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Mind and Body
The physiological effects of 'zazen' are fundamental and far-reaching. The posture creates perfect muscle tone with neither too much tension nor slackness, balances the nervous system, and creates harmony between ourselves and the universe.
What is life? Most of the time, we make a distinction between the life of our individual person, our body, and all other life outside. But our life is no just in our body, it is a perpetual exchange with the life of the universe.
Understanding this interdependence comes with the perception of 'ku' nor nothingness, vacuity, and with the actual living of ku, which is the highest truth and also universal love. The manifestation of ku is infinite, limitless energy, which is accessible to use whenew are in harmony with universal life; we are invested by it unconsciously, naturally, without any resistance.
Regulation of the Nervous System through Zazen
We each develop our own idiosyncratic muscular habits, in motion, action, contraction, or relaxation; but what is the normal condition of a muscle? Neither contraction nor slackness; it is balance between the two, which in turn conditions the balance of the nervous system and brain.
We are governed by two main nervous systems: the cerebrospinal or central system, which is associated with the cortex and cerebration; and the neurovegetative system, connceted with the viscera and inner centers of the brain. The second is also called the autonomic or voluntary nervous system because we cannot act upon it consciously, and it controls and activates our biological functions, those that regulate affectivity, temperature, metabolism, endocrine gland secretion, digestion, sleep.
Zazen regularizes the autonomic system, the equilibrium of which determines the health of body and mind. Its parts act together to regulate the working of our organs independently of the outside world, and to coordinate and harmonize their functions. Its two divisions, sympathetic and parasympathetic, condition the equilibrium of our body; it is the balance and regulation of these that govern health.
Most of use are fascinated by diets and medicines and treatments and cures-all external; but once can learn to balance one's body oneself. In zazen, the antagonism between sympathetic and parasympathetic is balanced, so that blood circulation, breathing, digestion, sexual energy, and sleep return to normal. When the balance is upset, sickness and disease occur, and medical treatment has only a partial and temporary effect upon them as long as the balance is not restored.
Even if you read ten million books and experiment with every possible religion, you canont give conscious orders to the autonomic system. it acts independently of our consciousness, although it is affected by what happens in the cerebrospinal (central) system. But through zazen we can act upon it unconsciously. Then, the muscles return to their normal condition, the outer brain grows quiet, and the internal structure can exert a balanced control over the neurovegetative functions. In the same way, the hormone secretion, which intereacts with the neurovegetative system, is also regulated during zazen.
We have grown away from the natural self-regulation of the body, its automatic wisdom, and we subject these regulating centers to all kinds of violence that disrupt their natural rhythm. That is the chief cause of all the diseases we see today, the neuroses and cancers, etc. by calming the cortex, zazen enables that rhythm to be restored.
Equilibrium can be achieved through zazen first, and then recreated afterward in the four basic postures of ordinary life-standing, walking, sitting, and lying down. (With chair, the occident may be said to have invented a fifth, half-seated posture.)
The same principles apply to all four postures. Dogen said that when they were correct, body and mind were in their normal condition.
 Koichi Sonuba · Wed Jul 30, 2008 @ 02:02am · 0 Comments |
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