Simply Sitting
2 months of guided meditation practice
This program offers a grounded and practical take on enlightenment, emotional maturity, and the integration required to take one’s seat in a lived and always-unfolding liberation.
“You awaken by questioning everything, changing your mind, practicing meditation correctly, and opening your heart.”
— Junpo Roshi
Meditation can change our lives in ways that few practices can.
Our experience of time, which seems such a fleeting commodity, can be slowed. In that stillness the reactivity and conditioning that drives so much of our lives can be seen for what it is, and we can find choice points in places where once there was only mindless thought, feeling, or contraction.
Along this path, you might discover the vast stillness at the very center of your being, so deep and unfathomable, and so very obvious, that you've been avoiding it your entire life. You might uncover your sacred heart, so huge and open that nothing and no one escapes its embrace.
But none of these things are the point.
Most people are chasing something in their spiritual practice: awakening, the transmutation of emotion, a connection with Source, seeing the All in Everything, greater equanimity and peace, or complete liberation from human suffering.
Here, we do none of those things. We simple learn to sit and be with what is, no matter if it’s anything on the list above or it’s being with the tempest of our thoughts and the fury of our feelings
“Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.”
— Dōgen Zenji
Calendar
Spring dates announced soon
The Art of Letting Go of the Self
Identity plays a part of any human’s healthy development. Until it doesn’t.
From those identifying their gender expression and preferences to a recent divorcee trying to create an identity outside of relationship, a mental and cultural construct of identity can help us define the relative self. This can be vital to placing our attention on nascent parts ourselves to better help us orient towards, defend against, and embrace the world.
But our identities can create a trap, fuel division and wars, create internal conflict, directly lead to suffering, and falsely divide the world into “self” and “other.” People who identify as ‘spiritual’, for instance, often carry beliefs that directly undermine their spiritual insight.
Over 8 weeks, we'll explore genuine insight through concentration meditation in light of our egoic identities. We’ll do the work of transcending our identities while including their strengths but dropping their attachments.
Course Structure:
We'll have weekly Zoom calls with 30-minute dharma talks (see topics at the end of this page), your Q&A's, brief check-ins, and a guided meditation that will be recorded so you can use it in the ensuing week.
“Nothing to do here, nothing to attain, just this moment and all it contains. ”
Our focus in Simply Sitting is on creating and sustaining a meditation practice that isn't about being spiritual.
It's not about enlightenment. It's not about attaining anything. It's not about anything you might experience. It's about the simplicity of sitting, and being with what is, day after day.
As we become more autonomous humans, we learn to better say “no” — no to bad relationships, no to bad boundaries, no to not speaking our needs, no to not speaking up against oppression.
That’s not what we’re up to in this course.
Here, we’ll practice saying yes. Yes to the world as it is, in this moment, with all its imperfections. A yes to you as you are, in this moment, with all your imperfections,
irritations, and sense of incompleteness.
What if you said yes to the heartbreak you’re really feeling,
that’s actually driving your no’s?
What might saying yes make possible?
Testimonials
“Simply Sitting is more than a meditation course — it's a framework for a liberated life. Keith transmits wisdom with humor and story in a solidly-held container, encouraging students to be with everything that arises and bypass nothing in the process. I loved the balance of teaching and practice and depth.”
— Chris Muse
“This is an excellent introductory class on Zen that goes deep enough that experienced meditators can find value and learn from it. Keith Martin-Smith is a direct student of Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi, and joins him in wrestling with the form that Zen practice will take in the 21st century West.”
— Joseph Farley
“It's no BS practice. There's no "there" there. It's so rare to find a practice that integrates emotional work — and the answer to all questions isn't just "sit more". I also like that Keith is honest about his own challenges so there's a feeling of kinship and knowing that everyone, even the teacher, struggles at times.”
— Kevin Webb
3 Commitments
This is Zen. Therefore, we commit to these three things.
1. TO PRACTICE
Practice comes first: for the 60 days of the group, your practice comes first. This means that before work, lovers, children, taking care of a sick body, being emotionally overwhelmed, or anything else, practice comes first, so that you can show up in a way that really matters.
The whole point of this program is to create and sustain a meditation practice in the midst of life. The reason we sit for 60-days is that for every single person in that group, life is going to come up. Sickness, jet lag, heartache, money triumphs or tragedies, emergencies, and 100 other things will occur over 60 days and, through it all, we commit to our practice with no exceptions.
