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T H E  S O M A E S T H E T I C S  O F 
H E A V I N E S S  A N D  H A R A  I N 
Z E N  B U D D H I S T  M E D I T A T I O N
G e o f f r e y  A s h t o n
The Breath of Buddhist Meditations
The earliest meditative practice of Buddhism may well have been 
ānāpānasati (“mindfulness of breathing”), the value of which consisted 
in its developing serene concentration (samatha or samādhi) and in-
sight into the true nature of reality (vipassanā).1 Within many tradi-
tional Buddhist contexts, this came to involve a close coordination of 
ānāpānasati and vipassanā.2 Here the practitioner typically begins with 
1  Ānāpānasati means “mindfulness” or “awareness” (sati) of “breathing” (ānāpāna). The 
Ānāpānasati Sutta (The Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing) is the 118th discourse in the Ma-
jjhima Nikāya of the Pāli Canon (also known as the Tipiṭaka). It attributes ānāpānasati to the 
Buddha and refers to it as the core liberating practice of early Buddhists. Section 2 of the sutta 
describes how the Buddha observes the breath while sitting beneath a tree: “Breathing in long, 
he discerns, ‘I am breathing in long’; or breathing out long, he discerns, ‘I am breathing out 
long.’ Or breathing in short, he discerns, ‘I am breathing in short’; or breathing out short, he 
discerns, ‘I am breathing out short.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe in sensitive to the entire 
body.’ He trains himself, ‘I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body’.” The Middle Length 
Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Pub-
lications, 1995), 118.
Samatha or samādhi is typically rendered as “serenity,” “concentration,” or “absorption” (as we 
will see later). Vipassanā (literally, “special” [vi-] “seeing” [passanā]) means “insight.”
2  Ānāpānasati was believed to be especially conducive to yielding insight into the true nature 
of things, and thus became closely associated with another form of meditation frequently re-
ferred to by traditional Buddhists: vipassanā. This is evident in the Satipatthāna Sutta (the 10th 
discourse of the Majjhima Nikāya), the Abhidhamma Piṭaka (the second “basket” or piṭaka of 
the Pāli Canon), and the Visuddhimagga (the 5th century text of Buddhaghosa that stands as 
the most influential treatise on traditional Buddhist meditation outside of the Tipiṭaka). In 
recent centuries, several “modern” Theravāda Buddhists (especially in Burma, Thailand, and 
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ānāpānasati. With eyes closed, he or she passively observes the breath at 
the tip of the nostrils and then expands their awareness to sensations in 
other areas involved in nasal respiration.3 After concentrating the mind 
through this exercise, the practitioner takes up vipassanā: they survey 
the various sensations of the body, starting from the crown of the head 
and working their way down to the toes, and then moving back up in 
the reverse direction.4 While these sensations can be externally oriented 
(e.g. the sense of the skin touching one’s shirt), they can also be internal 
(the sensation of one’s heartbeat, the feeling of muscle fastened to liga-
ments and bones, the sense of various mental and emotional phenom-
ena). But whatever sensation it is that one encounters, the vipassanā 
meditator treats sensations as impermanent and lets them go once they 
arise. This is meant to facilitate a fluid, continuous movement across 
the field of sensations: even if one encounters an uncomfortable feel-
ing, their attention does not linger on the sensation.5 The concern to 
Sri lanka) re-interpreted core Buddhists texts (in particular, the Satipatthāna Sutta, the Abhid-
hamma Piṭaka, and the Visuddhimagga) with an eye to enhancing the significance of vipassanā 
(“insight”) over samatha or samādhi (serenity, concentration). While such developments are in-
deed creative revisions of early Buddhist meditative practice, they nonetheless take place within 
the Theravāda frame. for this and related reasons, I refer to these modern adaptations as still 
within the fold of “traditional Buddhism.” for more on this, see robert H. Sharf, “Buddhist 
Modernism and the rhetoric of Meditative Experience,” Numen 42, no. 3 (1995): 228–283, 
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3270219.
3  In contrast with breath retention and other practices of yogic prānāyāma (which regulate 
breathing), in ānāpānasati one simply becomes aware of how breathing is happening in itself. 
Typically, one feels sensations of coolness on the ingoing breath and warmth on the outgoing 
breath. After some time with this, one then directs awareness to sensations in adjacent areas 
involved in respiration: inside of the nostrils, at the top of the upper lip, and the whole triangu-
lar area from the top of the nose to the top of the upper lip. This is prescribed by Buddhadāsa 
Bhikkhu and S. N. Goenka, among others. for more details on this, see Buddhadāsa, Getting 
Started in Mindfulness with Breathing: Accessible, Beginning Steps for Ordinary People, trans. 
Santikaro (Bangkok: The Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives and liberation Park, 2015); also 
consider William Hart, The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S. N. Goenka (San 
francisco: Harper One, 2009).
4  This body scan might move in the following order: crown of the head, skin around the 
skull, face, ears, neck, right shoulder to right fingers, same with the left, front torso, back of the 
torso, right hip, thigh, knee, calf, ankle, foot, toes, same with left. I again refer the reader to 
Buddhadāsa, Getting Started in Mindfulness; and Hart, The Art of Living, for sample instructions 
concerning this method.
5  If a certain location has been overlooked, is experienced as cloudy, quiet, or numb, or 
displays a gross, impenetrable thickness, then the practitioner may go back and attend to such 
areas. But it is important that one’s attention does not become fixated such that the given 
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avoid fixation holds throughout the exercise. Aside from gently shift-
ing one’s attention from the breath to the next adjoining part of the 
body, the practitioner does not intervene in, critique, or react to the 
character of their breathing, the quality of a given sensation, or the con-
tent of thoughts and emotions – one does not even try to make sense, 
as it were, of these sensations. Importantly, though, it is the breath 
that remains the grounding phenomenon of vipassanā: the traditional 
Buddhist meditator begins with and regularly returns to observing the 
breath (especially when the mind wanders, becomes distracted, or gets 
engrossed by a painful sensation).6
As the practitioner develops facility with these exercises, the breath 
softens, the senses sharpen, the body scan becomes more fluid (one 
eventually surveys the body in a single breath cycle), and one experienc-
es samādhi – an experience of concentration or absorption, including 
even the nondual awareness of the body and mind in a singular, unified 
body-mind sensation.7 But of course, this is a distinctly Buddhist prac-
tice, and so its ultimate goal is to alleviate suffering. for the Buddha, 
we suffer not just because accidents happen (one stubs their toe or gets 
a cold); suffering is more subtle and ubiquitous than physical pain. 
sensation overpowers their attention and generates new saṃskāras (especially the mental traces 
of anger and aversion). for this reason, the meditator should first strengthen their awareness, 
equanimity, and concentration before attending to “stuck” areas. Prematurely doing so can not 
only disrupt the flow of the body scan, it can have damaging consequences. Goenka gives at-
tention to this at Hart, The Art of Living, 69–80.
6  Some attention is given to this in a study of the meditative practice recommended by 
Buddhadāsa in Geoffrey Ashton, “losing my Mind and loving Mosquitoes, Crickets, and 
other Jungle Inhabitants: reflections on field research and its frustrations at a Buddhist Med-
itation retreat in Southern Thailand,” in At Home and In the Field: Ethnographic Encounters 
in Asia and the Pacific Islands, eds. Suzanne S. finney, Mary Mostafanezhad, Guido Carlo 
Pigliasco, and forrest Wade Young (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), 278–284. 
Goenka gives even more explicit attention to this in his teachings. for this, see S. N. Goenka, 
Discourse Summaries (Onalaska, WA: Pariyatti Press, 2000).
