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Notes on Home Practice
Practice Materials
and Ending A Sitting Round Originally published in the eMirror, Volume 5, issue 11 (A student's question concerning home practice prompted me to write a series of short articles on the subject. This is the third in the series). Should one have a Butsudan (an altar), for home practice or does it really matter? Well, it depends on how you understand what a Butsudan is, what the objects on it are, and how you make use of them. At Dainen-ji, Butsudan and the objects placed on them reflect and exemplify the dignity and simplicity of our practice. Butsudan can be powerful reminders of the vast richness of Zen practice or they can be tawdry piles of inspirational knick-knacks. The more often that one sits, the more useful that a Butsudan can be to provide an orientation to the forms and to extend one's practice of mindfulness. If on the other hand you sit only once or a few times a week then it would probably be more of a distraction than anything else. So a Butsudan would be useful for monastics and formal students, general students, branch and public students who sit daily and have for some months. Associate and public students who sit only once or several times a week should work with more basic elements of their practice environment, such as taking care of the zafu and so on. If you are going to create a Butsudan, please consult first with a Dharma Teacher or a practice advisor. Please avoid elaborate, colourful objects. You can assemble a Butsudan from a small table covered with a black cloth, a small black incense bowl, and plain glass "votive light" holders. We do not use brass and gold-coloured objects on any of the formal Butsudan throughout the monastery. They are striking in their simplicity. Rupas, as they are used in our practice, are not religious icons. The word is Sanskrit and simply means a "form". They are simply a representation of someone sitting in an aligned posture, a reminder to us to practice the posture. The preference, therefore, is for rupas that express good posture and look human – look like you or I - rather than some of the oddly distorted statuary that seems to be popular. They also remind us of the Lineage, the people who have embodied and carried forwards this wonderful practice to us in this present day. The honshi or traditional representations of Awakening that are appropriate to our Lineage would be Sakyamuni Buddha or Mahavairocana Buddha. Other figures that would be appropriate are Acala Vidyaraja (for monastics), or the bodhisattvas Samantabhadra, Manjusri, or Avalokitesvara. Somewhat less appropriate but often commonly available are forms of Amitabha Buddha. If students wish to use a rupa, they can request that the rupa be empowered by Roshi. This is referred to as "Opening the Eyes" of the rupa. If you would like to make arrangements to have a rupa empowered, you could contact a Dharma Teacher or practice advisor about this. Candles and incense are used as offerings: offering what we know into Knowing in itself. We use candles on Butsudan because they evoke our sense of seeing. They also represent the flickering of mind – something that anyone who spends any time sitting on a zafu can attest to. Incense is used to evoke our sense of smell, and also because it represents the truth of impermanence – it burns down and is gone. Incense bowls at Dainen-ji are usually small black bowls filled with rice or white sand or for more prominent Butsudan, incense ash. Periodically, these are strained through a mesh strainer to remove the ends of sticks that did not burn. Before each sitting, the surface is smoothed with a small rake and the inside edge is wiped with a cloth. The incense used at Dainen-ji is Japanese incense rather than Indian incense because there is a vast difference between wood resin incense and the often very flowery Indian incense. The Shoyeido incense company has a Website that will give you a great deal of information about how good quality incense is made and they have an online ordering page. The URL for Shoyeido is: http://www.shoyeido.com A sho is calligraphy, executed with brush and ink. Throughout the monastery there are sho mounted on the walls, almost all of which have been brushed by Roshi and they have a profound impact on the environment of the monastery. Residents at Dainen-ji, monks and formal students, typically have a small Butsudan or a wall shelf that serves as one, usually with a small rupa, candles, an incense bowl, and perhaps some items specific to their practice. Mounted on the wall above these is an original sho designed by Roshi for the space in which it is displayed. We consider these to be more important than the rupa, They are a strong, yet delicate, and very beautiful reminder of our practice. Students of Roshi can request that he execute a sho for their home practice rooms. Anyone who would like more information about this can write to me, at Jinmyo@trytel.com as Roshi would need photographs of the room it is to be placed in and would need to know certain other details (such as lighting) in order to create one. If you have a Butsudan or intend to set one up, you should bear in mind that it must be maintained properly by cleaning it