Hi,
Reading Three Pillars of Zen.
In the monasteries they make a lot of the hara as the key to enlightenment.
Is there anything special about hara practice that can't be found in concentrating on jhana or chakras?
Is the hara just another object of meditation - could be breath, could be brow chakra, could be candle flame, could be sensations - but for some reason the Japanese elected to go with hara?
In terms of energy work is there anything special to be found there or is it just another chakra, maybe second chakra with another name?
And is the secret really nothing to do with the hara but with direct seeing.

Great question. I really don't know much specifics of Zen practice. 

I have always found that any practice that demanded I place my attention on a specific body location tended to drive me a bit nuts. There would be a phase where it just wasn't working, a phase where all of a sudden it would work and then an extremely frustrating phase where it didn't work again. I could do it much more comfortably now but it still comes with the implicit discomfort of forcing attention to take a shape. 

When I just gave it up the issue resolved itself. Since then I have basically worked with whatever shape sensation presents as and never really gone back. I'm not just saying it's annoying to hold attention on something, it is, but, there was like neurological difficulty I was having doing it, like my mind just couldn't do it sometimes and other times it could. It frustrated the hell out of me. 

There was a lot of this kind of practice in tantric stuff I was doing years ago. 

What I understand now is that as I was practicing my mind was evolving through stages/modes that had their own shape of attention and perceptual tendencies and I just needed to honor that. 

Nothing cosmic in your belly then?
I want someone to tell me they penetrated the hara and it blew their ego away and unlocked the universe.
If it doesn't then why are the zen types banging on about it?
Is it a special thing?

In Three Pillars of Zen, along with the great awakening stories, it's hara this and hara that.
Over in the other types of Buddhist monasteries - never gets a mention but awakening still happens. Which leads me to think it isn't that special.

Hara is something martial artists go on about like it gives them super powers - before getting beaten by MMA fighters, so there are a lot of big claims about it not backed up by anything.
Is it the same in the contemplation field - or is there something in it?

Tell me something encouraging :-)

Zen's hara = Taoist's lower dantian

FWIW, Angelo Dilullo got to I AM realization by focusing non-stop in the hara. On a much lower note, most of my non-dual experiences (long time ago) came from focusing there.

The three dantians and the eight chakras overlap, but they are different energy systems.

Developing the lower dantian helps anchoring your attention away from your mind (thoughts) and heart (emotions) and decrease the flight response. That's why it plays a central role in martial arts, besides being the center of mass and so boosting equilibrium and strength.

Also, focusing there helps to release excess tension or energy to the ground through your legs. In Taoism, before building up energy you need to clean the pipes so as to not get it stuck in your head or chest. 

Damo Mitchell has tons of books and videos on the topic.

Dan Cooney is a guy that posted here lots of interesting stuff with detailed instructions. 

I tend to think of it as another name for the chakra. that aspect of it has more significance in qigong or tai chi than in Chan (Zen).

To me the importance in Zen is that if you are meditating on the breath and you focus your attention on your chest, it often interferes with natural breathing and you can feel uncomfortably short of breath - so instead it is better to focus your attention on the tip of the nose or the hara where the sensation changes as you inhale and exhale. (I used to go to a Zen center for group meditation and talks and I took the 5 precepts there and the course and retreats required to take the precepts. So that is my credentials for knowing anything about Zen. Other Zen centers might teach something else.)

Turns out it's in the book.

"The ability to think and act from the hara is, like joriki, only indirectly related to satori and not synonymous with it. Satori is a
“turning about” of the mind, a psychological experience conferring inner knowledge, while hara is no more than what has been
indicated. Masters of the traditional Japanese arts are all accomplished in thinking and acting from the hara—they would not
merit the title “master” if they were not—but few if any achieve satori without Zen training. Why not? Because their cultivation of
hara is essentially for the perfection of their art and not satori, the attainment of which presupposes, as Yasutani-roshi points out in his
introductory lectures, faith in the reality of the Buddha’s enlightenment and in their own immaculate Buddha-nature."