7  The association of mind-body nondual realization with some sort of liberating awareness 
is given little to no attention in early Buddhist texts. However, more modern applications of 
ānāpānasati and vipassanā have been known to elicit such experiences. Much of this is based on 
my own first-hand experiences and personal conversations with practitioners. for a document-
ed account of this, consider the discussion concerning how to practice Buddhist meditation 
toward the realization of mind-body nondualism available at: Michael W. Taft, “How to Do 
Nondual Vipashyana,” Deconstructing Yourself, June 4, 2021, https://deconstructingyourself.
com/how-to-do-nondual-vipashyana.html. 
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We suffer because our lived reality does not conform to how we think 
it ought to be – either because things change in ways that we would 
not prefer (what the Buddha calls “the suffering of change”) or because 
reality does not conform to the habituated conditions that we impose 
on it (“the suffering of conditioned states”).8 Buddhist meditation at-
tempts to remedy this by training the mind to let go of the ought and 
allow things to show themselves just as they are, as given to the senses 
and prior to language. from this, the Buddha articulated the following 
negative insights, that is, insights into the way things are not. Things 
are irreducible to distinction between mind and matter, purified of the 
need to be seen in any particular or predetermined way, and empty of 
mineness or self (everywhere the Buddha looks for the “I” or self, he 
finds only its absence). Such realizations were seen to have tremendous 
practical value: that which the Buddha calls duḥkha (suffering, misery, 
dis-ease) loses its power to capture one’s attention.9
As Buddhism spread throughout Asia, its theoretical and practical 
philosophies adapted to the presuppositions of new cultural arenas. 
The emergence of Japanese Zen Buddhism exemplifies this. In keep-
ing with its Buddhist roots, Zen is fundamentally concerned with al-
leviating suffering and outlines a way of life where meditative practice 
occupies a central place. But there are nuanced differences between the 
meditations devised in traditional Buddhism and the form of “seated 
meditation” (za-zen) widely taken up by Zen Buddhists. Zen and zazen 
thrived in Japan largely because they were able to recast Buddhist con-
cerns in a way that successfully accommodated East Asian ways of be-
8  The Buddha refers to these as vipariṇāma-dukkha and saṃkhāra-dukkha, respectively; see 
Walpola rahula, What the Buddha Taught (london: The Gordon fraser Gallery, ltd, 1978), 19.
9  As the 5th century Theravāda Buddhist monk, Buddhaghosa wrote: “Mere suffering exists, 
but no sufferer is found; The deeds are, but no doer is found” (Visuddhimagga, 513; quoted at 
rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 26). This statement does not deny that suffering takes place. 
It simply means that phenomena as they appear before the senses, including phenomena that 
induce the experience of suffering, do not originally show an “I” who stands as the owner of 
that suffering. The skilled practitioner still experiences uncomfortable sensations as uncomfort-
able. But because he has disciplined his attention to phenomena without fixating his attention 
on those arisings, and because he has recognized that the sufferer is not ultimately real but 
instead is a derivative, conventional reality, then suffering-inducing phenomena are not bind-
ing in any ultimate sense. rahula offers further analysis along these lines at What the Buddha 
Taught, 73.
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ing in the world (those of Confucianism and Daoism, in particular).10 
Focusing upon developments within Japanese rinzai Zen, this paper 
examines how zazen redeploys the body, sensation, and breath in terms 
of an explicitly somaesthetic orientation.11 In short, the Zen meditator 
learns how to face suffering by developing three features of a somaes-
thetics that are generally not emphasized in traditional Buddhism: the 
postural form of the body, the capacity to perceive weight, and above 
all, the performance of breathing from the lower belly or hara.
The Weight of Suffering
In order to appreciate the differences between more traditional Bud-
dhist practices (including modern Theravāda Buddhisms) and those of 
Zen, let us situate Zen in the context of Buddhism’s core theme: suf-
fering. With the first Noble Truth, “All this is suffering” (sarvam idam 
duḥkham), the Buddha believed that he was speaking to a universal hu-
man concern. But Zen may not share the same presuppositions about 
suffering as did the Buddha.
Since this essay is enframed by the English language and its tacit 
philosophical assumptions, let us first consider some attitudes toward 
suffering that run deep in Western languages and cultures. largely 
due to the influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, in the “Western 
world” we take for granted the value of light and lightness over the dark 
and heaviness. In order to lead a life of religious, epistemic, and moral 
truth, we are often taught to step out of the darkness and “into the 
light” (e.g. the light of God), to resolve the obscurity of misunderstand-
ing and have things “come to light” (the light of reason), and to stand 
upright away from the depravity of vice (original sin) and “take the 
10  Among other things, Zen integrated Confucian notions of relational personhood and 
authoritative conduct (ren), and Daoist theories of chi (vital energy) and practices of inner 
alchemy (neidan). A sequel paper in progress explores these themes further as they pertain to 
zazen. An excellent study of this is provided by Peter Hershock, Chan Buddhism (Honolulu: 
University of Hawaii Press, 2005).
11  for the sake of brevity, this paper uses the term “Zen” to refer to rinzai Zen, with a focus 
on the Tenryu-ji (beginning 14th century) and Chosei Zen (21st century) lineages.
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high road” of virtue.12 By following such a program, we can more fully 
enjoy the lightness, levity, and love that stem from our higher (often 
construed as divine) nature.
for an illustration of this, consider Van Gogh’s painting, “Min-
ers’ Wives Carrying Sacks of Coal” (shown in figure 1). Here we find 
a group of women burdened by heavy bags of coal. Each of them is 
hunched over (some at almost 90 degrees) as they walk along a dark, 
barren, snow-covered path. They are depicted as passive, powerless vic-
tims forced to undergo overbearing work conditions. Note how the 
woman in the left part of the painting looks back, seeming to express 
a world-weariness and general sense of dis-ease. The painting conveys 
the heavy weight of suffering: to suffer is to bear a burden (physical, 
mental, spiritual) and continue on without much choice.
The etymology of “suffering” corroborates this interpretation of van 
Gogh’s painting.13 The word is comprised of two latin parts: the pre-
fix “sub” (meaning “under,” “below,” “beneath” [e.g. submarine] and 
“secondary” [e.g. “subordinate”]), and “ferre” (meaning “to carry,” “to 
endure,” “to bear” [e.g. a “ferry” or transport ship]). Put simply, to “suf-
fer” means to be made to under-go, endure, or feel oneself beneath a 
burden that one must bear or carry.
Understanding suffering in these terms gives clues to the meaning of 
duḥkha – the Sanskrit term commonly translated into English as “suf-
fering.” Duḥkha (dus + kha) often gets rendered as “having a bad axle,” 
where dus connotes “bad,” “difficult,” and kha means “axle hole.”14 This 
12  Such phrases are well-known to natural English speakers, and their latent presuppositions 
typically run deeper in those speakers enculturated in arenas that have been influenced by Judeo-
Christian values. To give one example, consider a passage from the Gospel of John (1.4-1.9): 
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the 
darkness did not comprehend it. There came a man sent from God, whose name was John […] 
He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. There was the true light which, 
coming into the world, enlightens every man.” John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (la 
Habra: CA: The lockman foundation, 2006), 1539–1540.
13  I am grateful to my colleague, Tom Cavanaugh, for bringing Van Gogh’s painting to my 
attention, as well as for his interpretation of this painting in terms of the etymology of “suf-
fering.” I also thank Gordon Greene for his comments on the possible meanings of “Miners’ 
Wives Carrying Sacks of Coal.”
14  “Dus” changes to “duḥ” as a regular feature of sound combinations (sandhi) in Sanskrit: the 
“s” changes to a “ḥ” (visarga) when the following syllable begins with a “kh.” Meanwhile, the 
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presumably15refers to the discomfort of riding in a cart with a bad axle 
caused by one of its wheels having an off-center hole.16 But some scholars 
interpret duḥkha differently, including the renowned Sanskritist, Mon-
Pāli spelling is dukkha, where the “dus” morphs into “duk” according to the sandhi rules of the 
Pāli language. Pāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan language that was used by the Buddha and which 
would become the language of the Buddhist Pāli Canon (Tipiṭaka) and the liturgical language 
of Theravāda Buddhism.
