Tag: Shodo Harada Roshi

Dear All,

Even when we sleep at night, the inner organs work. Because of them working, that is why we are alive. Why is that so? It seems that we are one human being. We have the senses to see hear smell and taste – all of them are in the upper part of our body. When we were born, we receive a lot of data input. More and more our inner essence weakens and we desire even more information from the outside. Our thoughts increase and the essence is blocked and finally lost. We base our life upon the information from the outside. If we do not make efforts to replenish our essence, we become even more empty inside. This is our urgent need.

Our head and and arms show the part of our being which is facing towards the world outside. Then we have the belly, and we can perceive it as the head of our lower part of the body, with our legs and feet. The lower part is about our true essence and life force. It is important that we see both of these aspects.

Our organs working even while we are sleeping is due to the lower part of our body which produces the hormone of life energy. When we are born we are in inner harmony. Yet we use the upper part of our body more, receive information and start to think more. The more our essence becomes weak, the more we feel unsettled. This is the important point of our zazen: to place our focus in our tanden.

This is what the Buddha took as central, as well as the ancients before him, thus the teaching of the tanden breathing is over 4000 years old. This has been supporting our life energy all along. Yoga, Chikung, TaiChi – many different path support this inner balance. We bring the life energy back inside and raise our energy level. This is important. Keeping your awareness on your tanden, feeling the pressure there. Inhaling exhaling with the force of the tanden. Depending on our efforts, we stay with our awareness in our tanden, when standing, walking, lifting things, working and sitting. We move our body not from our head and ideas, but from our lower abdomen.

If you have some time, to sit zazen is fine. With each exhalation breathe down into your tanden. Exhale to the last point and the essence becomes stronger. Which again strengthens your tanden in return and reduces the habit to think about everything with your head.

Hakuun Shutan Zenji talks about it, how he would stay centered in his tanden, teaching is many students and doing his work from there. He would pass on this wisdom to others. We can strengthen our inner essence to the degree that our feet become warm. Hakuun Shutan Zenji would say that he felt filled with vibrant energy even at high age and could continue all of his activities.

All we need to do is to gather our energy in the tanden. If we try to do his from our head though, then we get tense in the diaphragm and cannot exhale further, not reaching the tanden. We need to make actual efforts, making our exhalation slowly longer, not getting stopped anywhere. And finally we have raise the energy level of our tanden.
Once the life energy gathers in the tanden, our blood circulation becomes more vibrant as well, the veins moving the blood back to the heart, our energy level rises even more. We can absorb more oxygen to vitalize ourselves.

There is no need for extraneous thoughts, but rather exhale one breath after the next. It is my great wish that you may continue with this inner practice, raising you level of energy so that you can stay settled and immovable within no matter what information and news may reach you from the outside.

Dear All,

For us to be healthy, we need to use our body in the correct way. This is something everyone knows. It is our mind which uses this healthy body. When we feel unsettled, we get red in our face. When we feel scared, our face becomes white. The condition of our mind has a huge influence on our body. We use our awareness a lot for the outside, but what is important for us is this condition of our mind. Yet this mind has no form and receives much influence from the outside. Any change in the outside and our mind will react. According to the reaction we can become quiet or upset.

Trying to align this mind of no form is not easy. When our heart is beating fast, then we cannot calm it down by will. There is an easy way of going about it by calming our breathing. Yet it needs to be the correct breathing which can bring enough oxygen to all the 6 trillion cells we have in our body. Exhaling long and inhaling naturally. For this we need to use our skeletal muscle which are moving according to the command of the brain. The heart pumping the blood through our body which is enriched with oxygen in the lungs. When we are bed ridden, skeletal muscles are used a lot less, that is where we are not using the breathing in the best way. Thus it is good to move the body so that a strong blood flow can come about. A long exhalation will also invigorate the skeletal muscles and thus the capillaries are stimulated.

Different emotions and uncertainty as well as little physical motion weaken the blood flow. When we exhale long, we again invigorate the blood flow. The lungs do not move by themselves, but by the motion of the diaphragm. Our inhalation and exhalation move through the same one breathing pipe. If our exhalation is not deep enough, then the inner pressure of the lungs does not become less. Thus we cannot take in enough oxygen while being surrounded by it. That is our problem.

If we can exhale long, then we lower the pressure in our lungs and naturally the lungs when expanding will want to take oxygen in. Thus we do need to use our awareness to again lengthen our breathing which has become shallow and short because of the outer tensions which we absorb. This is the important breathing of zazen. If we do not take this as important, while we do have the ability, we cannot contain our emotional and psychological reactions. This is the place where we have to use our awareness well. Too much noise and weak concentration is why we need to make efforts.

Please do not stop at reading this only, but actually bring this breathing practice into your daily life. Please continue and become a master of your breathing

-Shodo Harada Roshi

Dear All,

Are you taking your breathing as most important?

When we were born, we would express naturally, smiling, laughing, crying. We were not involved in the outside world yet. At that time we were doing Tanden (abdominal ) breathing at that time. The abdominal pressure working well. This was our start, then our youth, adulthood and old age come along. When we are young, we can lively our daily life and can be active. Our tanden breathing is used when working, moving and using a loud voice. We do not need to learn this tanden breathing, we are able to use it naturally.

Yet we receive many energies from the outside and from our emotions, we get angry, we get greedy, we carry grudges, become jealous, sad, worried, unsettled and become captive of our emotions. Thus we lose our ability to breath with our tanden and become emotional, our breathing being shallow and a balanced breath turns into a confused breath. We lose our wide and expansive breathing. The outcome being unsettled in our mind.

Actually we do not need to learn something this complicated as tanden breathing. When we were young, we already used this kind of breathing, Once we start to protect our position and ideas, clashing with others, we confuse our original breathing and cannot use it anymore.

I am not telling you something special, but only pointing out, that we need to take this original breathing as most important. Yet during many years in our daily life we got stuck to outer ideas and made it more difficult for ourselves.

The idea of an I confuses our breathing. Let go of the idea of a self, work for others, be completely what you are doing and right there the original tanden breathing appears again. A shallow breathing without any strength makes us become heavy and dark in our mind. Living in this world with a huge, warm, loving mind and act from there, this refreshes also our breathing.

Please look at this carefully, and you can see how we should be now, how we should react – this becomes obvious. There is no need to practice a form of breathing. Rather do not get stopped by the emotions and ideas arising, by the idea of our position and self. That is what is important now.

-Shodo Harada Roshi