How we experience and enact our lives is always by means of our body, speech and mind. Realizing this is a tool for grounding zazen practice. They are where we turn awareness to. When we first sit down, we attend to how we arrange the body. In a grounded posture on a zafu, the knees are touching the floor and are lower than the navel. The hips are tipping forward. These elements of posture are present , too, while sitting on a seiza bench or in a chair. The hips are slightly elevated in these arrangements, which then supports an upright spine. Attention on the body, on the breath is then more easily followed without strain.We also attend to any inner speech, the various voices that crop up internally as thoughts, memories, fantasies, etc. We don’t follow these voices….of criticism, blame, anxiety etc. Rather we just notice them and turn back to the body experience.
When body and speech are quieted, we get a good look at the way the contents of mind flow along. Sometimes popping up and vivid, enticing, so that we get lost in them, in the images, in the emotions, the moods, until we recollect that we are sitting zazen. We then just return to the simple practice of being a body, sitting and breathing.