15  Image available at “Vincent van Gogh: Paintings, Drawings, Quotes, and Biography,” ac-
cessed November 30th, 2023, https://www.vincentvangogh.org/miners-wives-carrying-sacks-
of-coal.jsp#.
16  Winthrop Sargeant (who may have been a better song writer and musician than a scholar 
of Sanskritic philosophies), writes: “The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to 
India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn 
vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit mean-
ing ‘sky,’ ‘ether,’ or ‘space,’ was originally the word for ‘hole,’ particularly an axle hole of one of 
the Aryan’s vehicles. Thus, sukha […] meant, originally, ‘having a good axle hole,’ while duḥkha 
meant ‘having a poor axle hole,’ leading to discomfort.” Winthrop Sargeant, The Bhagavad Gita 
(New York: SUNY Press, 2009), 303.
figure 1: Vincent van Gogh, “Miners’ Wives Carrying Sacks of Coal,” 1882, 
Watercolor, Paper (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands).15
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ier Monier-Williams.17 He argues that duḥ-kha originally meant dus-
sthā. “Dus” is not controversial: it is the original syllable. More difficult 
to discern is that the “kha” of “duḥ-kha” derives from “√sthā,” meaning 
“to stand.” Monier-Williams calls attention to how the writing of “kha” 
(ख) appears nearly the same as for the verbal root, “√sthā” (स्था). Due 
to phonological changes in the development of Sanskrit (so goes the 
argument), the writing of “dus-sthā” (दुस ्- स्था) changed to “duḥ-kha” 
(दुः - ख)्, at which point the initial literal denotation became concealed. 
This suggests a different grounding in lived experience for the meaning 
of duḥkha: “standing badly,” “an improper manner of standing,” or “dif-
ficult to stand.” In other words, suffering has a visceral basis: bad pos-
ture. The “difficulty in standing” (duḥ-kha) that one observes with the 
women depicted in Van Gogh’s painting might thus be seen as a direct 
physical manifestation of their suf-fering (sub-ferre). Duḥkha results not 
from having ridden in an imbalanced chariot, but from standing poorly 
underneath a heavy burden.18
India’s most famous philosopher of suffering is the Buddha, and he 
seems to view duḥkha in a like-minded way. In speaking to his disciples, 
the Buddha relates The Parable of the Raft:
Oh monks, a man is on a journey. He comes to a vast stretch of water. On 
this side the shore is dangerous, but on the other side it is safe and without 
danger […] There is no bridge for crossing over […] It would be good there-
fore if I would gather grass, wood, branches and leaves to make a raft, and 
with the help of the raft cross over safely […] Having crossed over and got 
to the other side, suppose that man should think: “This raft was of great help 
to me […] It would be good if I carry this raft on my head or on my back 
wherever I go.”19
17  Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (london: Oxford University 
Press, 1899), 483.
18  Of course, the meanings of the Sanskrit term duḥkha (or the Pāli dukkha) are more nu-
anced and varied than one single interpretation can capture, including my own. I do not pre-
tend to achieve an exhaustive analysis here, and I would welcome comments about precisely 
how early Buddhists understood this term. for now, I emphasize that my intention here is just 
to open space for a philosophical reconsideration of the meanings of duḥkha. To this end, I 
hope that this etymological analysis helps to disclose previously hidden shades of meaning.
19  rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 11–12. I use rahula’s reference to this parable, given in 
The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya.
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The Buddha then asks rhetorically: “What do you think, oh monks? 
If he acted in this way, would that man be acting properly with regard 
to the raft?” He answers his own question: “No, sir […] It would be 
good if I beached this raft on the shore, or moored it and left it afloat 
[…] In the same manner, oh monks, I have taught a doctrine (dhamma) 
similar to a raft – it is for crossing over, and not for carrying.”20
The “dangerous,” near side of the shore represents a life of suffer-
ing (duḥkha), whereas the far shore connotes the experience of nirvāṇa 
(Sanskrit; Pāli: nibbāna). More than simply a description of two ways 
of being, this parable summons us to cross over to the other side of the 
water by taking a particular attitude toward duḥkha: let it go. The Bud-
dha is so intent upon this that he calls us to let go of all things, includ-
ing his own teachings – even the dhamma can become a burden that 
pulls us down into suffering. He exhorts his disciples at the end of The 
Parable of the Raft: “You, oh monks, who understand that the teaching 
is similar to a raft, should give up even good things (dhamma); how 
much more then should you give up evil things (adhamma).”21
In support of this radical call, the Buddha articulates a practical psy-
chology of craving or thirst (tṛṣṇā). Craving is a primary cause of suf-
fering because it binds our present feelings, thoughts, and actions to 
the past.22 for example, suppose that I am entrapped by anger toward 
my neighbor, who damaged my fence last month and refuses to fix it. 
Meditations such as ānāpānasati and vipassanā were designed to remedy 
this. The practitioner becomes aware of presently arising sensations, e.g. 
the inbreath at the entrance to the nostrils, the physical sensation of 
the skin in contact with one’s shirt, the mental sensation of a memory. 
Craving may take place with respect to these sensations, thus giving rise 
to thoughts such as “The feeling of this shirt on my skin is uncomfort-
able, and so I want to remove it,” or “The memory of my neighbor’s 
20  rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 12.
21  rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 12. This passage uses the Pāli spelling, dhamma, to de-
note the teachings of the Buddha. The Sanskrit term is dharma.
22  The Buddha identifies three forms of craving (Sanskrit: tṛṣṇā; Pāli: taṇhā): kāma-tṛṣṇā 
(craving for sensual pleasures), bhāva-tṛṣṇā (craving for existence), and vibhāva-tṛṣṇā (craving 
for non-existence). Paul Williams and Anthony Tribe, Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduc-
tion to the Indian Tradition (london: routledge, 2002), 43–44.
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actions makes me angry, and so I want to sue him.” However, by dis-
ciplining one’s attention, one notices how thirst takes place separate 
from and subsequent to the earlier sensation (of the shirt on one’s skin, 
of the memory of one’s neighbor, etc.).23 from this clear awareness of 
the temporal gap between the two moments, the meditator learns to 
distinguish the arising of a given sensation and the manifestation of 
craving with respect to that sensation.24 This opens up a certain psychic 
distance from thirst: firmly rooted in the presently arising feeling itself, 
the meditator discovers the ability to not react to sensations. In turn, 
the craving gets deprived of its fuel. This does not eliminate unpleas-
ant sensations from ever taking place again (I may continue to experi-
ence frustration with respect to the memory of my neighbor’s actions); 
but having disciplined the felt need to react to sensations, one steadily 
extinguishes that which feeds unhealthy modes of emotional response 
(forms of craving such as anger) and the exacerbation of suffering. Put 
differently, the meditator learns how to shed the weight of the past, and 
as a result, becomes free to experience present happenings more clearly.
Zen agrees with the Buddha’s general message. But it does not ad-
here to some values that the parable takes to be self-evident. Consider 
that the Buddha relates the journey toward “the other shore” as an in-
dividual endeavor, and that his raft (i.e. the dhamma) is meant to be 
“beached on the shore, or moored and left afloat.” He is not to use it 
for returning to the near shore and traversing back and forth. Above 
all, the raft is “not [meant] for carrying.”25 I draw attention to this for 
23  Importantly, sensation and thirst arise sequentially, not in synchronicity – otherwise, the 
Buddha’s analysis of the arising of suffering in terms of a sequence of causes and effects would 
have no value. rahula explains: “It is this ‘thirst’, desire, greed, craving, manifesting itself in 
various ways, that gives rise to all forms of suffering and the continuity of beings. But it should 
not be taken as the first cause, for there is no first cause possible as, according to Buddhism, 
everything is relative and inter-dependent. Even this ‘thirst’, taṇhā, which is considered as the 
cause or origin of dukkha, depends for its arising (samudaya) on something else, which is sensa-
tion (vedanā), and sensation arises depending on contact (phassa), and so on and so forth goes 
on the circle which is known as Conditioned Genesis (paṭiccasamuppāda).” rahula, What the 
Buddha Taught, 29. The various spokes in this conditioned wheel of suffering and their sequen-
tial, causal interrelations are related in several early Buddhist texts. for more on this, see Henry 
Clark Warren, Buddhism in Translations (New York: Atheneum, 1963), 90.
