Some Notes on Tanden, One-Pointed Concentration, Teaching Meditation

Someone I very much respect wrote recently to ask a bit about lower dantian and teaching. Here is the exchange:

Question:

"Ok so I've recently re-introduced a serious one-pointed concentration practice back into my life, after taking a break from it about ten years ago because it was getting waaaaaaaaaaaay too interesting and pretty much everything else in my life was falling by the wayside, so I felt that I perhaps ought to set it aside for a later date. Now, ten years later I feel much more settled, mature, integrated with regular life so that's good.

Anyway back then it was anapanasati using the focal point at the tip of the nostrils, as described in the anapanasati sutta and commentaries, with my own tweak of narrowing the point of focus down to an area the size of the point of a needle, below the nostrils above the upper lip.

But since taking it up again a few months ago I decided to put the work in to establish a powerful new anchor point (not really new, in fact not new at all, but worthy of a massive powering up), in the lower abdomen halfway between the front and the back, maybe slightly more towards the back, on the anterior surface of the spine inside the body. The classic area we often use in the Chinese systems, which I've been using in wuji standing and qigong practice for years as well, but never with the level of laser like attention of my seated concentration practice. So still working on the single pointed focus on an area the size of the point of a needle.

Anyway I thought of chatting to you, because despite all of the excellent commentaries and descriptions in the buddhist literature and from modern buddhist teachers in the theravada tradition, I haven't found too many people describing the wild and crazy levels of interoceptive body awareness and mind-body feedback developed from this practice. Qi overflowing from dantian is of course a common description in some of the Chinese traditions, but I was wondering if you could point me to some teachers or works or meditation manuals that go properly deep into it? The theravada commentaries are fantastic because they're written by and for hard core (usually) monastic practitioners, rather than lay people, so they don't beat around the bush, so I'm interested in that level of work.

Also curious to chat with you about teaching, since, despite my best efforts to delay and avoid it, I find myself gradually teaching more and more meditation, and have more people experiencing wildly altered states during practices with me and this then affecting their lives, so I'm feeling like I may need to re-establish links with a Buddhist lineage, even though what I'm sharing is very much informed by my Daoist and yogic experience and personal practice. So very curious about how you are navigating this and what efforts you have been making to keep it safe for people."

Corey:

Gosh, Tanden…  Yes, Honestly, it could be said that a lot of what I currently teach is Tanden, or lower Dantian.  Sometimes called Hara, but I often find that people are talking about something a bit more vague when referring to the Hara.

So, some notes on the Tanden.  

Let me start by saying that Tanden (Lower Dantian) is not taught in every Rinzai monastery or tradition. But that is my main background for my experience, along with a couple of decades of Zhan Zhuang and other Chinese energetic practices. But the orientation I come from is from Shodo Harada Roshi, which was to use any practice to connect with the Tanden and the energy, and to creatively use that to go into my process.  So I was not doing it for a martial interest, but purely to go deeper into my internal process and lead to kensho and later advanced practice. Tanden is taught to differing levels of sophisticated transmission within the small group of Rinzai Zen Lineages who actually teach it, and I feel very fortunate to have been with that particular teacher, as I connected with that still very well.

As far as where the emphasis on Tanden came about, I am not sure.  Some people like to think that it is something Buddhism picked up from China and the Taoists, while still others argue that the vase breathing of Tibet is too similar to tanden breathing for the practice to have come out of China, as the practices of Tibet were not filtered through China. It all must have come from India. Honestly, I don’t care. This is not my interest.

But I do very much feel that the language of some of the martial arts in China and Taoist practices is interesting and illuminating. I think, actually, that the Chinese detail and sophisticated language around it are much more detailed than what I saw in Japan.  

Cheng Man Ch’ing’s descriptions are quite informative

I can say that the Roshi I trained with is a Tanden master, and he used the Tanden as a tool to unify the energy in the body and to bring his mind to the incredibly sharp unfiltered clarity.  I am not saying that Tanden brings breakthrough, but it is a way to bring the whole system together and manifest this state of mind in a functional manner in the world. This is so rare to have someone functioning from this place of true essence.  To just watch them move and have your whole life changed by that.

