My zazen this morning started with a body scan that progressed well with minimal wandering of attention.

Then generally a diffuse, moving attention to my whole body.

And then my attention was drawn to that sound I hear when I meditate and at other times when I focus on it. It seems to be constantly present but something that I usually filter out.

Do others hear this? Does anyone know what this is?

I noticed that it sounds like a cross between a whisper and a hum.

I noticed that it is not a single pure tone. It is a variety of tones in the way that a piece of yarn consists of a variety of fibers twisted together.

At times I noticed energetic pressure — at the entrance to my ear canals, at the point between my eyebrows, and between my brain hemispheres.

I brought it to the foreground of my attention, in essence turning up the volume.

I let the sound fill me, permeating my body, immersing myself in a bath of sound.

Toward the end of my session (not knowing how close I was to the end of the 30 minutes), I felt some pain at the back of my hips. I brought that pain to the foreground of attention, inquiring about it, being with it, finding its center, outlining the area, noticing it shifting.

That’s it for today, folks. Thank you for reading.

So yesterday and today, my intent was “whole body awareness” during zazen. Back to the drawing board, so to speak, following my teacher’s instructions.

Whole body awareness can be construed as awareness of the whole body and awareness with the whole body. And both — at the same time! And probably much  much more.

I take this instruction to mean expand awareness. Go wide. Go deep. Go broad. Extend awareness.

And include the body in awareness — this is not a purely mental exercise.

And keep it as whole as I can. All of a piece. Bring awareness to the foreground. Let attention to anything less than the whole recede to background.

Easier said than done. Still, a willingness to allow as much awareness into my consciousness as possible is worthy! It is worthy! Step back and allow!

Today I noticed opening my hearing to all sounds, external and internal, and the silence in which sounds float, and letting the sounds and the silence in which they arise fill and flow through my body.

Today I noticed the physical sensations of my physical body sitting on the zafu.

Interestingly, today was one of the most pain-free days I’ve had. Early on I felt some tightness in my left SI joint, with curiosity about it. Did it have a strong message for me today? No.

After a long while of sitting, I felt aching at the back of my hips, and 30 seconds later the bell rang.  

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I am still curious about that experience I had a week or so ago, of the me-shaped hole. I felt energy all around my body, pressing on me, yet I sensed my body as being light, full of space.

It was a different way of perceiving myself in relation to the space around me. Usually, I’m heavy and the air-space around me is light.

Was I discovering that my habitual ways of thinking of “me” are just habit, not truth? Was some nimble, flexible part of my body-mind system at work here, leading me somewhere, showing me something?

I liked it. And, it was whole body awareness.

What a contrast! Yesterday morning I sat at home on my zafu. Quiet, filtered sounds from birds and traffic.

This morning I sat zazen in a tent. 3-D surround sound — birds (cardinals, woodpecker, and so on), people (mostly male voices), noises of people breaking camp, dogs barking, distance traffic, trains.

For a while, birds were talking in a circle around me.

Meditation enhances my sensory awareness. Sometimes when I’m not sitting, I am surprised by moments of deep presence in a sensory experience.

I experienced that last night, nightwalking through the woods, being aware of moving through living space, alive with moving atoms and particles, through plants emanating a subtle phosphorescence.

Unable to rely on focused vision, yet still being able to walk the winding path through the trees in the dark. In these moments, time runs differently.

In these moments, being alive is simply amazing.

These moments make the pain of sitting worth it.

I sat zazen this morning groggily. Awareness moving from the soft, slow waking mind into the flesh-and-blood body.

My body scan was disjointed. I started at my crown … and then realized my attention was caught up in something not present. 

What happens in the … ? I am so curious about this, and I have not yet been able to “catch” that moment!

Every day it’s different. I’m not sure there is such a thing as progress, really. Today zazen didn’t seem much different than the first week of this year.

There are skills to be learned, certainly. Like coordinating the body scan with the breath. I inhale and exhale while paying attention to my head, scanning its parts. Repeat until my head feels well-scanned (whatever “well” means that day). Then breathe with attention on my neck. Move on to chest, abdomen, back, upper arms, seat, legs, feet. Change this order up but generally move down the body one area at a time, breathing and attending.

That’s a skill for body scanning when my attention is wandering. When my attention isn’t wandering, I can scan my whole body almost uninterrupted. I feel pleased with my focus then.

And then it’s on to the next moment of awareness, and the next, and the next.

It also takes skill to sit for 30 minutes without moving, and you gain that skill by doing just that. You experiment and find the posture that works best for you. Right now I’m liking half lotus a lot.

It comforts me to believe that the more I sit, the better I get at it, although more experienced meditators say that pain is part of the experience. It’s definitely not a linear progression, though.

I’ve had what I consider to be one insight about the nature of reality. And it occurred like this: in my ponderings about “whole body awareness,” I had a new thought: what if everything is awareness?

That seemed radical and revolutionary. I wanted to suppress it because if it was true, it meant change. (Okay, I’m lazy.) It kept resurfacing into consciousness, though, so I almost casually examined it, tried it on, tried to find if there was any way it could be not true. I couldn’t, so I accepted it as truth.

And then change began rippling through my life, although I’m not really more skilled at sitting. The variety of sitting experiences just expanded, that’s all. Some days, breakthroughs. Some days, groggy monkey mind.