Lessons from Keishin: Moved by Hara
Observe something in nature and bring its quality to your practice, for example, sit like a pine tree and allow the hara to hold you. Photo Credit: Adi Emal, Pexels
Written by Weng Suarez
I laid down my body on the mat, probably, in exhaustion—or probably, in frustration. And I let out a deep cry, both from the recognition of deep-seated tension in my body and a deep want to be released from it. “Where is the breakthrough here,” I asked? “Why do I have to go through this?” “Is this all that’s on the other side?” These were my questions after the second segment of the third day, just before going into our bedroom where my husband was sleeping soundly.
My suffering on the mat during rounds of zazen pushed me to find a way to ease the suffering the next time we sit, and largely, because I wanted to experience how to truly relax my body and get a glimpse of how it truly felt to be one with the breath, of how the mind and the body can be one and have a shared experience. I still had discomfort during the last day, but I was able to manage the pain, and I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t find my hara. What wisdom there is to find the hara, the center of being. “Move from the hara,” I remember Whitelaw roshi saying it last year during our Zen Leader Series, but I hadn’t truly experienced it until Keishin—on the very last day of Keishin.
“Move from the hara,” I was told again during Keishin. And during the first two-to-three days, I was using force to “move” the hara. But it didn’t hold me when I did it that way—when I was the one trying to move it. “Moving from the hara” was subtle. Very subtle. And yet it made all the difference. Only then did I start to understand what it meant when roshi would say “let the hara hold you.” A felt sense in the body is different from a felt sense in the heart area, as in, feelings, or emotions. A felt sense in the body is deeper, and my sense is that this must be what Richard Rudd of the Gene Keys meant when he said the heart is everywhere in the body. Or I would say, the whole body can be the energetic heart itself. “Walk from the hara,” we were told. And that is a gem to work with in the day-to-day coming from Keishin.
As the Operations Director of the Institute for Zen Leadership and an instructor-in-training, I felt compelled to dive into the Zen practice. Because Zen Leadership is not Zen Leadership without Zen. I remember that before the last segment of the third day, I was coming out of the bathroom, shortly before going back to the mat, thinking, “I could give up getting certified as an instructor.” But the very curiosity of, again, what’s-on-the-other-side if I dared cross this bridge of practice got me going. I knew I wanted to go and cross that bridge. I knew conceptually that Zen is key to embodied wisdom, but I haven’t had a glimpse of what embodied wisdom could actually feel like in the body until this training. When I sit with no pain in one segment and think I know the hack, or the trick, and I just need to repeat it—exact posture, precise angle, or just enough tuck—I suffer again in the next segment. This, to me, is a lesson of how it is not like to deeply listen.
One of my dear teachers shared years ago about a study of nations that had gone through revolutions—toppled government leaders, dictators, tyrants—and its peoples finding themselves still poor, wrought with the same issues of poverty, corruption, environmental issues, and so on, or worse, decades after. The reason is because the people of these nations just repeated the same old, same old approaches to address their problems, or grievances, even as humanity and the world process have changed or evolved. It’s the same thing with businesses or entrepreneurs who had success with one thing and tried to just repeat what they had done in the past, thinking it will bring them the same success. Most of these businesses have failed while the most successful ones are those who listened deeply to the changing contexts or environments and tuned into the opportunities that were emerging. It’s at the core of leadership work when we deal with conflict or crisis.
Imagine leading from the hara—from that place of deep intuition, of what wants to arise, to be born, to be let go, to be let come, to be let be. Imagine us doing that collectively. Imagine more leaders leading organizations and societies from this place of connection with the field and our innate wisdom. What kind of world are we going to create? How will we respond differently? What kind of human beings will we be?
Embodied wisdom is wisdom that comes from the body, naturally, confidently, wholly. It is our unsustainable relationship with tension that holds us back.
When we did our final Shodo on the last day of Keishin, I got to touch the beauty of ease. I used to experience ease as a flow, as a form of coherence, mainly as a felt sense in the heart area, and it’s grounding and energizing, and it moves me to do things more fluidly or with joy. Truly coming from hara, I felt no obstruction, no want, no desire to be pleased by making my writing a certain way. My body was so clear that it was just going to allow the energy flowing from my body to move me. And the brush—the brush was one with me. I don’t remember moving the brush a certain way.
In my experience co-holding the Cebu Farmers Market here in the Philippines—a generative initiative for health and thriving—and observing the process of its becoming, I found that being a vessel for what wanted to come through us was exactly what took it to its next level of evolution. The people, meetings, encounters, and resources needed to make it happen, simply happened. As leaders wanting to “add value to the world,” we have to be very clear about what we’re serving. The initiative is a being and when it wants to come through us, it will take the form it wants to take, not what we want it to take. I’ve somehow known this from experience and from processing these experiences with my co-holders. It is one way in which I understood what “embodying” being a vessel means. In Keishin, it was made physical, as you would find as well. The mind-body energy will show you. What a more deeply embodied way to lead in this world.
Editor's Note: Discover hara more deeply in yourself and join us for Hara New Year – Jan 5-25 –a powerful training opportunity offered in partnership with Chosei Zen.
Weng Suarez is the Operations Director of the Institute for Zen Leadership. She co-founded the GMO-Free Cebu Movement and the Cebu Farmers Market and is currently the Board Chair of the Communities for Alternative Food Ecosystems Initiative.