24  rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 72–74.
25  rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 12.
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two reasons. for one, it illustrates differences in theorizing the bodhisat-
tva ideal. Theravāda Buddhism generally views the bodhisattva as an 
exceptional (and thus, rare) individual who is resolved upon becoming 
a Buddha, whereas Mahāyana widens the bodhisattva path, making it 
available to all persons.26 Mahāyana Buddhism also associates this ideal 
with a spontaneously arising compassion: its bodhisattva strives to at-
tain Buddhahood for the benefit of all beings, not just themselves. The 
Parable of the Raft does not portray such a notion of the bodhisattva: 
in saying that the boat should be docked at the far shore, and thus not 
used to ferry across other seekers of nirvāṇa, the Buddha emphasizes 
that each of us must realize nirvāṇa for ourselves and through our own 
efforts, not for the sake of another or by riding on the backs of others’ 
achievements.
A second difference between traditional Buddhist and Zen attitudes 
follows upon the first, and it echoes the above connotation of duḥkha 
(suffering) as standing poorly beneath a weight. Since for the Buddha, 
one’s own enlightenment does not depend on saving others, then there 
is no need to carry or hold onto the raft. Going further, not only is it 
unnecessary for a Buddha to shoulder this burden (since he has already 
arrived to the far shore), the weight of the raft impedes the way for-
ward. It threatens to drag him down into darkness and deprive him of 
nirvāṇa, enlightenment, or that liberating sense of being filled with or 
made into light – where light signifies both shining (or illuminating) 
and being less heavy (such as when one levitates or just experiences lev-
ity in general).27
Based on this, it certainly would not “be good if I carry this raft on 
my head,” the Buddha suggests.28 But is it not possible to be under what 
one carries (sub-ferre) without exhibiting suffering? Must the weight of 
things entail standing badly (dus-sthā) and aggravating compulsive pat-
26  This individualism is in keeping with prevailing Indian views of liberation: spiritual pur-
suits were widely seen to be private, personal affairs. for more on this, see Jeffrey Samuels, 
“The Bodhisattva ideal in Theravāda Buddhist Theory and Practice: A reevaluation of the 
Bodhisattva-Śrāvaka Opposition,” Philosophy East and West 47, no. 3 (July 1997): 399– 415.
27  for more on the etymology of “light” and “enlightenment,” see Eric Partridge, Origins: A 
Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (london: routledge, 2006), 1780–1783.
28  rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 12.
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terns of action and re-action (karma)? Consider the long-time practice 
still evident in many rural, non-Western cultures, where one carries a 
heavy basket of food or other items on their head. In figures 2–4, these 
women stand beneath a weight but show no sign of suffering. Contrary 
to the depressed, caved-in bodies depicted in van Gogh’s painting, these 
women carrying baskets exhibit a certain ease, grace, and vitality. Pre-
sumably, they do not personify suffering because their motor and sense 
organs are not passive in the face of suffering. Instead of just witnessing 
the sensation of heaviness and letting it fall by the wayside, they acutely 
feel the weight of things and coordinate their bodies with a view to 
actively receiving weight, allowing it to drop directly into and through 
their bodies.
figures 2–4: Three women carry baskets on their head, and the weight drops 
through them.29
29  fig. 2: Indian woman carrying basket on her head on a beach after fish sale, Morjim, 
March 11, 2013 in Goa India (Shutterstock/alexnika). fig. 3: Indian woman in Tanjore in the 
Tamil Nadu region of southern India (Shutterstock/Steve Allen). fig. 4: Indian woman walk-
ing on the fog street in Varanasi, India with the basket on the head (Shutterstock/Anastasiia 
Gooz).
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These three women carry three baskets. The correlative to this in 
Pāli is “ti-piṭaka” (lit. “three baskets”) – a term that, as noted above, 
also refers to the authoritative teachings of the Buddha (i.e. the Pāli 
Canon). Most likely, these women never carried or studied the Tipiṭaka 
of Buddhism. Traditionally, only men were taught the “Three Baskets” 
of the Buddhist Canon, while women (perhaps more so than men) 
were tasked with carrying ordinary baskets.30 But might the experience 
of ferrying beneath the weight of ordinary baskets have taught them 
about suffering in other ways? People living in industrialized countries 
stopped carrying baskets on their heads long ago. The Industrial rev-
olution replaced this practice with more efficient transport machines 
(e.g. motorized carts) and corresponding skills (driving cars, learning 
how to fix cars), all of which enabled us to transport ourselves here and 
there while levitating over the landscape.31 But have we since forgot-
ten how to sub-ferre, to stand beneath things? And did we forget how 
to suffer just as we forgot what it’s like to dwell in the dark or to carry 
things on our heads?
Zazen and the Somaesthetics of Hara Breathing
According to Zen, suffering is a psycho-physical phenomenon that 
affects the mind through the physical body.32 By training the body to 
stand beneath the weight of things in the right way, one can ameliorate 
the problem of suffering, including mental suffering. To this end, Zen 
envisions the body as somatic (that is, as both a living and lived body) 
and has developed a regimen of somaesthetic practices that center 
around the experience of heaviness.33
30  The three “baskets” or primary sections of the Tipiṭaka include the rules of monastic life 
(Pāli: vinaya), the sermons of the Buddha (suttas), and the philosophical and psychological 
analysis and interpretation of Buddhist doctrine (abhidhamma).
31  for an interesting study on this and related topics, see Peter Adey, Levitation: The Science, 
Myth and Magic of Suspension (Edinburgh, Scotland: reaktion Books, 2017).
32  recall the above note: by “Zen,” I refer to the rinzai Zen lineage known as Chosei Zen, 
which traces itself back to Tenryu-ji (beginning 14th century).
33  Somaesthetics is broadly concerned with the following: (1) the aesthetic experience and 
usage of the body (soma) as a somatic body, that is, as living, sentient, and purposive; (2) 
a multi-disciplinary study that coordinates theoretical, empirical and practical approaches to 
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In demonstrating how the orientation of Zen is somaesthetic, con-
sider that Buddhists frequently take the most ordinary activities of 
life – how to sit, walk, eat, bathe, breathe – and transform them into 
spiritual exercises. This is evidenced in traditional Buddhist practices, 
which are largely concerned with bodily perception and the traces of 
karmic or intentional action that get lodged in the lived, i.e. somatic, 
body. But such exercises were typically viewed as mental practices.34 
Just notice the manner in which the Theravāda Buddhist meditator 
(dressed in the yellow robe) in figures 5–6 sits with a comfortable, 
though somewhat slumped over, posture. In ānāpānasati and vipassanā, 
the core sitting exercises for such monks, the presented form of the 
body is not emphasized, and the practitioner is explicitly directed to not 
regulate or perform the acts of sensing and breathing in any particular 
way. Body, sensation and breath are merely objects of passive awareness. 
