Leaving the Lotus Position
Susan Moon on the necessity of alternative meditation postures
I SIT IN a chair. Yes, of course, but I mean I sit zazen in a chair. This is a recent development, arising no doubt from a karmic web of causes and conditions, but the primary one is osteoarthritis in my knees.
Everybody knows that a Zen student truly dedicated to the Way sits cross-legged on the floor. Buddha was sitting cross-legged when he was enlightened under the pipal tree 2,600 years ago, and there are millions of Buddha statues to prove it— sitting cross-legged on altars and bookshelves all over the world. Several of them are in my house.
Comments
Chair sitting
I have to sit in a chair as my left leg was severly injured, and I can't sit on the floor.
Don't worry about the chair. Get on with the meditation. That's where the practice is.
Glad you got used to it. Happy chair sitting!
Dina
Dina
sitting
Sitting cross-legged on the floor was the normal/natural way of sitting for all occasions for centuries in the country of Buddha's birth and later in the countries through which it first spread. Westerners do not normally sit on the floor. It is not therefore natural to us - this is a culturally-embedded phenomenon that has come to be viewed as required by Western practitioners. Therefore, even if you have no injury, I see no reason for demanding it of oneself.
Middle way
Did not the Budha himself said that we should abstain from suffering because it is unprofitable? That we should follow the path of moderation away from the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification...
Feeling pain in the knees if you meditate in lotus, is self-mortification...
Good luck, BTW, I meditate in a chair too!
B
Eastern versus western
Sitting on the floor, and squatting, are eastern postures that people in eastern cultures use all day every day (or did - perhaps that is changing). So lotus for an easterner is a ritual form of everyday sitting. For a westerner, it is not, because westerners sit in chairs or on benches or stools from a very early age. The two postures develop different strengths, tendon lengths, flexibilities, senses of balance, etc. A westerner stting in lotus or half-lotus is making a much different effort than an easterner. Maybe there is an advantage in the lotus, or maybe it is just the ritual posture because floor sitting was universal in the cultures where Buddhist meditation developed. And this is a millenia-old difference - even though chairs were very rare in most western households until as late as the 18th century, floor sitting was also rare - benches or stools, not floor cushions, were used.
There are things to be said for continuity and symbolic reminders; there are also things to be said for not being attached to meaningless ritual. Which might be which?