I'm really painfully bad at explaining it, as I should be.
Zen is short for Zen Buddhism. It is sometimes called a religion and sometimes called a philosophy. Choose whichever term you prefer; it simply doesn't matter.
One of the central points of Zen is intuitive understanding.
Another is zazen, sitting meditation, involving not closing oneself off from the world, but opening oneself to it. Clearing one's mind and increasing awareness is central. The final result of which is 'satori' or enlightenment.
Zen is not any worship of a diety or being, even the Buddha, who just showed a way and was nothing more or less than a man. It's a method and philosophy of coming to grips of being a human and part of the world, never separated. From what I've seen, those who excel at it are the most contented, comfortable and enjoyable people to be around.
For some, the use of 'Koans' allows them to break past mental barriers that they have and spring forward into new realizations of themself. For me, my one 'true' (in my own reckoning) instance of Zen was just such a time concentrating on a koan. I will endeavour to explain it, though doing so is really impossible.
The koan was: "If you call this a stick you conceal it; if you say it is not a stick you deny it. What is it?"
I spend an hour in zazen, meditating on this. As best I can understand, my mind 'snapped' like a chewing gum bubble popping and I had an immediate urge to go hop in the shower. As soon as I did, the water was water pouring over me, but it was also the stick pouring over me. I saw the nature of the stick itself, past any names or concepts of a 'stick' that we learn and believe over time.
Think of that this way...without language or human-created ideas, what are the things around us. Past that, what are we?
Gassho,
Greg |
