What Is Zen?
Understanding the merging of wisdom, meditation, and mindfulness
Originally Zen was a specific Japanese approach to Buddhism.
Most schools and traditions in Buddhism present the basic teachings of a man named Siddhartha. However they often “bury” those teachings under rites, rituals, ceremonies, sutras, temples, a type of clergy class, and sutras (manuals and collections of aphorisms attributed to the Buddha or those that followed him).
Zen, depending on the school, emphasizes rigorous self-control, meditation practice, and insight into the inherent nature that exists in all beings.
In Zen practice, one is focused on Awakening or Enlightenment, a process of uncovering the inherent or transcendental nature of reality.
Zen, now often used separately from the term Zen Buddhism, is a very pragmatic spiritual practice. Not really a religion, a theory, or dogma, the fundamental idea of Zen is to surrender the need to find the truth in external people, places, and things and fulfill our spiritual needs internally.
There are eightfold paths in traditional Zen Buddhism. These are:
· right view,
· right resolve,
· right speech,
· right conduct,
· right livelihood,
· right effort,
· right mindfulness,
· right concentration.
The purpose of Zen is to come to an understanding of yourself. What are you? and who are you?
The whole point of Zen is to understand what it means to be human, and what does it mean to be you, as a human. There is no one way to do this. Students of Zen may use chanting, walking, bowing (prostrations), and even sitting meditation.
Much of the recent popular interest in mindfulness is deeply influenced by Zen.
Mindfulness is the practice of purposely bringing one’s attention to experiences occurring in the present moment without judgment.
Though definitions and techniques of mindfulness are wide-ranging, Buddhist traditions explain what constitutes mindfulness such as how past, present, and future moments arise and cease as momentary sense impressions and mental phenomena.
The easiest way to apply mindfulness is to separate what you want from what you need, and as you do what needs to be done, do so mindfully.
Ultimately these practices are meant to simplify our lives for a little while, so we can better understand our minds, and where our suffering comes from. Eventually, we can perceive that we create our suffering ourselves. War, peace, heaven, hell: all these come from the mind.
So what are you doing, just now? How do you keep your mind, just now? What is that?
If you only keep that question, “what is this? I Don’t know….” very strongly, then eventually your mind and your life will become clear. Then second by second, moment by moment you will begin to become more effective, efficient, precise productive, and self-aware. Functioning in this way opens the door to your true nature.
There are two main schools of Zen: Soto and Renzai. The latter embraced the concept of the Kōan, a tool for freeing the mind of “dualistic” thinking (separation of “self” from “other”)
Zen, which has Japanese origins, eventually split among its Chinese Chan origins. On the surface, the anti-intellectual rhetoric of Chan and Zen Masters who focused on stories and Kōans was no match for the intellectual discourse of those known today as neo-Confucianists. But for the Zen teachers, it didn’t matter, for their understanding of “truth” came from inner awareness, not intellectualism.
The recorded encounter dialogues, and the kōan collections derived from this genre, mark a shift from solitary practice to the interaction between master and student.
The essence of Awakening and Enlightenment core to Zen came to be identified with the interaction between masters and students. Whatever insight meditation might bring, its verification was always interpersonal. In effect, Awakening and Enlightenment came to be understood not so much as an insight, but as a way of acting in the world with other people. What we would now call, social intelligence.
This mutual inquiry of the meaning of these encounters of masters and students of the past gave students a role model.
One looked at the enlightened activities of one’s lineal forebears in order to understand one’s own identity […] taking the role of the participants and engaging in their dialogues instead
Many Zen traditions work with kōans, stories, dialogue, questions, or statements, the meaning of which cannot be understood by rational thinking but may also be accessible through intuition or lateral thinking.
Kōan training requires a qualified teacher who has the ability to judge a disciple’s depth of attainment
When the Chán-tradition was introduced in Japan, Japanese monks had to master the Chinese language and specific expressions used in the kōans-training. The desired “spontaneity” expressed by enlightened masters required a thorough study of the Chinese language and poetry. Japanese Zen imitated the Chinese “syntax and stereotyped norms”.
In China, the officially recognized monasteries belonging to the Gozan (Five Mountain System) continued the old Chinese system. Senior monks were supposed to compose Chinese verse in a complex style of matched counterpoints known as bienli wen. It took a lot of literary and intellectual skills for a monk to succeed in this system.
In some provincial temples where there was less control by the state, monasteries developed “more accessible methods of Kōan instruction”.
This instruction had three features:
1. A standardized koan-curriculum;
2. A standardized set of answers based on stereotypes Chinese sayings;
3. A standardized method of secretly guiding students through the curriculum of Kōans and answers.
By standardizing the koan-curriculum every generation of students proceeded to the same series of koans. Students had to memorize a set number of stereotyped sayings, agyō, “appended words”. The proper series of responses for each kōan were taught by the master in private instruction-sessions to selected individual students who would inherit the dharma lineage — become a successor to their Master.
A Finals Thought
In the eighteenth century, the Rinzai school became dominated by a strong emphasis on Kōans study as a means to gain profound insight and an Awakened state (Kenshō).
Author: Lewis Harrison is a serial entrepreneur, and an Independent Scholar with a passion for knowledge, innovation, personal development, self-improvement, problem-solving, and being happy. He teaches Transmodern Zen and is the creator of Harrison’s Applied Game Theory, an executive coaching system. His website is AskLewisGameTheory.com
“I am always exploring trends, areas of interest, and solutions to build new stories upon. Again, if you have any ideas you would like me to write about, just email me at LewisCoaches@gmail.com.
You can find all of my Medium Posts at Lewisoaches.Medium.com
………Lewis
