"And sesshin is simply a refusal to meet our expectations! From beginning to end a sesshin is designed to frustrate us! Inevitably, it gives us some pain, mental or physical. It's a prolonged experience of 'It's not the way I want it!' When we sit with that, there's always a residue of change left in us. In some cases it's very obvious. But the people who do the best in sesshin are usually the ones who have not sat many sesshins. The oldtimers can avoid sesshin even as they do it! They know how to avoid leg pain so that doesn't get too bad; they know many subtle tricks to avoid the whole thing. Because newcomers are less skilled, sesshin hits them harder and there's often an obvious change."
No Exchange, Everyday Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck
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Zen practice is hard, both emotionally physically. In addition to a regular daily meditation practice, Zen students traditionally attend intensive week-long sesshins, which demand 12 or more hours a day of often painful motionless sitting. Clearly, the rigors of Zen should not be confused with any sort of relaxation technique or meditation that aims at simply quieting the mind or becoming calm. Often the sheer physical difficulty of Zen practice has been emphasized as what sets it apart from other meditation practices, as much as its storied promise of sudden great and enlightenment or kensho. The beginning student may not have a clue as to what enlightenment really means, but he or she all too quickly learns what it means to sit with excruciatingly painful knees. Mastering one's reaction to pain may be the new students first challenge, as if Zen were primarily a matter of cultivating toughness and endurance. (He goes on to talk about a Japanese teacher who undoubtedly taught a valuable, rigorous, authentic Zen, one that has no qualms about its elitism and that contained a perceptible contempt for those who couldn't keep up.)
Ordinary Mind by Barry Magid Introduction page 10
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