This is an excerpt of an article published in Tricycle, the Buddhist Review, August 2005.
"WHEN VICTORIA AUSTIN started her meditation practice, she worked very hard. Perhaps too hard.
“I started practicing Zen in 1971,” says Austin, now the president of the San Francisco Zen Center (in Fall, 2005). “By 1983, I had seriously hurt myself.” Too much concentration practice too soon, says Austin, adversely affected her nervous system, which she believes led to a host of problems, including tremors, sciatica, poor digestion, irritability, and headaches. She says she owes the problem, in part, to giving up her seven-year Hatha yoga asana practice when she began studying to be ordained as a priest in the late ‘70s, because her teacher at the monastery saw it as “spiritual shopping.”
|
While she says the extent of her symptoms is rare, it is indicative of a broader danger for meditators: not paying attention to the physical body. Asana, she adds, is meditation in action, and can prevent this kind of problem.
Now recovered, Austin passes down the teachings of both Iyengar yoga and zazen to her students. She also teaches various courses and workshops that address the whole body in the context of Zen teaching. And she always encourages her serious students to have a physical practice.
|
|
“I’m not talking about physical in the sense of exercising,” she says. “I’m talking about physical in the sense of developing a firm foundation for a sitting practice. It doesn’t have to be Iyengar yoga, but it should be a practice that allows students to address our Western cultural habits of separating body and mind.
“The Buddha was someone who woke up in every possible way. Every cell of his body was awake and he was able to understand conventional truth—the function of the body—and ultimate truth at the same time.”
Victoria began practicing meditation in 1971. She was ordained as a Zen priest in 1982 in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. She received dharma transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman. She is formerly the tanto (head of practice) at Tassajara and the president of San Francisco Zen Center. She is an Intermediate Junior 3 certified Iyengar Yoga teacher who trains regularly in India and in the United States.
|
