About Zen

The word Zen is a Japanese modification of the Sanskrit word Dhyana (Pali Jhana). Dhyana became Ch’an or Ch’an-na in China and Zen or Zenna in Japan (Son in Korea). Zen is originally Zen Buddhism, which is a sect of Mahayana Buddhism. According to a legend, a certain Bodhidharma from South India (Kanjeevaram) traveled to China in the 5th/6th century and taught this form of meditation. From China, Zen Buddhism spread to Korea and Japan. An ancient verse describes the Zen method, realization and transmission in this way:

A special transmission outside the scriptures
No dependence on words and letters
Directly pointing to the heart‑mind
Seeing into one’s Nature, attaining Buddhahood.

Zen Buddhism in Japan has two main branches: Soto and Rinzai. The Soto method of meditation is mainly “shikantaza” or “just sitting”; the Rinzai method is centered on koan. Koans are existential, paradoxical questions, such as: What is the sound of one hand? Or, “What was your original face before your parents were born?

Both “just sitting” and the use of koans are important paths, but koan training is better suited to realization and its refinement. Zen can only be properly learned under the guidance of a qualified master. Especially for koan training, a master is a sine qua non. The master cannot give you satori; he or she is there to guide, to challenge, to test, to confirm. In truth, the whole world is your teacher; the whole life of birth and death is your training ground.

“The task of the Zen master is not to teach Self‑Being but to convey that it cannot be taught, that no methodology is capable of bringing it about. By forcing the student to look within her/himself, however, for that mode which (though unactualized) has been there all along, the Zen master may be said to be teaching. This teaching which is a non‑teaching is Zen’s most unique pedagogy. Rarely will a Zen master say what Zen is but will inexorably express what it is not. Zen, therefore, is a teaching by negation, negating everything that the student supposes Zen to be, hoping that the student will realize that by not being any particular thing, s/he is everything; and that by not being any particular self, s/he is selflessly all selves. Negation, thus, is an affirmation which is not acquired but which happens, which is awakened as naturally as ordinary consciousness, as though it had been there all along,” John Steffny.

The heart of Zen is Satori: Awakening or Enlightenment. It is the Awakening to one’s Original Face before one was born, to the ultimate reality of all. It is an Awakening of the Heart blossoming into endless compassion for all beings. Prajna and Karuna, enlightenment and compassion, are the essence of the Zen Way and are the two sides of one realization. Zen meditation is also therapeutic; a healing and wholing of the body‑mind‑spirit; liberation, reconciliation and atonement.

To study the Buddha way is to study the self
To study the self is to ‘forget’ the self
To ‘forget’ the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.
To be enlightened by the ten thousand things is to remove the barriers between oneself and others.
No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no‑trace continues endlessly.
-Zen Master Dogen (1200‑1253) in “Genjokoan”

Zen can mean many things: Zen Buddhism, Zen meditation or method, Zen philosophy or approach to life, Zen experience or realization, Zen enlightenment or awakening, etc. Zen meditation and realization need to be differentiated from Zen Buddhism. The latter is a religious sect; the former is beyond any one particular religion. Indeed, Zen is the religion of no-religion, and in its light religions can truly be themselves. Zen as practice and realization transcends every philosophy, ideology and ism (monism, pantheism, nihilism, secularism, humanism, etc). It transcends both negation and affirmation and grounds and authenticates every reality in its suchness and uniqueness. It is the death of the old wo/man and the birth of the New Wo/Man, of the New Heaven and the New Earth. Zen, however, is not so much a theory as a practice and action – gyo (Jap.), sadhana (Sanskrit). It is practice with the master, with the sangha, and in daily life; it is practice of body, mind, and spirit; actualized in the in-between of self and the master; as well as with others: One Action of the universe.

The Great Way has no gates,
Thousands of paths enter it;
When you pass through this gateless gate,
You walk freely between heaven and earth.
-Zen Master Mumon (1183‑1260) in his preface to the Mumonkan