Sitting Meditation

The light of mind is reflected in emptiness;
Its substance is void of relative and absolute.
Golden waves all around,
Zen is constant, in action or stillness.
Thoughts arise, thoughts disappear;
Don’t try to shut them off.

Let them flow spontaneously—
What has ever arisen and vanished
When arising and vanishing quiet down,
There appears the great Zen master;
Sitting, reclining, walking around,
There’s never an interruption.

When meditating, why not sit?
When sitting, why not meditate?
Only when you have understood this way
Is it called sitting meditation. 

Who is it that sits?  What is meditation?
To try to seat it is using Buddha
To look for Buddha.
Buddha need not be sought;
Seeking takes you further away.

 In sitting, you do not look at yourself;
Meditation is not an external art.
At first, the mind is noisy and unruly;
There is still no choice but to shift it back.

That is why there are many methods
To teach it quiet observation.
When you sit up and gather your spirit;
At first, it scatters helter-skelter;

Over a period of time, eventually it calms down,
Opening and freeing the six senses.
When the six senses rest a bit,
Discrimination occurs therein.

As soon as discrimination occurs,
It seems to produce arising and vanishing.
The transformations of arising and vanishing
Come from manifestation of one’s own mind.

Put your own mind to use to look back once:
Once you’ve returned, no need to do it again;
You wear a halo of light on your head.
The spiritual flames leap and shine,
Unobstructed in any state of mind,
All-inclusive, all-pervasive;
Birth and death forever cease.

A single grain of restorative elixir
Turns gold into liquid;
Acquired pollution of body and mind
Have no way to get through. 

Confusion and enlightenment
Are temporarily explained;
Stop discussing opposition and accord.
When I think carefully of olden days
When I sat coolly seeking,
Though it’s not different,
It was quite a mess.

You can turn from ordinary mortal to sage
In an instant, but no one believes.
All over the earth is unclarity;
Best be very careful. 

If it happens you do not know,
Then sit up straight and think;
One day you’ll bump into it.
This I humbly hope.

Foyan (1067-1120)

Excerpted from Instant Zen-Waking up in the Present trans by Thomas Cleary 1994

Many teachers used poetry to encapsulate their teaching. All the pertinent points are covered skillfully, and any one stanza can serve as a focal point for practice.

In this crystal clear teaching poem on sitting meditation we can feel the evolution of the sitting process itself; we all have felt the mind’s endless distractions which all settle in time.

Nothing more is needed in this clarity.

Observing with care,
Elana, Scribe for Daily Zen