By contrast, see how the Zen monk on the right (depicted in two im-
the somatic body; and (3) fostering capacities for bodily presentation, perception, and perfor-
mance. My understanding of somaesthetics primarily follows the work of richard Shusterman. 
for more on this, I recommend richard Shusterman, Thinking through the Body: Essays in 
Somaesthetics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
34  rahula discusses this: “This mindfulness of awareness with regard to our activities, taught 
by the Buddha, is to live in the present moment, to live in the present action… Here in this 
form of meditation, you haven’t got to perform any particular action in order to develop mind-
fulness, but you only have to be mindful and aware of whatever you may do… you have only 
to cultivate mindfulness and awareness always.” rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 72–73. Ar-
guably, the most important text on meditation from the Buddhist canon is the Satipaṭṭhāna 
Sutta (“The Discourse on the Establishing of Mindfulness”) which recounts “four applications 
of mindfulness [that] are the one and only way by which beings become pure.” The Middle 
Length Discourses of the Buddha, 49; quoted in Edward Conze, Buddhist Meditation (New York: 
Harper and row Publishers, 1969), 25. The Visuddhimagga, meanwhile, tells us that “without 
mindfulness, the mind may not be upheld or checked.” The Middle Length Discourses of the 
Buddha, 49; quoted in Conze, Buddhist Meditation, 28). Contemporary examples abound that 
show the significance of Buddhist mindfulness in theory and practice. Consider the methods 
prescribed by the Thai Buddhist monk, Buddhadāsa, for practitioners at Wat Suan Mokh. The 
theoretical and practical dimensions of ānāpānasati and vipassanā as recommended at Wat Sun 
Mokh are discussed in Ashton, “losing my Mind and loving Mosquitoes, Crickets, and other 
Jungle Inhabitants”. for these reasons, Buddhist meditation is often associated with “mind-
fulness meditation.” Paul Griffiths offers a slightly different perspective on mindfulness. His 
rendering of mindfulness as “a paradigm case of observational analysis” highlights this practice 
as active and engaged. Paul Griffiths, “Indian Buddhist Meditation,” in Buddhist Spirituality: 
Indian, Southeast Asian, Tibetan, Early Chinese, eds. Takeuchi Yoshinori et al. (New York: The 
Crossroad Publishing Company, 1993), 51.
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ages) sits erect and tall, yet relaxed. Similar to traditional Buddhists, his 
seated practice is designed to yield concentration (samādhi) and insight 
(vipassanā) into the nature of existence. However, zazen incorporates 
physical posture, sensation, and breath into a somaesthetic regimen.
figures 5–6: A Theravāda Buddhist meditator (left) and a Zen Buddhist meditator 
(center, right).35
Zazen posture gives central importance to the presented form of the 
body. Consider these three basic instructions for how to display one’s 
body:
1. Draw in the chin just enough so that the crown of the head is at 
the highest point of the body.
2. Maintain an erect but relaxed spine position. There should be a 
natural but not pronounced bend of the lower back. While this 
curve is not completely eliminated, one should avoid sticking 
one’s behind out and back.
35  fig. 5 authored by sasint, available at https://pixabay.com/photos/buddhist-
monk-sitting-meditation-1807526/. fig. 6 shows the Zen practitioner, Kodo Sawa-
ki (accessed on October 15, 2023, https://www.facebook.com/kodo.sawaki/photos
/a.589521497748862/5821570837877209/).
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3. find your energetic center of gravity in the hara (Japanese for 
“lower belly”). This is key: in Zen, the hara is one’s energetic and 
spiritual core. When properly engaged, it stabilizes the psycho-
physical (or somatic) body as a being-in-the-world: pressure, ten-
sion, and contact with the world get registered and absorbed in 
the lower belly.36
Having accomplished these three instructions, the head should stack 
directly onto the shoulders, the shoulders should stack onto and drape 
off of the spine, and the torso should drop into the hara.
The second pillar of zazen is bodily perception, namely, the percep-
tion of gravity working on the body. In order to establish and maintain 
right posture, one needs to constantly scan the sensations of the body, 
not unlike in vipassanā. In zazen, however, one scans for a specific sen-
sation: the pull of gravity. furthermore, the meditator actively judges 
sensations according to a discernible criterion: proper alignment of the 
body within one’s gravitational field. One seeks out unnecessary muscle 
contractions – such as those for keeping oneself upright, or just parts 
of the body that hold residual tension – and then attends to these mis-
alignments. This often begins with sensing the weight of the head: if 
the head is in the wrong relationship to gravity, then it will jut too far 
forward, and as a result, the muscles of the neck and upper back can-
not relax (since these will engage in order to keep the head from falling 
forward and pulling the torso with it). When this becomes a habit (a 
saṃskāra or somatic trace), then the shoulders will routinely hold ten-
sion and assume an unnecessarily high default position. Accordingly, 
one task of the zazen meditator is to inspect the body for areas of ten-
sion and make postural adjustments that bring the body into natural 
alignment with the Earth. When the practitioner achieves proper align-
ment, they are able to calmly perceive the pull of gravity working on 
36  for more details on how Buddhists of the Chosei Zen tradition practice zazen, see the 
prescriptive comments given by the 20th century Japanese Zen Master, Omori Sogen in Hoso-
kawa Dogen, Omori Sogen: The Art of a Zen Master (london: routledge, 2011), 36–63. Sogen 
writes from within the Tenryu-ji lineage and anticipates the formulation of Chosei Zen. The 
instructions and rationale described here continue to be practiced by monastic and lay people 
of the Chosei Zen community. for more recent elaborations on these instructions for zazen 
practice, I direct the reader to the Chosei Zen website: “Chosei Zen,” accessed October 15th, 
2023, https://choseizen.org/.
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all physical and mental phenomena of the somatic body, such that the 
weight of these manifestations drops directly into the hara.37
Performing breathing in a particular way is the third pillar of zazen. 
The inhalation gets drawn into the lower belly (hara), while the chest 
and shoulders disengage from the act of respiration. As the hara fills 
with air, one scans the body for the sense of gravity, identifies holding 
patterns, gently makes postural adjustments (tucking the chin, rolling 
the shoulders back and out, etc.), and allows the weight of the body to 
sink into the hara and pass through to the pelvic floor. Importantly, 
this does not involve actions that we would ordinarily consider to be 
“mental”; the instruction is not to first imagine the breath sinking into 
the belly, such that it then suddenly happens. rather, this is a physical 
performance: by coordinating the inhalation with subtle postural ad-
justments and the scan for sensations of weight, more space opens for 
the breath to sink deeper toward the pelvic floor.
These three instructions for developing the somatic body are not 
merely sequential, as if first one presents correct posture, then one per-
ceives the body in a gravitational field, then one inhales. They are dy-
namically interrelated in a regimen of learning how to stand (or sit) well 
beneath the weight of things. from this, one can go about life with-
out embodying suffering, even though the body-mind always already 
finds itself weighed down. But does the Zen way of experiencing gravity 
merely help one to bear, endure, or survive the challenges of life? Can 
this somaesthetic approach help to positively enrich one’s life?
Awakening the Somatic Body through Gravity and Grief
Suffering is not to be avoided in Zen. To the contrary, the inquiry 
into suffering as an embodied experience is what leads one to nirvāṇa 
or awakening. This is mostly in keeping with its Buddhist roots. But 
Zen conducts this inquiry while remaining directly beneath the weight 
37  It bears noting that our thoughts, feelings, and emotions have weight. Consider the sensa-
tions of love and grief: typically, one experiences love as light-weight, whereas grief is much 
heavier. I further explore this later in the essay.
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of things, and it does so because the experience of heaviness helps to 
awaken the somatic body.
In order to demonstrate this, consider some linguistic relationships. 
The following English words are etymologically derived from a com-
mon latin ancestor, gravis, meaning “heavy” or “weighty”: “gravity,” 
“gravy,” “grain,” “gravel,” and “grief.”38 The link between “gravity,” “gra-
vy,” “grain,” and “gravel” is not a stretch: these things are heavy, they 
settle into small cracks at the bottom of things, they are susceptible to 
gravity.39 less apparent is the link between gravity and grief. In sorting 
this out, note that “grief ” shares an even closer kinship with the word 
aggravation than it does with “gravity.” “Grief” derives from “gravis” by 
way of the latin terms gravare (“to weigh down”) and aggravare (ad + 
gravare, or “to make heavier,” “to add or increase in oppressiveness”). A 
grievance can easily turn to aggravation, especially if an already hurtful 
situation gets worse or exacerbated by additional misfortune (such as 
when one suffers an “insult to injury”). In English, we have words like 
“hot-headed” to refer to people in the grip of aggravation and anger. 