Quite succinct.

Pretty sure these chakras and cauldrons just are old names for what we now call nervous system. Chakras being nerve ganglions and endocrine organs, and hara being the neuronally innervated intestines - third brain. There are neurons in stomach, heart and brain so that matches pretty well with some esoteric physiologies.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/

If anyone can recommend a book that analyses yogic energy physiology from the standpoint of modern physiology...?

brief outline
https://creativesoultherapies.com/blog/2018/3/10/the-chakras-and-the-nervous-system

I have had my fair share of hara superpowers. I would suggest that, if you are following Zen instructions, just follow them without trying to understand them in another context. Let the hara be something you are finding out about. In Japanese, it just means belly or gut, and is considered the seat of intuition, just as it is in English. So just start with that understanding, that you are talking about the belly, and then find out what goes on there. If you figure out what it is before you start investigating, you will never discover it. 

My hunch is that this is similar from a functional POV to the Mahasi technique, which has people use their breath at the abdomen for their primary object. There's a lot of stuff happening around your head area - thoughts, the creation of a center, generally solidity and separation, might be better to ground somewhere else, no?

From a very practical perspective, if you sit down relaxed and upright, and you allow the body to breath itself, and you lower where you are looking from straight ahead to diagonally downward, and you put your awareness into the center of your body... then there is a wonderful relaxation response that happens.

When we're busy or worried or lost in our head, doing these little adjustments really helps take the drama out of the situation --- at least it helps take away all of the extra drama that we are bringing into the situation.

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As Pepe mentioned, hara is synonymous with the lower dantien in taoism, or the "root" chakra in the the chakra system.  The lower dantien represents the energy of grounded, physical embodiment, thus cultivating a focus on it can help to balance the often mind-heavy approach of standard meditation.  

And yes it has definate correlations to our GI nervous system, vagus nerve, etc, but IME is also a unique experience all on its own - which can extend from a sense of grounded presence up to remarkable experiences of vitalizing flushes of energetic fire (there's also a clear connection with Tibetan tummo practice which involves visualizing a source of heat in the lower abdomen).

For more info on it I would recommend checking out the book The Master Key by Robert Peng.  He goes into the whole 3 dantien system and the effects and cultivation of the three dantiens.  Plus he has an epic personal story: modern qi gong master, trained from childhood in China by a realized master, did a 100 day dark chamber water fast to awaken energetic powers, now teaches out of NYC.  

Thanks for the book recommendation. What do you thnk of this sort of split between Indian and Chinese conceptions of the energy system? Do you think in the end there's any real difference?
It makes me think maybe that the two general schools have siloed themselves and limited their own potential. Or is everything found in taoism also found in various Indian yoga schools but in different language?

Wow ya big question!  I would say that there are obvious similarites, but also each tradition has unique aspects and strengths (and same goes for sub-tradations and lineages within each).  Although there are also differences in degree of emphasis and overall orientation that are much more overt.

If you study taoist qi going, you will probably focus on more direct energetic development without a greater religious context.  In something like tantric Tibetan Buddhism (which originated from Indian tantra) the commonalities are there if you know where to look but the overall context and oreitnation of practice is likely radically different.  Do they all lead the same place - I mean maybe ultimately, but like way down the line.  Best to pick whichever most appeals to you now.

These traditions have evolved over thousands of years - with a diffusion and cross-polination of ideas, but obviously nothing like what we experience today via the internet, etc.  Which I would say is more just inevitable than neccesarily limiting.  If your local religion didn't jive with you though in 500 A.D, that could certainly have been limiting.  In this bountiful modern era, for example, I have been fortunate to study a hash of teachings from Theravada, Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, etc - each of which made unique and specific contributions to my practice.  So as far as modernity goes, that lack of limitation is a major gift.