I Own a Zafu

Furniture for a better version of me.

Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

I own a zafu.

I own a couch, I own a TV, and I also own conventional chairs. A pretty standard package for a standard apartment. I also own a zafu, which, for people who don’t know, is a meditation butt pillow.

You can use a zafu to do lots of things. It’s non-sentient, so it won’t judge you for misusing it. It can be a gaming butt pillow if you feel like it.

But it’s a zafu.

It’s made for meditation, the quintessential polar opposite of doomscrolling and gaming. Should you indulge in those vicissitudes, you would be betraying yourself and thousands of zazen practitioners.

The zafu is a reminder, and a regular chair is not. A regular chair is fungible. There is no symbolism to it. You might as well eat while standing, no shame will ensue. A zafu is another story.

Every object in your apartment makes a silent claim about who you are. The couch says: I rest here. The desk says: I work here. The tired coffee machine says: I lack sleep. The zafu says: I’m trying. The trying is what makes it different. The zafu also makes a spiritual statement. This guy, right here, he’s probably a zazen guy. He knows the lotus stance, he knows how to spell Buddha’s first name. He probably avoids meat.

I’ve had mine for days. I’ve meditated on it, read on it, and stared at the wall on it. I’ve also briefly considered using it as a footrest. I didn’t.

The TV is the zafu’s nemesis. You’re almost mentally rewarded for not using it. You sleep more, even better. You get to do productive things, like writing, cooking, or, you know, meditating.

The TV wins most nights. It’s just math. One of them is engineered by thousands of people to capture your attention, and the other is a circle of buckwheat. The odds are not fair.

The zafu is comfy, yes, but it’s entirely friction. There is nothing to start, nothing to load, nothing to recommend. Just you, a cushion, and the uncomfortable discovery that your mind lacks the ability to shut up for 15 minutes.

I don’t know how we came to be so familiar with extremely complex tiles of pixel generators. We navigate them instinctively, fluently, without instruction. Nobody taught you how to scroll. Nobody explained the algorithm. We just know, the way we know how to breathe, how to avoid eye contact on public transport, how to pretend we’re busy when we’re not. Screens are the native language of the modern human and we are all fluent.

And yet. A round butt pillow defeats me.

No interface or tutorial. No dopamine loop engineered by a team in California. Just me, a cushion, and the instruction to sit still for at least five minutes. And somehow that’s the hard part. Somehow that’s my frontier, my Mount Everest. We sent people to the moon and we cannot close our eyes and follow our breath without mentally drafting an email to someone we don’t even like.

15 minutes of meditation shouldn’t be that hard. It’s frightening to me that it is.

The zafu is a special piece of furniture because it screams that I’m trying to be someone I’m not. I’m trying to relax, and I can’t. I’m trying to focus, and I can’t. I’m trying to commit, and I can’t. If I was good at those things the zafu wouldn’t be there in the first place.

The zafu says that I’m trying because I’m not the person I wish I was. I suspect I’ll never be. The zafu is sitting on the floor doing nothing, and I’m angry because I’m angry, stressed because I’m stressed, bored because I’m bored.

But then when I happen to actually sit on this comfy, very blue, very organic, very traditional meditation butt pillow, I forgive it. Maybe I’m even forgiving myself a little bit.

That’s a step.

Thank you for reading.