What is Zen Practice?

Zen is the Way of meeting yourself as you really are, opening up a growing wisdom and depth of the inner life through a practice of stillness, receptiveness and a profound agreement with what is. When you trust yourself enough to finally let yourself go into the inconceivable – to do in the midst of living what we do when we die, in fact - the nature of who you are and what this really is breaks open, and that is called realization (literally, ‘becoming real’, ‘actualising reality’, with nothing left standing in the way of that). This inconceivable is also very simple and plain – not separate from the lid of the teapot, the shape of your knuckles, the steam rising, the call of the mopoke, the sob of someone’s laughter. Fortunately, it surrounds you in every detail of your being and your existence. How can we wake up to this?

	Upside Down Zen Chapter One Breath Like Mind, Like Water

For a detailed introduction by the teacher to the fundamentals of Zen meditation, we recommend you read 'Breath Like Mind, Like Water', from Susan Murphy 2004 book, Upside Down Zen, published by Lothian Books, Melbourne.

 

Zazen and mindfulness

The practice of this inner quiet and still openness in formal meditation is called zazen, and the form of it includes seated meditation and walking meditation practised inside a shared form of ritual mindfulness, or the offering of full attention to this very moment, this very act of being here now. The practice of this Way of being (being here, being now) in the midst of ordinary life is called mindfulness, and it is an ever expanding, ever instructive live relationship to the world and to your own life. Radiating out from a core of intensive meditation experience formed and explored in regular sitting, and at greater depths in meditation retreats, mindfulness has the power to transform your relationships, your stance in the world, your responsiveness (compassion) and sense of responsibility (engagement), your work, your art, your imagination, becoming your true self in every part of accepting, living, and letting go this brief and precious life.

a habit to break all habit

The process is assisted by forming a habit of daily sitting, that is supported by sitting regularly in the company of others who are committed to forging a path of practice in their lives, and by attending sesshin (silent 7-day meditation-focussed retreats) whenever possible. Meeting the mystery of yourself as you really involves repeatedly renewing a powerful intention to bring yourself to stillness and offer yourself to the unknown – letting the practice teach you how to step past the strictures of self in ten thousand ways. If you don’t practice the Way, you can’t experience this, you can’t see past your thoughts and fears and find out what happens when you finally let it fall away. No-one has forever – time goes, that’s it! Commitment to a path that seems to bring you home to your self is the first waking up to this fact. Faithfully followed, it will teach you how to entrust yourself to what is, and blossom there - break open into light, wake up completely.

Unknowing

Happiness is no more than lending yourself to what is happening, in the most creative and imaginative way you can discover. The creative edge, the live and surprising edge of your actual life right now, as every artist knows, always lies at the boundary of not-knowing, and involves learning how to depend on what you don’t know. The Zen path is often called the crooked path of wisdom, because it is resolutely nothing but the direct experiential path of no-self, not-knowing, the radical not-doing of the self. It has nothing to explain. Just like poetry.

Lessons from emptiness

Koans are the peculiar Zen way of speaking directly from reality instead of presuming to explain it. While they may seem frustrating, this is because they refuse any part of our ordinary way of breaking things down and ‘making sense’ of them. They speak words of emptiness and trust us to hear them, and to realise that emptiness for ourselves - in fact, as ourselves. Open to all who walk the path of Zen is the immense and unique experience of exploring these lessons from emptiness, intimately meeting with the old masters of Zen, and enjoying their freedom as our own immediate life. A koan is not a ‘riddle’ and you don’t ‘solve ‘ it. You let it rearrange you back to an original simplicity that is shared by rocks and clouds, starfish and blue whales, and even human beings.