regularly, preferably daily. We normally place candles on the outside edges of the Butsudan, with the incense bowl centred between them. A stick of incense is laid in front of the bowl, running horizontally to the front edge of the Butsudan. The candles are lit after the Butsudan is cleaned in readiness to light the incense. If you do not have anywhere to store a lighter, you could place it at the back of the bowl, where it is least visible. When you are ready to begin your sitting, you can do a standing bow before the Butsudan as an acknowledgment of the space in which you arise and which you arise as. Straighten then lower your self into seiza (a kneeling position) in front of the Butsudan. Do a seated bow and then pick up the incense and place it between the fingertips of your index fingers, the hands in gassho (hands held palm-to palm in whole bodily mindfulness). Bow with the incense stick and then light it by extending it toward the left-hand candle. Once lit, turn it in a small rapid circle with a slight flip of the wrist to extinguish the flame. (Blowing it out would be traditionally regarded as very brutish behaivour.) Then place it in the center of the incense bowl and do another seated bow. Stand, and do a standing bow before the Butsudan. Then take your seat. Whenever moving about in a practice environment, always keep the hands in shashu (hands held before the chest at the diaphragm, the right hand folded into a fist, the left hand over the right with the thumb tucked into the space between the thumb and fingers of the right hand). I mentioned last week that I would also write something about finishing a sitting round. When you finish sitting, how you end your round, how you take care of your zafu or cushions, is very important. Practice is opening to the richness and vividness of our experiencing and everything we do in connection with it is important. This is why we need to maintain clear use of the forms in beginning our sitting, while we are sitting, and in how we end a sitting round and leave our practice area. At Dainen-ji, we sit on zafu, which are round cushions filled with kapok and use a mat called a zabuton. When we finish a round, we bow forward, keeping our hands in the Dharmadhatu mudra, straighten, pause, and then move into a kneeling posture on the zabuton. Keeping the neck and back straight, we lift the zafu into a standing position by its strap, and then place one hand over the strap, the other on top at right angles, and push down, turning the zafu a quarter turn with each push, the last push brining us back to the strap. This is done to aerate the kapok (a natural fiber) and restore the shape of the zafu. But it also acknowledges some other points:
Our practice of the forms in mindfully taking care of our sitting area acknowledges and addresses all of these points and readying one's seat for the next sitting is an act of compassion towards oneself. If you do not yet have a zafu or a zabuton, you can adapt the forms to whatever tools you use, by looking into what they need in order to be cared for properly. Once you have taken care of your zafu, lift and place it on the floor next to the zabuton, allowing enough space to move your body off of the zabuton so that you are kneeling next to it, holding the zafu by the strap with the zafu held parallel to your "outer" thigh. Brush the zabuton lightly, removing any "bits" that might have fallen off of you, lint etc., and smoothing wrinkling of the fabric. You can't do this properly unless you are paying attention to what you are doing. And if you are paying attention, you will come face to face with that eternal question that comes up in Zen practice: "How much is enough?" We bring all sorts of habitual patterns to our practice. So, for example, someone who has a tendency towards obsessiveness may find themselves doing micro-surgery to remove all of the bits of lint. That is not mindfulness; it is the acting out of a habit. Or, if the tendency is to be continually absent oneself from what is going on in this moment by becoming lost in thought about what may happen during the rest of the day, we may find ourselves banging and slapping the zabuton. In either case, we are not really paying attention to what we are doing, not looking into what is needed in this moment. So take the time to look into how you can take care of the practice materials you use. How you do this is an expression of how you understand your practice. After taking care of the zafu, place it either flat or standing against a wall, centred on the zabuton, ready for your next sitting. If you use a clock, kaishaku, a gong, these should be placed in alignment with each other, rather than left haphazardly. If you are using a Butsudan, then walk to it, do a standing bow before it, straighten and lower yourself into seiza. Blow out the candles by cupping your right hand around the backs of the candleholders. This is done to prevent hot wax from being blown onto the Butsudan. Then place your hands in gassho, stand, and do a final standing bow. During retreats at Dainen-ji, retreatants will lay out a fresh stick of incense before leaving the room in readiness for their next sitting, so this is something you could also do at home.
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