Heat rises, one’s face might even turn red, when a grievance gives way 
to anger. Grief would appear to occur a little lower in the somatic body, 
closer to the heart or mid-chest area. English phrases corroborate this: 
when one grieves or feels sad, then one might say, “I suffer from heart-
ache,” or “My heart feels heavy.” What’s more, grief appears first, and 
then seems to elevate in the body when something gets added onto the 
initial grievance.
But is this the natural movement of grief? Does grief still elevate in 
the body if nothing extra (latin “ad”) increases the initial grievance 
(“gravare”)? Derived from the “gravis” cluster of terms and meanings, 
all of which share the meaning “heavy,” “grief ” has the sense of “getting 
us down.” But how far down does that feeling drop? I suggest that grief 
38  Partridge, Origins, 1324–1327.
39  “Gravity,” of course, refers to weight or downward acceleration. “Gravy” means “a heavy 
sauce, stew,” and comes from gravis by way of some intermediate terms, including the latin 
granum, meaning “seed, grain.” “Gravel”, meanwhile, evolves through the Old french word 
gravele, meaning “sand” or “small stones.” The french grave appears to be a misspelling of latin 
granum, while the English term grave is more closely related to “carve” and “engrave” (by way 
of their shared basis in the Old English grafan, “to dig, dig up; engrave, carve, chisel”) than it is 
to “gravity.” Partridge, Origins, 1324–1327.
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initially manifests lower in the body than the heart – at least as low as 
the belly, such as when one says “My stomach is tied up in knots” or 
“I feel sick to my stomach” upon learning of a significant loss. How-
ever, we tend to forget or disregard this sensation, misplace it in the 
heart, and surround it with a fortress of aggravation. (Tension in the 
shoulders, the jaw, the muscles around the eyes, and the fists can signal 
this much.) But this dis-ease results not from the design of grief itself; 
something else gets added onto it, namely, craving, or the felt need to 
do something about the grievance.40
The emergence of aggravation from grief can be situated in the se-
quencing of traditional Buddhist meditative experience. recall that, 
in this context, the practitioner attempts to become aware of the gap 
between the initial sensation (i.e. that of a grievance) and the subse-
quent arising of craving with respect to that sensation (i.e. anger or 
aggravation). In becoming aware of the distinction between awareness 
of a grievance and thirsting to act upon that awareness, one begins to 
develop the ability to let go of craving. By disciplining the felt need to 
react to the sensation of grief, one exhausts little-by-little the mode of 
intentionality known as aggravation. for many traditional Buddhists, 
this is what it means to face the suffering of grief: to feel grief just as it 
is, without aggravation manifesting afterwards.41
40  Phenomenologists call this felt need “intentionality”: consciousness or awareness invari-
ably is about or directed toward something. The Buddha likewise recognizes this. But he does 
not take the intentional structure of consciousness to be the cause of suffering or that which 
gets added onto a grievance. We do not suffer because we sense a displeasing object – or at least, 
though one might experience ordinary suffering due to disagreeable sensations, this is not the 
cause with which the Buddha is concerned. recall that the Buddha’s practical philosophy is 
primarily oriented toward the second and third forms of suffering, both of which resist the way 
things really are: the suffering of change (vipariṇāma-duḥkha) and the suffering of conditioned 
states (saṃskāra-duḥkha). The root cause of these modes of suffering is that which arrests our 
awareness or fixates its relationship to things. This is precisely why craving is a cause of suf-
fering. We can respectively understand the three varieties of craving – kāma-tṛṣṇā (craving 
for sensual pleasures), bhāva-tṛṣṇā (craving for existence), and vibhāva-tṛṣṇā (craving for non-
existence) – in terms of fixation on pleasure and the obsession that compels a fight or flight 
response. See rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 29.
41  rahula speaks to this: “there is a way of practicing mental development (‘meditation’) with 
regard to all our sensations or feelings, whether happy, unhappy or neutral. let us take only one 
example. You experience an unhappy, sorrowful sensation. In this state your mind is cloudy, 
hazy, not clear, it is depressed […]. first of all, you should learn not to be unhappy about your 
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The problem, then, is not so much that grief happens but how we 
carry grief. Buddhism widely recognizes that we cannot eliminate those 
external conditions that give rise to grievances. But in contrast with 
the Buddha’s methods, Zen undertakes not just a phenomenological 
description of what it’s like to experience grief (and other sensations) in 
the body; it engages in practical experimentation with how the somatic 
body carries grief. Where we feel grief largely hinges upon how we hold 
our grief.
Here is an alternative description of the feeling of grief, as given by 
the 21st century Zen master, Gordon Greene: “I was with my mother 
when she died, and I can still feel the sensations of just sitting silently 
at her bedside for the thirty minutes before my sister arrived in the 
room. I felt drained of all thought. Every part of me sagged, felt pulled 
toward the floor. Draining and sagging are gravity at work. Gravity and 
grief as one.”42 What Greene describes can be experienced first-hand 
through intensive vipassanā practice: after several days of repeating the 
body-scan exercise, thought-patterns become calm, the senses become 
highly acute, and the meditator is prone to experience the body and 
mind in terms of a unified sensation. However, for Greene this intensi-
fied, singular body-mind realization happened through trained attune-
ment to a specific sensation: that of heaviness, gravity, or grief. Grief is 
like gravy, grains, and gravel: it is meant to sink. But it often does not 
because our sensory and motor organs are susceptible to becoming ar-
rested by the felt need to protect the one who suffers. fixated by the 
object of grief and the “I” who supposedly endures the grief, the body-
mind relinquishes its ability to consciously feel, breath into, and stand 
beneath the grief.
So how do we remedy this seeming incapacity to let go of grief? for 
Greene, allowing grief to drop is more so a physical ability than a men-
unhappy feeling, not to be worried about your worries. But try to see clearly why there is a sen-
sation or a feeling of unhappiness, or worry, or sorrow. Try to examine how it arises, its cause, 
how it disappears, its cessation […]. It is the same with regard to all sensations or feelings […] 
Here is no attitude of criticizing or judging […]. It is simply observing, watching, examining 
[…]. Thus you become detached and free, so that you may see things as they are.” rahula, What 
the Buddha Taught, 73–74. likewise, the experience of grief is to be had just as it is.
42  Gordon Greene, “The Weight of Suffering,” Gordon Greene (blog), April 24, 2018, https://
gordongreene.org/2018/05/02/the-weight-of-suffering/.
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tal one. Grief (and other varieties of suffering) arrests us due to psycho-
physical distortions and misalignments with respect to gravity. But we 
can foster the ability to perceive and breathe into grief, and assume a 
posture that allows grief to drop. He attributes success in this respect to 
having developed hara (lower belly). Greene explains:
In order for that [dropping of grief ] to happen, numerous muscles through-
out the body need to “wake up” and to relax. for muscle tissue to wake up, 
it needs to feel the pull of gravity. That process of feeling the work of gravity 
throughout the body takes a great deal of time because of the ways in which 
we identify with our habits. for the most part we are not aware that the ways 
we hold our body in the gravitational field are based on neuromuscular habit. 
