi never moves. At one point in the video, you can see her legs visibly shaking and at the end, she cannot get up without help. A few of the members that day were prepared for that moment, I’m guessing because they have experience sitting on the floor from an Asian upbringing (I see you, Kamala Harris) or kneeling in prayer. But most of them were frankly ill-prepared and unable to stir our hearts by taking this action, even though the event was meant to convey somber depth of feeling and determination.

Contrast the event at the Capitol in DC to retired US Marine Todd Winn standing in front of the Utah State Capitol with “I can’t breathe” taped across his mouth. In full dress blues, Winn stood at attention, unmoving in the hot summer heat for three hours. His shoes literally melted into the pavement. I don’t believe that Winn’s conviction and emotions were so different than Democratic Congressional leaders. The difference was that his body—and maybe also his mind and spirit—was far better trained.

So what does this mean in practical terms for all of us? What can we do to begin our training? A physical regimen that makes you push yourself beyond what feels comfortable is not so hard to find. Even now, with gyms yet to reopen, we can do pushups and wall sits in our living rooms, heavy work in our yards, or run. The key is to work on going all out physically, keeping your energy high without letting it drop, even if it’s for a short time. The most important thing is to look for how to maximize impact while minimizing effort. That means not grimacing, not letting your voice get high and tight, and not flailing your limbs around when your motions could be powerful and precise.

The other part is sitting zazen—specifically the kind of seated meditation where you’re sitting tall, eyes open, not moving, and really alert to your surroundings. This is the very first instruction that a student receives when they come to Chozen-ji. The way we do zazen refines the body, breath and mind, and heavily emphasizes a strong and very erect posture. That you cannot move is, for me, the most important part. No shifting your legs because they hurt or have gone numb, and no swatting at the fly buzzing your eyes or even the mosquito biting your face.

(If you don’t know where to start with this, I teach an online beginning zazen class the first Saturday of every month at 8AM Hawaii Time. We usually sit about 20 minutes and work our way up to 45 minutes, the standard amount of time we sit for at Chozen-ji three times a day.)

When I teach beginning zazen, I explain that not moving first and foremost makes us more familiar with discomfort. Sometimes, the pain in your legs is enough that you feel like you’re going to scream or jump out of your skin. But can you sit there, experiencing that discomfort in your external circumstances and still count your breaths, breathe slowly with your hara, see the whole room, and feel your feet on the ground? Eventually, if you keep it up with the zazen, you'll begin to see through your discomfort and tap into something much deeper. As the body calms, aided significantly by not moving, everything including the mind becomes calmer and more clear.

There are other little practices you can do at home, like correcting your posture whenever you catch yourself hunching or collapsing, or shifting the way you walk so you’re evenly distributing your weight in your feet rather than stomping in your heels. I’m a big fan of yelling if you have the space to do that—yelling from all the way down in the hara with all your might. These don’t replace zazen and some physical discipline, but they’re things you can do in the in-between moments of everyday life.

It’s easy to understand that training or shaping your life this way would build strength, but this kind of training can also make you more resilient in the face of emotional pain. The same regions of the brain are activated when we experience emotional and physical discomfort. Stubbing your toe or getting hit on the head elicit a very similar psychophysical response as a stinging rebuke or public humiliation. So some of what we’re doing at Chozen-ji is essentially manufacturing the conditions of stress to surface the habits that usually only come out in exceptional situations. Then, we condition the response through zazen and physical training. 

By practicing responding with calm and clarity again and again, even when we’re in severe pain or under extreme pressure, we can get closer to responding the way we'd prefer (calmly, precisely, selflessly) reflexively and intuitively. 

This is part of the reason why, when I talk about Zen, I say "training" instead of "practice". Practice simply means repetition, something you come back to again and again. Indeed, the work of Zen training is lifelong! But in a way, you're also trying to get somewhere—i.e., to that psychophysical condition so that, when the shit hits the fan, you can see clearly and act swiftly for the benefit of others. There aren't so many good ways to practice such life or death encounters. But if you've followed my line of reasoning this far, you may understand that there are ways to train for such moments. And we can start our training right now.