Radically intimate attention is a phrase that Kisei used during her lovely dharma talk last week, to describe the heart of zazen. When exploring the intimacy of silence, the silent center of every momentary experience, right at the heart of the silence in zazen we embody radically intimate attention. Do you recognize this in your own experience? It’s something that is natural to us all that we may not notice, but zazen reminds us.
Even though zazen embraces everything that floats through what we are aware of during the physical stillness of this meditation, it’s not until you pause thinking that, instantaneously, you notice silence. I also notice this even when moving the body, as in walking. Silence lies at the heart.
During my early morning walk through the misty field, I played with how this is in fact observable. Alternating, first on sound – the crunch of grass and gravel underfoot, and birdsong, lively and resonant, and then withdrawing attention and placing it just in the very flowing center of awareness, silence is. Intimate. Inmost. Just simply an unrestricted field of silence in motion.
Zazen teaches us straightforward intimacy, reaching into every breath and functioning in all activity.
Mushin