This means that literally we don’t feel gravity in the majority of the muscles in 
our bodies. At least we don’t feel that gravity until we are struck by grief, or 
we train intensely in Zen.43
This diagnosis echoes traditional Buddhist (even pan-Indian) think-
ing about the interrelation between action, habit, and re-action. The 
repeated performance of intentional actions (karma) produces habit 
traces (saṃskāras) that get lodged in the somatic body; habit traces bind 
the person to rebirth (saṃsāra) into craving (tṛṣṇā) from moment to 
moment; and rebirth into craving induces one to compulsively react 
to one’s environment. But there is a way out of this cycle – and a way 
out that does not require one to abandon the agency of the body or to 
escape the heaviness of suffering. By developing one’s posture, sense fac-
ulties, and breathing, one can stand with confidence directly beneath 
the weight of things and allow it to drop through their body. Moreover, 
this is not just a defense tactic. The weight of anything, including the 
weight of grief, can be positively used to sink into one’s ground and 
awaken the somatic body from the slumber of countless lives of habitu-
ated being-in-the-world.
Zazen and the Alchemy of Hara Breathing
The most powerful tool of Zen is a practical philosophy of respira-
tion that centers around the hara. Considered just in terms of the inha-
43  Greene, “The Weight of Suffering.”
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lation, breathing from the hara is not unlike diaphragmatic respiration. 
Both offer a corrective to thoracic or chest breathing: when the breath 
comes from the chest area, one’s oxygen intake is compromised, karmic 
residues get lodged in the area surrounding the heart, one feels cut off 
from the lower body, and there is a diminished sense of groundedness 
(both physically and mentally). By engaging the lower abdomen during 
the inhalation, the hara expands (not unlike how a bellows functions), 
one’s oxygen intake improves, the heartbeat slows, one’s blood pres-
sure stabilizes, and weight is allowed to sink. But zazen gives unique 
emphasis to the exhalation – and this is where the concepts of hara 
and hara breathing get distinguished from those of lower belly and 
diaphragmatic breathing, respectively. The lower abdomen remains ex-
panded while exhaling, as it gently pushes down into the pelvic floor 
and widens outward. This happens naturally in some actions, such as 
coughing: the breath literally exits from the mouth, but an energetic 
movement explodes down and outward through the belly. The exhale 
of hara respiration can be thought of as a slow-motion cough. Through 
a long, steady, complete outbreath, one drives the exhale into the hara, 
gently contracts the muscles around the anus, and slightly tucks the 
hips (koshi) in order to create an unimpeded channel that tunnels down 
through the pelvic floor. Indeed, this is an activity that requires train-
ing (humans do not naturally exhale in this way). But it awakens our 
natural vital energy, produces lift through the crown of the head, and 
even helps to alleviate the suffering of others.
referencing the mechanisms of a piston engine is instructive (see 
figure 7–8). A piston engine is typically a heat engine that uses one or 
more reciprocating pistons to convert pressure into energy through a 
rotating motion. The engine consists of a fixed cylinder and a moving 
piston. The expanding combustion gases push the piston in a down-
ward, circular motion, this rotation creates an ignition that generates 
power, and this power gets conducted along a vertical channel. In many 
ways, this is similar to the workings of breath and posture in zazen: 
the inbreath draws air into the lower belly, the outbreath circulates this 
air while maintaining air pressure in the lower belly, and this, in turn, 
maintains a sense of connection to one’s ground while igniting an in-
tense heat or focused energy that extends upwards, permeates the body, 
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and spreads throughout one’s environment. Through repetition of these 
respiratory movements, an intense but soft power becomes concentrat-
ed in the lower belly.44
Indian yogis have long referred to this creative, heated energy as “ta-
pas,” and they frequently link it to the Vedic god Agni, the god of fire 
whose name is cognate with English “ignite.”45 Neither mere material 
nor just mental (as if the mind were free-floating separate from the 
body), this heat is psycho-physical; it is nondual, vital energy itself. 
from within the lower belly, a small kernel of supple, dynamic energy 
44 for more on images gathered in figure 7 and my very simple explanation of a reciprocat-
ing piston engine, see here: “How Pistons Work: A Detailed look at Types, functions, and 
Mechanisms,” Marinerspointpro, accessed October 15th, 2023, https://marinerspointpro.com/
piston-working-functions-materials/. figure 8 is taken from Omori Sogen, An Introduction to 
Zen Training: A Translation of Sanzen Nyumon, trans. Dogen Hosokawa and roy Yoshimoto 
(london: Kegan Paul International, 1996), 41.
45  Tapas comes from the Sanskrit word for “to heat, to burn, to give out warmth” (the verbal 
root, “√tap”). first appearing in Ṛg Veda 10.154.5, tapas has long been associated with the 
Vedic god of fire, Agni (himself often considered a great tapasvin or “possessor of tapas”). It 
later became associated with the ascetic practices of Jainism and Buddhism, as well as variations 
on the theme of an eight-limbed yoga (where tapas is frequently associated with the niyamas, 
such as its meaning “self-discipline” in the Yoga Sūtras). In tantric yoga traditions, meanwhile, 
this heat takes on more dynamic meanings associated with the power (śakti) to be cultivated 
through inner alchemical practices. for more on these topics, see Walter O. Kaelber, “Tapas, 
Birth, and Spiritual rebirth in the Veda,” History of Religions 15, no. 4 (May 1976): 349–350, 
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1062153.
figure 7–8: rotating movements ignite heat in a piston engine and hara breathing.44
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becomes concentrated and expands outward along vertical and hori-
zontal planes, radiating outward in the shape of something like a bub-
ble. Zen, of course, speaks the language of the alchemical traditions of 
East Asia: in place of tapas, its vocabulary is that of ki (Chinese “chi”). 
The longer and more deliberately that one practices hara breathing, 
the stronger one’s ki (psycho-physical, vital energy) becomes. When 
performed well, this respiratory practice allows the meditator to enter 
a deep samādhi, a state of relaxed concentration. Importantly, though, 
zazen is more so an inner alchemical practice of energy cultivation than 
it is a contemplative practice.46 In this respect, while samādhi indeed 
develops certain epistemological and psychological powers (e.g. the 
ability to focus one’s mind or attention), we should prioritize the on-
tological meaning of samādhi as a nondual absorption into the environ-
ment. One’s being (the Greek “ont-” of “ontology”) as a discrete “I,” 
self, or mind that stands over and against the world melts away through 
a merging with the absolute self, mind, or body of the universe.47 How-
ever one terms it – tapas, ki, chi, psycho-physical, vital, nondual en-
ergy – the heat that animates the body and enables digestion and other 
metabolic processes is the same fire that dissolves illusions that linger in 
the holding patterns of the heart and the head, such as the illusion that 
the mind and body are two, or that self and other are separate.
Having fed the lower belly through repeated, disciplined breathing 
– not unlike how one feeds a wood burning stove with firewood and 
just enough air – the hara becomes tender, hot, and expansive with ki. 
As noted above, the inbreath is associated with sinking: it attunes one 
to the sensation of gravity at every square inch of the body. But the 
meditator does not literally sink to the floor like a wet noodle. Each 
outbreath drives a gravity-countering force upwards, such that vital en-
ergy swells and rises through a subtle channel. Greene explains what 
46  If interested to explore this further, consider the parallels between Omori Sogen’s account 
of Zen training in An Introduction to Zen Training and robin Wang’s study of the inner alchemy 
of Daoist neidan practice in Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and 
Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
47  Sogen writes: “Zen is to transcend life and death (all dualism), to truly realize that the en-
tire universe is the ‘True Human Body,’ through the discipline of ‘mind and body in oneness’.” 
Sogen, An Introduction to Zen Training, 93.
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happens when our weight “passes through to the ground without being 
‘held’ by muscles in-between […] we use that weight to teach us the 
breath and the posture needed to carry that weight […] Just enough use 
of muscle and bone to hold that weight, but no more than necessary. 
And a use of breath that drives the countering lift. The gravity of grief 
is countered by the lift.”48
Importantly, the vertical extension that Greene describes applies 
only to the subtle body. The gross, physical body yields to the pull of 
gravity, steadily releasing the holding patterns that get “‘held’ by mus-
cles in-between,” while the soft, steady, extended push of the outbreath 
establishes a base from which vital energy grows skyward.
