One Time, One Meeting

Early one morning not long ago, I found myself driving down NY Rte. 21 with no other car in sight. Lifting my hands from the steering wheel, I allowed my Camry to steer itself. Within seconds, it crept toward the center line, like a hungry cat stalking a chickadee. I repeated this experiment twice, and each time it yielded the same result. After 34,000 miles, I concluded, it may be time for an alignment.

As with our motor vehicles, so with our bodies and minds. We, too, can benefit from frequent—if not daily—realignment. Many activities and practices can serve this purpose, including Hatha yoga, the martial arts, Tai Chi, Qigong, dance, equestrian training, walking, singing in a choir, and, not least, Buddhist meditation. All promote physical, emotional, and mental alignment. And, insofar as they become daily practices, they can also foster the quality of enhanced alignment in active, everyday lives.

Within the wide spectrum of Buddhist meditative traditions, Zen is unique in placing zazen, or seated meditation, at the center of the practice. Over time, zazen fosters stability of mind, clear seeing, and deep insight into the nature of reality. No less important, it can also engender alignment with natural forces and external conditions; greater concordance between our perceptions and things as they are; and consistency between our thoughts, words, and deeds and our deepest moral values.

There are several ways of aligning the body while practicing sitting meditation, the traditional, cross-legged posture being the most familiar. For many Westerners, the most comfortable and salutary way is to sit toward the front of an armless chair, feet flat on the floor, hands resting in the lap. Contrary to common belief, it is not advisable to emulate a flagpole. Rather, the spine can be allowed to assume its native, upright curvature. Placing a wedge-shaped cushion under the buttocks can further support this aligned but natural posture.

Yamada Mumon Roshi (1900-1988) has likened the posture of zazen to a five-story pagoda. A Western equivalent might be the corbeled structures widely employed in Ireland since medieval times. In a corbeled building, the constituent stones, cut and fitted for the purpose, rest one on top of the other. Gravity supports this aligned structure; mortar is not required. The Gallarus Oratory on the Dingle Peninsula, built sometime between the eighth and twelfth centuries, is a celebrated example of this kind of structure. Resembling an upturned boat, this virtually mortarless chapel has survived centuries of harsh weather and multiple invasions, largely by virtue of its natural alignment.

Physical alignment, once firmly established, creates a foundation for its attitudinal counterpart, namely alignment of the mind with existing conditions. Beyond the force of gravity, those conditions might include the temperature of the room, the kind and degree of ambient light, the time of day or night. “When hot, be hot; when cold, be cold,” an old Zen saying, epitomizes this aspect of the practice. It also identifies an abiding challenge. Resistance to adverse conditions is as natural as breathing. When practicing zazen, however, our resistance itself becomes an object of contemplation. When we are cold, we know we are cold, and we know we don’t like it. Counterintuitively, this dual acknowledgment brings us gradually into alignment with whatever may arise, be it heat or cold or a sharp pain in a knee or shoulder.

This practice of attitudinal alignment can continue even after we leave our chairs or cushions and reenter everyday life. There we are more than likely to encounter frustrating conditions and difficult situations, ranging from a jar we can’t open to a difficult conversation we might rather have avoided. For the willing practitioner, however, such situations offer opportunities for a more subtle practice of alignment, by which I mean the alignment of our thoughts, words, and actions with our most cherished values. Often, these lie far apart. We profess to honor one way of being, but we habitually exemplify another. But, just as the qualities of physical and mental alignment can be cultivated during zazen, so the alignment of our values with our words and deeds can become a goal in our daily lives. And over time, with diligence and sincere intention, the two can be reconciled and brought into accord.

In the Japanese Zen tradition, the process of coming into alignment is known as “settling.” Its aim is a “settled mind.” Should this occur, the result can be as humbling as it is heartening. In a recent poem, I commemorate the experience:

ORATORY

As though its frame were built of corbeled stone,

This oratory made of flesh and bone

No longer needs to practice sitting still

Or hold itself erect by an act of will.

Felicitous, this finding of a place

Of lasting stability, this state of grace.

As these lines suggest, arriving at a state of alignment can feel like coming home, not only to oneself but also to a place of lasting peace. Reason enough, I would have thought, to make room for meditation in one’s daily round.

Yamada Mumon Roshi, Hakuin’s Song of Zazen (Shambhala, 2024), 182-3

Photo: The Gallarus Oratory, Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry, Ireland