07 June 2007

The biggest knot of tension in the body is the ego.

1 comment

Caroline Ross said...

The wonderful US Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck also describes all thought (that is not useful and immediate to the current task at hand) as tension. When we are really trapped into believing what we think, she calls this 'spasm', (which is a term the fabulously uncompromising Hubert Benoit coined in his book Zen and the Psycology of Transformation.) What we cling onto and really believe about ourselves, that which we are totally knotted around in painful but sometimes oblivious spasm - that could certainly describe ego. Unless we acknowledge and work with this this tension, to somehow melt it, we remain essentially bound in ourselves. I immediately think of the image of someone totally muscle-bound and yet smugly delighted with their virtually useless but hugely pumped and oiled limbs...