The Difficulty of Zazen

Zazen is a difficult practice. For a beginner, it is frustrating to be frequently distracted by thinking. If the beginner has a teacher, the teacher will tell him or her that this distraction is normal and not to criticize himself because it is occurring. Even a long-term zazen practitioner is frequently taken off his focus on breathing by fantasizing, planning, reminiscing, and so on.

Why does this distraction occur? A possible answer is that zazen is like presiding at your own funeral. To drop the thought process and return to breathing is to experience a little death as the self fades away. Although I can’t find the reference, I believe it was Chogyam Trungpa who said that the reason thinking keeps returning during meditation is to convince the meditator of his own existence. There is possibly a slight fear of obliteration that gradually emerges during an extended focus on breathing. Thinking comes in to say, “Don’t worry, you are still here!”

Paradoxically, we fear the very point of zazen, which is to drop the self or ego. This fear is illusory. There is a Zen story about a zazen practitioner who happened to fall off a cliff. As he started to fall, he grabbed on to a root extending from the wall of the cliff. He held on desperately to the root until his strength gave out, his hand loosened, and he fell three inches to the ground.

The fear of self-obliteration is a psychic myth. The reality is expressed in the Bahiya Sutta, where the Buddha says that when the “you” disappears from consciousness, “This, just this, is the end of stress.” Daily life is expansive and free without self-consciousness.  

So yes, zazen is difficult, but the rewards of persisting in it are immeasurable.