The Formality of Form
A post shared by Cheetarah (@present_and_connected) on Sep 1, 2017 at 1:35am PDT Last weekend my husband and I had an introduction to Zen-meditation as I wanted to know the form this meditation had to offer and the difference between other meditation forms I have tried. Mindfulness and loving kindness meditations being a few of them. As the instructor was explaining the origin, practice and form she said jokingly "But don't worry, we won't hit you with sticks!" and I was like "Excuse me, what do you mean with that?!" And she explained that in the Japanese ZaZen tradition when you are learning this form of meditation, you really have to learn the form - when you are not sitting up straight enough, you'll get hit by a stick in your back to re-position your posture! The shock showed on my face and she said "yeah, Zen-meditation is not for wussies! But like I said we won't hit you with sticks." And gosh I just laughed and lau...