The Samurai of old used it to get into their bodies, develop martial ability, mushin, and functioning samadhi. Yagyu called it a bridge to everything. Others called it a Great rolling ball.

What is it like to be with someone functioning from the tanden? It is as if when the Roshi speaks (in the characteristic tanden master super deep voice) that the information is not filtered through the brain, but bypasses that and springs from the tanden, without mental calculating.  It is as if the environment parts for him when he walks. When you see him he can appear melting, luminous, transparent, shockingly  physically present etc.

-Yes, Tanden or lower dantian is found two or three centimeters below the navel, in the center of the belly just where you said above.  Beginners can begin to think of the tanden as a little golden egg in there.  But that is not the whole story.

In my training, the Roshi would just look at me and grunt and smack his tanden when he saw me.  Tanden was day one in the monastery, but also day 1000. Learning to orient bodily though the tanden was cooked into every aspect of the life there. From raking the garden to washing the rice, the tanden was everywhere. Not to mention two or three individual meetings a day with the Roshi in which he demonstrated and transmitted tanden energy to us. At first it’s not something we have a radar for. Over time, it naturally begins to permeate everything we do.

Much of the training is not explanatory.  It is purposefully not explained.  It falls more into Kuden, oral instructions.  Mostly physical demonstration.  We literally learn through osmosis.  Mostly as under the table transmission in sanzen (the 1:1 meeting with the teacher). We are taught to keep the lower body substantial, grounded, sinking into the earth.  And the upper body, floating up to the heavens.

We learn Tanden breathing via sussokan (also sometimes called sussokukan). This is counting the breath, but also extending the breath as far as we can. This extending the breath shows us very clearly where we are stuck, mostly in our upper bodies. As the Tanden breathing begins to deepen, the tanden, like a little baby fetus of energy, begins to grow and develop over time. This is a non-linear process to say the least.  It cannot be rushed.

People want to give an anatomical definition of tanden.  I would say there is an anatomical location, but on the other hand the tanden is always changing, always showing up in new ways.  Often the tanden is felt more in relationship to the fullness in the body or context rather than in just the specific location, or even feeling the room and seeing its relationship to the tanden. There is a location and a physical process, and yet, at a certain point, one must let go of the tanden to really allow it to spread and expand and integrate.  So it is very much out of the rational mental world of explanation.  One must suspend disbelief. One must be profoundly relaxed.

People like to pin the awareness in the tanden, hold it there. This works sometimes. This type of concentration practice can work in some ways. But in others, it is as if the tanden will not develop if we look too closely at it. It won’t show up if we are looking too directly at it. It must be allowed the natural alchemy of growing.  This is not easily grasped.

Characteristic of all of my training, trying to understand mentally is not encouraged. Rather to open up to a deeper truth beyond thinking.  People deeply struggle with this, but the tanden is a way to open up to life in a non-mental cellular transformation process. The physical opening of the body provides feedback on how to release, and this bleeds into how we do everything.

How do you throw yourself fully Into something which cannot be grasped?  How do you touch this process wanting to happen without force?  Like growing a sublime subtle fetus. Like learning to feel light and allow it.

When the Tanden begins to develop and one is in meditation, the energy will build there and at a certain point the belly will fill and stop moving altogether.  It will remain full like a taut ball and the energy will then be inwardly circulating, This cannot be done with force.  This will begin a transformation process which will dramatically change the body.

As for people learning to meditate and having wild energy pyrotechnics, this is a tricky aspect.  You see, people think that we are learning to control the energy or to make it go down.  In fact, there is a wildness in opening up that can’t be controlled.

 How do we open up all of the gates and also find the tanden within that? The heart energy is volatile and bombastic and full of this incredible joy, but the tanden is a tool to create a vessel to be wide open and deeply rooted.  One great advantage about using the tanden as the area of concentration or focus is that it creates a body which can handle the energy while also unifying our awareness in samadhi. So practices like concentrating on the tip of the nostrils are wonderful, but the interesting aspect of the tanden is that it also creates a healthy vessel to process the energy. And, after a Great Awakening, it gives the practitioner an ability to manifest that and function from this huge place. 

