Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Sitting’ occupies a remarkably charged conceptual territory, functioning simultaneously as physical posture, contemplative act, and existential statement. The term appears most densely in Zen and Buddhist-adjacent literature, where zazen—seated meditation—is treated not as a preparatory technique but as enlightenment itself. Dogen’s radical formulation, transmitted through Cooper, Brazier, and Watts, insists that ‘just to sit is to have attainment from the beginning,’ dissolving the instrumental distinction between practice and realization. This non-dual position stands in productive tension with classical yogic traditions (Bryant, Patanjali), where sitting firmly—sthira—serves as a necessary but subordinate prerequisite for fixing the mind. A further axis of meaning emerges in Jungian and depth-psychological writing, where Jung’s childhood game of sitting on a stone—uncertain whether he was the sitter or the stone—becomes a foundational image for the dialogical self and subject-object permeability. The body-schema literature (Ogden, Gallagher) situates sitting among locomotor and postural phenomena governed by the body schema. Across traditions, the act of sitting condenses questions of stillness, embodiment, identity, and the relationship between effortful practice and spontaneous realization—making it a genuinely polysemic term in the comparative study of contemplative psychology.
‘To practice [za]zen is to get free of body and mind. Just to sit is to have attainment from the beginning’
This passage advances Dogen’s radical non-dual thesis that sitting in zazen is not a means to enlightenment but is identical with it, making sitting the central soteriological act.
, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019thesis
‘How can sitting in zazen make you into a buddha?’ … he verifies and validates Baso’s zazen as expressive of realization
Through the tile-polishing koan, Cooper shows how Dogen rehabilitates sitting not as instrumental technique but as the direct expression of realized practice, resolving the apparent critique of zazen.
, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019thesis
Sit either in the full-lotus or half-lotus position… sit upright in correct bodily posture, neither inclining to the left nor to the right, neither leaning forward nor backward.
This detailed prescriptive account of zazen posture grounds the abstract non-dual claims about sitting in precise somatic and ritual discipline, demonstrating that formal correctness and metaphysical attainment are inseparable.
, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019thesis
Both Rinzai and Soto Zen as we find them in Japanese monasteries today put enormous emphasis on za-zen or sitting meditation… To practice Zen is, to all intents and purposes, to practice za-zen
Watts establishes that across the principal Zen lineages, sitting meditation is functionally synonymous with Zen practice itself, though the historical record complicates this identification.
, The Way of Zen, 1957thesis
Sitting on the toilet, sitting on the zafu, sitting on or behind the couch – no difference! It is in this ordinariness of simple, everyday activities that self-realization truly takes place.
Cooper extends Dogen’s non-dualism to collapse the distinction between formal seated practice and quotidian life, making the act of sitting a universal site of realization.
, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019thesis
Generally, we sit for thirty or forty minutes at a time. Shorter sitting may be better for beginners. Longer sittings may be punctuated by slow walking meditation
Brazier provides a practical phenomenology of zazen duration and the management of physical discomfort, situating sitting within the therapeutic and contemplative arc of Zen practice.
, Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind, 1995supporting
arise by trying to acquire it; it just comes by itself when one is sitting and watching without any purpose in mind–even the purpose of getting rid of purpose.
Watts describes the paradox of purposeless sitting in Zen meditation halls, where the absence of goal-oriented intention is precisely the condition under which insight arises.
, The Way of Zen, 1957supporting
posture is a limb of the actual goal of yoga to the extent that it allows the meditator to sit firmly, sthira, and comfortably, sukha, for meditation… one cannot fix one’s attention onto something if one is sleeping or running about; one must sit
Bryant articulates the classical yogic understanding of sitting as a necessary but subordinate preparatory condition for meditation, in contrast to Zen’s identification of sitting with realization itself.
, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009supporting
sitting firmly is a prerequisite for fixing the mind. Moving around requires effort and is distracting, says the great theistic Vedānta commentator Rāmānuja, and lying down provokes sleep; therefore, one should sit on some support without any bodily effort.
The Yoga Sutra commentary tradition positions sitting as the mediating posture between distracted movement and sleep-inducing recumbence, establishing its instrumental rationale within Indian contemplative epistemology.
, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009supporting
‘I am sitting on top of this stone and it is underneath.’ But the stone also could say ‘I’ and think: ‘I am lying here on this slope and he is sitting on top of me.’ The question then arose: ‘Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?’
Jung’s childhood stone-sitting game becomes a depth-psychological image for subject-object reversibility and the fluidity of self-identity, making the act of sitting a catalyst for early dialogical and individuation experiences.
, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963supporting
‘Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?’ This question always perplexed me, and I would stand up, wondering who was what now.
Smythe reads Jung’s sitting game as an early instance of dialogical positioning of self, in which the act of sitting materializes the reversibility between subject and object central to Jungian psychology.
, The Dialogical Jung: Otherness within the Self, 2013supporting
Every night at Thuy’s bedtime, I sit in meditation. I let her sleep in the same room, near where I am sitting… Every night Thanh Thuy sees me sit.
Thich Nhat Hanh presents sitting meditation as a quietly transmitted practice embedded in domestic life, illustrating how the seated posture carries meaning beyond formal instruction.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988supporting
‘I am sitting on top of this stone and it is underneath.’ But the stone could also say ‘I’ and think: ‘I am lying here on this slope and he is sitting on top of me.’
Von Franz situates Jung’s stone-sitting as a symbolic encounter with the Self in material form, connecting the phenomenology of sitting to the alchemical stone and to individuation mythology.
, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975supporting
Locomotive | walking, sitting | body schema (body image in IW)
Gallagher’s taxonomy classifies sitting as a locomotive movement governed by the body schema, providing a phenomenological neuroscience frame that complements contemplative accounts of seated posture.
, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005aside
Cal āsane sthitasya, the one who is seated on calāsana, that seat which is moving… on horseback or a tonga or a scooter… The body must be moving.
The Vijnana Bhairava tradition inverts the stillness imperative by prescribing seated practice on moving vehicles, using bodily agitation to destabilize ordinary consciousness and induce non-dual awareness.
, Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self-Realization, 1979aside
They say that the indefinite, ‘Someone is sitting,’ comes out true, when the definite, ‘This one is sitting,’ is found to be true.
Stoic dialecticians use ‘sitting’ as a canonical logical example to illustrate the truth-conditions of definite versus indefinite propositions, without psychological or contemplative import.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987aside