Christianity, Islam, Bahai) is that they are founded on a set of beliefs; Buddhism is founded on a set of practices. I am not so confident that this is a valid distinction; however, it does point to the Buddhist emphasis put on structured and guided contemplative methods – what we incessantly call practices.
For Buddhists, we perform ‘practices’ and we have a ‘practice’. We bring a certain disciplined attention to following a prescribed method of training, one which has been handed down to us by generations of previous practitioners as leading to deeper levels of insight.
It is important to recognize that practice methods are not a curriculum. Unlike many Western learning processes, where we move through beginner to junior to senior to master, Dharma practice is not a simple matter of working through a set of books or exercises. One individual can practice for decades and never penetrate much of anything. This is sometimes called ‘dead sitting’. Another can progress (if that is a proper description) rapidly. Buddhist practice is no mere technique either. There are those who suggest that mindfulness, meditation and other contemplative practices are simply neutral and neural techniques. The proposition is we just need to do certain things, regardless of what we believe or understand, and the effects will follow. One might call it ‘sleep-sitting’ or ‘sleep-walking’ practice, rather than sitting or walking practice. They deny the fundamental triad of wisdom-practice-morality taught by the Buddha in his Eight-fold Path. All practices engage the whole person and, to be effective, require our full psycho-physical engagement in the context of the moral challenges of our day-to-day life.
The famous story of Hui Neng, the Zen patriarch, is an example. He was a monastery worker who picked up wisdom by watching and listening. His own determination and sincerity brought him great insight. When it came time for the abbot of the monastery to name a successor, he asked a typical Zen question-puzzle, and invited anyone in the vicinity to answer. The best answer would inherit the abbotship and the leadership of the lineage. The reigning star monk publicly presented his answer, apparently a worthy and studied one. He was thought to be the new abbot. This lay worker, Hui Neng, came to the abbot in secret and offered his answer, one which demonstrated superior insight. Even though Hui Neng had none of the star monk’s learning or erudition, his greater insight was recognized by the abbot, who named Hui Neng as his successor. The authenticity of one’s insight is confirmed by the master, not merely granted by the completion of a course of learning, by reading the latest best-sellers or ego-driven claims of accomplishment.
Another way of seeing this is to compare two contrasting concepts. In Western learning there is a distinction drawn between theory and practice. They are seen to be contrasted areas of expertise. Someone can be called a great theoretician, an ideas man or, pejoratively, an egg-head or ivory tower dweller. They are contrasted with someone who excels in applications, getting things done. These people are mythologized, especially in the North American environment, as those who fly by the seat of their pants, who are solutions-guys, or rely on instinct or wits, the only thing they know is how to get things done. The contrast is abstract/idealistic versus practical/realistic. Rarely does one progress from one to the other, or excel in both. No doubt this duality has some roots in Western ideas of knowledge and American values; we’ll leave that to others to explain.
As one Sangha-leader likes to put it, Buddhists ‘hold to no views whatsoever’. There is more of an inclusiveness of wisdom and practice. Wisdom, in the western sense of abstract knowledge, is pointless without some expression in practice; practice methods likewise are hollow actions unless grounded in insight or wisdom. Practice and wisdom are more like two sides of a coin than two poles of a magnet – complement rather than opposition. Therefore, when we engage in any Buddhist practice, we do so from the perspective of wisdom-in-action, and with the intention of elaborating wisdom through practice.
This is not to say that practice is abandoned once insight is attained. Its not that you’ve got your PhD and don’t need to ever crack a book again. The connection between wisdom and practice continues without end. Wisdom would be false or incomplete if it weren’t expressed in one’s daily practice. One’s practice may change and evolve, but remains the manifestation of wisdom.
Sitting and Walking
Buddhist practices take many forms. The saying is “there are 84,000 kinds of practice” – the Buddhist way of saying there are many, many forms. Different schools emphasize some over others, some schools see the different forms as identical leaves on a tree or different roads to the same destination. Modern Chinese Dharma teacher Chen Hua follows this direction:
…the Buddhadharma is one in essence, though it has many manifestations. In the first stage, you should gain broad understanding by reading everything you can. Later you can enter deeply into the door of knowledge which you choose according to your individual predisposition and preference…it is imperative that your studies embrace many facets, lest you someday be drawn into a sectarian mentality. Each Buddhist school has its good points, and each can contribute to the perfection of the others… The boundaries between them are never very strict… There is only one Buddhist religion, but it was divided into schools in order to suit the innate capabilities of different people. In studying Buddhism, the first thing is to ‘vow to learn the gateways to the Dharma, though they be innumerable’.
In Search of the Dharma, Chen-hua, p. 250
Thus, walking practices are one of many such gateways to the Dharma. We have already touched on the question of whether walking practice is a coherent whole, in the way that sitting or chanting have been seen. For now, we will assume walking practices do form such a coherent whole. If so, how are we to relate them to other kinds of practices, especially the much-vaunted sitting?
Posture
The question of proper posture first struck me only years after I had been sitting zazen in a Zen Sangha. We eager ‘zennies’ were taught, as generations of practitioners were and are taught, that the king of postures, the one Bodhidharma held for years in his cave, which Shakyamuni struck under his Bo Tree, is the full lotus, padma-asana. Hour after hour, I squirmed under the silent sneers of seniors who could hold it with ease, while my disobedient knees and ankles refused to conform. One sensei looked at me and barked, “if you’re going to sit like that, you may as well go home!”
A few years later, when I visited the Land of Serendip, as Sri Lanka was once known, my first non-Western Buddhist environment, I was severally invited to join in with group meditation lead by a senior lay person or a monk. To my astonishment, no one even tried to effect a lotus posture, full, half or otherwise. People sat in what ever seated posture they could manage. Heads might be down, spines might be arched. No one cruised through the crowd with a kyosaku (stick of compassion) to adjust posture. The important thing was that you brought the mind to a state of attention. I smugly assumed my very sharpest half-lotus.
At my present level of practice maturity, I would recommend a standard somewhere between these extremes. I know that bullying my body into impossible (for me) poses, offers little strength for insight. I also have confirmed repeatedly that a certain formality and structure of posture proves much more potent for my sitting practice. What I have learned about sitting has also come with a maturing in walking practices, so I tend to see the two practice postures as inter-related. We only have one body, after all. This echoes the advice of one teacher who would describe simple indoor walking practice as identical to sitting in purpose and posture, with the exception of the movement of the legs. Holding that description gently for now, let’s explore postures, walking and sitting. Apart from the arrangement of the legs, what are the key elements of the sitting posture?
• The spine is relaxed and uses its natural curvature for support;
• The balance tends to be slightly back-leaning;
• The chest is open, the shoulders back, to facilitate fullest breathing;
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