"I don't know why I do zazen, but when I wake up in the morning, the world is so beautiful I cry."

Zazen is a Japanese word that means sitting meditation. This form of
passive meditation is antithetical to every tenet of modern society,
because it refocuses energy away from external stimuli and back on the
internal self. Practicing zazen goes against our instincts, which are
typically preoccupied either with achieving instant gratification
(channel surfing) or ineffectual, unending patterns of worry. By doing
zazen, you conciously take a timeout from the cyclical information
overload of daily life. The effects are impressive.

I like to
do zazen in the woods, but location is not terribly important as long
as you can find a clean, quiet place where it is comfortable to sit,
away from visual or audio distractions. After slowly stretching out the
body, sit cross-legged with your left hand cupping the right, wrists
resting in your lap. Eyes can be shut, or left half open but relaxed.
Try to keep good posture. Then, just sit for a while.

For the
first few minutes, I've found that my mind fights hard to get me up and
doing something. It takes discipline to just stay still, deal with
small muscle aches and not get distracted. Funny when you think about
it - we're so accustomed to constant action and stimulation that one of
the most difficult things to do is simply sit still for any length of
time.

Thoughts rise up from here and there while I sit. It's
impossible to stop them, and I don't try to, but I don't engage them
either. The key to zazen is passivity, even in regard to your own
thoughts. If a joke from a Simpsons episode wanders into your mind, it
wanders in, but without gritting your teeth and concentrating on
getting rid of it, it's better to just let it wander on out again. If
it gets too crowded up there, you can try focusing on breathing - in
and out, in and out.

If you make it 5 minutes without shifting
your weight, looking up at something or getting distracted, the
physical effects of zazen begin to develop. For me, it starts with my
hands. First fingers and palms feel unnaturally light, as if they could
float away in a heavy breeze, but I also become aware of a heaviness
holding them down, a ball of energy balanced ever so delicately in my
lap. The more still I manage to hold my body, the lighter my hands feel
and the more tangible the ball of energy becomes. After 15 minutes or
so, the airy feeling spreads up my arms, to shoulders and chest,
encircling the energy in my lap. At this point, the relative scale of
my body and spirt seem to move apart, like a feeling I remember from
childhood when I couldn't sleep but lay still anyway, until my sense of
self rose up like a helium balloon barely connected to the huge
physical mass of the body to which it was still anchored.

This
feeling is extremely delicate. A woodpecker ratatats on a tree from the
other side of the hill and the state shrinks down suddenly as your
focus swings over to the sound. It takes time to build it back up
again, and after 30 minutes or so I'm usually unwilling to keep going
once my focus breaks.

When it's done though, after getting up
and stretching again I'm invariably in a good mood, comfortable and
happy, as if I just jumped into a cool pond at the end of a long bike
ride on a muggy day in August.

Give zazen a try - hold it as
long as you can, use a timer if you have to. It's free, and you don't
need accessories. The high is
comparable to the endorphin surge you get after running up a steep hill.