69. Simple advice for maintaining balance

There is an old Zen saying:
“Those who wish to strengthen their sight keep their eyes closed. Those who wish
to strengthen their hearing avoid sounds. Those who wish to sustain the chi in
their mind maintain their silence.”

The Buddha was quoted as saying “Most important is not overusing the five
windows of the senses,” those five are seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and
smelling.

Actually, in Sanskrit, the word “skanda” which literally translates as “doors of
perception” was used presumably by Buddha instead of “windows.”
Examining the purpose of this teaching, we are being advised of the importance of
not giving away our energy to the myriad things that present themselves to us in
our day to day life. Don’t allow your energy to consistently leak out. When this
happens we lose our vital center.

Self cultivation as the Soto sect would define it, includes being ever mindful to
sustaining our chi, this still body, still breath, still mind, not moving center. This
teaching phrase shouldn’t be interpreted as no bodily movement. Rather it points
to maintaining a personal fulcrum in the midst of any and all activity.

Holding tension in the eyes, eyebrows, forehead, and scalp is very common.
Doing so makes grounding our energy in the hara more difficult. Our focus travels
upward into our head. It is important to maintain what Taoists term “intermingling.”
That is when the emotions brought about by overthinking things that in turn
produce “fire” energy is sent downwards to meet the ”water” energy of the
diaphragmatic center. A balance is then achieved that establishes the fulcrum as I
described above.

Zen practice should never be thought of or limited to meditation on the cushion.
The complexities of daily life is where our growth takes place in a transformative
way. The irony that oftentimes takes us years to see clearly is that we are already
free. The freedom we seek is simply covered over by layers of self referential
grasping and rejecting. We lose our center because we allow ourselves to be
pushed, prodded and manipulated by daily circumstances.

Forced actions are contrived and without substance. Go with the natural flow of
your day and importantly, don’t pedestal anything as being particularly special. A
metaphor I have previously used is that of a well tuned automobile engine idling
smoothly and quietly. Remain poised even in the midst of tumult as if there was
nothing happening out of the ordinary. Observe that all phenomena are
impermanent and illusory and you are well on your way.