As this happens, the belly (Sanskrit garbha) awakens as a womb 
(garbha) that is pregnant with animating life-force.49 This corrects mis-
representations of Buddhism as life-denying. for clues to why Western-
ers misconstrued this, consider some forgotten cultural practices that 
affirm life through a process of negation. for millennia people have 
gone to the theater to watch tragedy unfold, even though they already 
know the ending and have no intention of preventing it from happen-
ing all over again. Why is this? Certainly, it is not because we enjoy 
watching others suffer. More likely, we want to grieve but do not know 
how, especially when the world assaults our injuries with added insults. 
The theater offers a safe space where we can let our guard down; our 
shoulders, heart, and tears can sink to the floor, and we can re-connect 
to source, namely, the Earth. As Aristotle observes, grief conjoined with 
fear is especially suited for experiencing catharsis or an “emptying out” 
that has the effect of cleansing and rejuvenating the heart. Not coinci-
dentally, here are some other cathartics (and now I use the term cathar-
tic in the medical sense): seeds (e.g., psyllium seed husks) and grains, 
both of which derive from the latin granum, were traditionally ingested 
in order to accelerate the emptying out of waste material and poisons 
from the digestive tract. When used in the right way, the members of 
48  Greene, “The Weight of Suffering.”
49  The same Sanskrit term, garbha, means both “belly” and “womb.” Not unlike in Japanese 
Zen, this suggests that, across Indian yoga traditions, the belly is a womb of vital, life-giving 
energy. related to this etymological analysis, the English “pregnant” is a meaning of the latin 
gravid, which is cognate with gravis. See Partridge, Origins, 1324–1326.
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the gravis family (gravy, gravel, grains) are instruments of healing pre-
cisely because they negate, cancel, and empty. They remove obstacles 
to the somatic body returning to life. likewise, grief can serve as an 
agent of catharsis by accelerating the work of gravity upon the grip of 
the emotions. And the key to allowing the experience of grief to heal is, 
above all, breathing. A tender, calm, long exhale allows things to empty 
downward and out while transfiguring weight into lift and death into 
subtle life. The secret to levity – and indeed, to life – is gravity, and 
gravity works in many ways.
like any other performance, hara breathing is social. In virtually 
all Zen communities, zazen is to be practiced with eyes open. And 
for much of Japanese rinzai Zen, meditators sit facing inward toward 
each other.50 This shows the Mahāyana Buddhist emphasis on the bo-
dhisattva path. Zen meditators sit, sense, and breath with and for each 
other. They develop their powers of bodily presentation (or posture), 
perception of gravity, and the performance of respiration in order to 
address the suffering of all sentient beings – starting with just those 
beings who are facing them during zazen. This gets conveyed by the 
final gravis term to be examined here: gravitas. Gravitas means “dignity,” 
“influence,” “solemnity,” “depth of personality,” and “weight.” It often 
signifies confidence, authenticity, seriousness of purpose, and poise. 
from a Zen perspective, the poise of gravitas requires some clarifica-
tion. Poise should not be psychologized at the expense of neglecting the 
body. recall Newton’s law of universal gravitation: all objects (even the 
smallest particles) attract other things by virtue of their mass. Newton 
articulated a sophisticated formula for determining how this force of 
attraction operates. But he studied gravitation between merely physical, 
insentient objects, not embodied, living ones. The workings of gravitas 
between somatic bodies are more complicated. In this sphere, gravitas 
alludes to the quality of someone’s psycho-physical presence (kiai), a 
presence that elicits in others a sense of respect, trust, and safety, and 
which viscerally registers in the body as calm, groundedness, and ease.
50  This is not the case in all Zen communities. In many instances, meditators sit away from 
each other and facing a wall. for more on how Chosei Zen training involves sitting inward 
toward each other, see “Chosei Zen.”
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Speaking from his experience as a hospital chaplain and medical 
school faculty member, Greene explains how zazen transforms grief 
into something like gravitas:
This phenomenon – standing up against the weight of suffering – is signifi-
cant to me for two reasons. One reason is about learning a more effective form 
of zazen. As you learn to push up from the hips, through the back and the 
neck, with the crown of the head then pushing toward the ceiling, your senses 
become more open and your exhalations become longer. If you instead simply 
sit there like a rock – all gravity and no countering lift – then your thoughts 
rather than your breath will dominate the experience and your zazen never 
comes alive. The second reason is a more public one. for many people whose 
work is to alleviate the suffering of others – whether physical, emotional, or 
spiritual – one of the toughest skills is to learn how to face that suffering with-
out it becoming a burden of your own. for example, you might be someone 
who works to ease the suffering of a woman not unlike the miner’s wife that 
van Gogh painted. If you become bent over with the weight of her burden – 
coal or sadness – then all of my experience as a hospital chaplain suggests that 
you won’t be of much help to her. Instead, whatever words might be spoken 
with that woman, I would want to also be showing her what’s possible in her 
own body. I can show her what it means to let the weight of that load – physi-
cal, emotional, spiritual – flow through me as efficiently as possible.51
Gravitas educes from others an inexplicable confidence in the work-
ings of the universe – a confidence that does not hinge upon hope for a 
better, more agreeable world, but which results from the well-developed 
sensation of that which always already grounds and supports us: gravity. 
One person’s gravitas helps others to feel the weight of suffering with-
out producing habits of reaction that arrest their attention and prevent 
them from seeing things just as they are.
Conclusion
In closing, recall the perplexing term that the Buddha invokes to de-
scribe the experience of awakening: nirvāṇa. Not unlike the members 
51  Greene, “The Weight of Suffering.”
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of the gravis family, nirvāṇa is best understood in terms of negation.52 
Warning us against positive attributions of meaning to the word, the 
Buddha and later Buddhist logicians speak of nirvāṇa in terms of a 
radical emptiness – an emptiness so extreme that it is empty of empti-
ness itself. This is not a nihilistic assertion. rather, it is a call to prevent 
us from turning nirvāṇa into a manifest object or presented reality that 
could in turn elicit craving. The more direct translation of nirvāna as 
an “extinguishing” or “blowing out” expresses this. In several passages, 
the Buddha likens nirvāṇa to extinguishing a flame, where the flame 
represents that which fuels our suffering.53 This suggests that the quest 
for nirvāṇa is one of endarkenment – a blowing out of that which lights 
up any given experience as if that singular experience were ultimately 
true. This is not to reject descriptions of nirvāṇa as an experience of 
profound illumination, levity, or lightness of being. But for much of 
rinzai Zen, this realization is to be had through awakening the somatic 
body to its original condition – a condition that transcends the duali-
ties of pain and pleasure, body and mind, self and other, life and death. 
Two other, internally related polarities that should be added to this list 
are those of light and dark, and levity and heaviness. In Zen, the path 
to awakening the body-mind proceeds through the dark, and our best 
guides through endarkenment are things heavy, such as gravity, grief, 
and the weight of suffering.
52  rahula comments: “A negative word need not necessarily indicate a negative state. The 
Pāli or Sanskrit word for health is ārogya, a negative term, which literally meanings ‘absence 
of illness’. But ārogya (health) does not represent a negative state. The word ‘Immortal’ (or its 
Sanskrit equivalent amṛta or Pāli amata), which also is a synonym of nirvāṇa, is negative, but 
it does not denote a negative state. The negation of negative values is not negative. One of the 
well-known synonyms for nirvāṇa is ‘freedom’ (Pāli Mutti, Skt. Mukti). Nobody would say 
that freedom is negative. But even freedom has a negative side: freedom is always a liberation 
from something which is obstructive, which is evil, which is negative. But freedom is not nega-
tive.” rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 38.
53  Closely related to this, nirvāṇa is also often associated with the extinguishing of three 
“fires” that bind us to rebirth (saṃsāra) into craving. These three fires are typically identified 
as passion, aversion, and ignorance. See Gombrich, How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned 
Genesis of the Early Teachings (Oxford: routledge, 2006), 65.
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