Often the energy must be allowed to go in wild directions in order to go down, but many people read about the energetics and try to make the energy sink.  They have an image, a template, and they try to make that template true.  And instead, we must let go, allow the tanden, the energy to open up, realize we are being led by the universe, and allow that energetic process to guide us deeper and deeper until we finally touch the mainline of the universe.

So the wildness and the joy of the heart energy and the upper body must be allowed to express fully, and this is part of the wildness we see in traditional Zen texts and koans.  It must be allowed to be wide open, and the tanden allows the system to be healthy in that process.

This is why when we watch a video of someone talking about Qi it often feels dead or vacant. They have not opened up to the fullness, the essence, touched this great life energy, but are still trying for a technique, a strategy.  Rather, a person who has allowed this wildness through them often comes across as innocent, fresh, like an idiot, blank and shining. 

In the midst of the process, at times up/down/in/out will cease to have meaning. One must release all assumptions or ideas in order to let go. And yet, there is a very blue collar aspect to the work. It will develop slowly and our whole being will be transformed within that process. It must be looked at, we must be curious about it, all day long. Like keeping an eye on it all day long, gently.  Walking, moving, working, how is it still there? How is it showing up…? It will be different every day, never the same. And so we need to stay fascinated, find a way to fall in love with the process.  

I work with a lot of people who have had so-called kundalini awakenings or other types of energetic openings. Sometimes their nervous system has been kind of fried and they are having trouble just functioning as a person.  This is very common. Mental fogginess and seizing up, etc  sometimes occur. Some even have to wear sunglasses all of the time or go blind. To use the taoist model, maybe the karmic body has been blown open but the physical body is trying to catch up.  The tanden work is a great blue collar training for these people to integrate and harmonize in a real, down to earth way.  It is a venue to find out what is real and bring it all together in harmony. This is about 1/2 of the people I work with.  

I think part of the trickiness of it is that in order to really open up, we have to be willing to let go in profound ways.  And so doing the Tanden work in a way to make that huge letting go a more smooth process.  I have such faith in this work, I am so convinced the universe is guiding us through it, and so that gives me faith in this process for the people in the midst of it on the operating table of the open heart surgery which is deep internal alchemy.  It’s only because I have gone through it and been the worst that I have such faith in the process.  

Another aspect about the Rinzai training is that maybe the main component is samu or work. So all of the shit ton of sitting is impotent, but it is said that samu is the most important. Part of that is because in order to get the energy going through the body in a healthy way is to physically work the body.  And the hard physical labor is great for those sensitive types with rising ki (kifun), red faces, ringing in the ears, emotionality volatile, who need to get physical and get the energy rooted. It is also  said that zazen in action is a million times more powerful than zazen on the cushion, and so the samu is the venue where people see if they can work with a functioning samadhi.  

Hakuin’s Yasekanna might be worth reading if I were you. https://terebess.hu/zen/Yasenkanna2.pdf

I am not aware of much clear helpful writing about all of this out process out there. Even some of the more embodied Rinzai traditions I don’t think really understand tanden. I started my blog because I did not hear anyone expressing it well.   I like to talk about process, make it all real, bring it into how it feels rather than a concept.  Otherwise, people get really abstract very quickly. This is how my teacher taught me, never allowing me to understand it mentally.  

Here are several posts I wrote about Tanden:

https://zenembodiment.com/2018/06/08/breathing-from-the-belly-tanden-a-great-rolling-ball/

https://zenembodiment.com/2021/12/27/tanden-everything-comes-to-us/

https://zenembodiment.com/2016/12/01/butterfly-wings-wings-of-tanden/

https://zenembodiment.com/2023/04/07/cultivating-and-feeling-the-tanden-lower-dantien/

https://zenembodiment.com/2021/08/29/mushin-no-mind-emerges-through-the-body/

https://zenembodiment.com/2023/12/10/the-center-less-center-physical-work-tanden-and-moving-in-oneness/

The Roshi put together a group of talks around covid and he went into detail about how this is all lower body work. We are all too much obsessed with the upper body, and so the legs and the tanden are this radical way of orienting the awareness. I’m not sure how to find these currently either.

Anyway, just some thoughts.  I hope it is interesting. Please share it with anyone who might find it useful or interesting.  Hugs! Core