We agree to practice 30-minute sits, 6 days a week.
2. TO ATTEND WEEKLY CALLS
We attend calls to support each other AND ourselves: the reason we practice together is because we’re stronger together than by ourselves. Showing up for your practice and for the weekly calls means not just supporting our own practice but also the practice of the whole group. We will all have days (and weeks) when we won’t want to practice; remembering this isn’t just about “me” can make getting onto the cushion and onto the calls easier.
We agree to miss no more than one of our group calls.
3. TO BE OPEN, HONEST, AND VULNERABLE
We commit to being open, honest, and vulnerable: we commit to being ruthlessly honest with ourselves and each other. In this group, we all agree to the importance of not stuffing what’s happening for us. We won’t make excuses or beat ourselves up. We choose not to sweep uncomfortable situations caused by individual or collective experiences under the rug, and we also choose to be skillful and patient in our communications.
We agree to be open, honest, and vulnerable.
Accountable
(adjective) Required or expected to justify actions or decisions; responsible.
"you will be held accountable to your commitments"
synonyms: responsible, liable, answerable.
“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”
CALENDAR
Week 1: Overview, Commitments, How to Sit, What to Do
Concentration practice
Exploring 3 commitments in practice
We agree to sit in physical, mental, and emotional stillness
We agree to allow the stillness that is here to arise
We agree to come back to the first two commitments as often as necessary
Here, now not “there, when….”
The art of not trying to be still, not trying to be quiet, not trying to be awake, and certainly not trying to be spiritual in our practice
Being with what is, without exception
Getting comfortable being uncomfortable
Guided Practice 1: How to Sit in the Posture of Pure Awareness
Week 2: The Three Poisons of the Mind: Ignorance, Aversion, and Attachment
Why we don’t try to overcome or destroy our egos
Consciousness versus Awareness — and ego view
Consciousness and Awareness — and egoless view
Why a spiritual practice is pointless, from a Zen perspective
A simple view of Enlightenment, and its viewless view
Guided Practice 2: Concentration meditation using sound and vision
Week 3: Understanding Identity
Deepening concentration practice through understanding our ego
Understanding what identity gives us, and what it costs us
Why there are no victims in Zen
What spiritual bypassing is
How to hold that bypassing inside a larger, wiser container of practice
Guided Practice 3: Learning to Bypass (without really bypassing)
Week 4: A New Map
Why maps matter
The difference between the territory and the map
Understanding the experiential truth of “nonduality”
What can go wrong with, and without, a good map around “being that which you seek”
Why true spirituality is about finding what is, here and now, not in some far-away place or with a different kind of ego
The danger of trying to use the ego to fight the ego
How to fully release into this moment to see what’s really true
Guided Practice 4: Sitting as Awareness itself
Week 5: Developing the Capacity to be *with*
Relating to ego on the path — ego is a “process” not a “self”
How that self is fully conditioned
Why you should learn how to bypass (yes, I said that) and why the world would be a better place if more people did
How to view emotions:
An unenlightened view
An enlightened view
An integrated view
No Guided Practice
Week 6: Developing the Capacity to be *with*, Part II
Why meditation can’t impact trauma
How to get the information in your feelings
The truth of anger
The truth of fear
The truth of trauma
Integrating emotions and meditation on and off the cushion
No Guided Practice
Week 7: Emotional Maturity
Why there are no victims in Zen, Part 1
Facing your own heart
Facing what you bypassed in your practice
Finding your personal koan / place to bring choice into your life
Choice in your emotional reality
Choice in your spiritual reality
Practicing a victimless view
Finding your personal koan / place to bring choice into your life
Choice in your emotional reality
Where do you know, for sure, you’re going to get triggered in the next week? (pick something simple, like the news)
What is the different choice you will make?
HOMEWORK — let you meditation partner know what you’re koan is, and then let them know when you face it. Will discuss next week.
No Guided Practice
Week 8: Putting it All Together
Why there are no victims in Zen, Part 2
Who is going to awaken? Is it going to happen to you, or are you going to choose it? What does this mean for your practice?
Understanding choice in your practice
Morality: avoiding the trap of solipsism or narcissism when morality is deconstructed through philosophy but not through experience
Living a victimless view without bypassing what you need to face and own about your conditioned self
Uncovering and acting from choice, compassion, and care
Guided Practice 5: Radical stillness, radical presence, radical freedom
