The word “Zen” means meditation. However, Zen meditation is unlike Hindu, Christian, and Islamic meditation. It requires no belief in a creed, a guru, a savior, a prophet, or a god. Belief in an outside entity is a roadblock to Zen practice; the Buddha is nothing other than the true self of every apparent independent individual. There are no two things; nothing, absolutely nothing, is outside, nothing is out there. Everything is mind. In the concluding lines of an ancient Buddhist chant:
This moment arises from mind. This moment itself is mind.
Those two sentences contain the most liberating knowledge ever reduced to the written word. Those two sentences reveal the open secret of everything.
If you are not a Zen practitioner, you have no idea what it’s all about. If you have read books like The Dharma Bums you have been misled as to what Zen is.
I once visited a self-proclaimed Zen group in St. Petersburg, Florida. A bunch of guys sat around, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, eating chicken and listening to an audio tape recorded by some guy who kept mentioning steak houses as he tried to make whatever foolish point he was trying to make. “Zen is anything goes,” they explained to me.
Zen, however, is a highly disciplined practice having nothing to do with self-absorption, self-gratification, and licentious, undisciplined behavior. These people had confused Zen with its opposite.
But Zen is not a revealed religion. It does not present a Truth and ask us to believe it. The Buddha challenged people not to believe his teachings but to test them. He said to follow the teachings that passed the test of practice and to drop the others. Blind belief, blind faith, plays no role in Zen.
The Buddha made it clear that he was a man, not a god. Having entered into parinirvana, he is extinct as far as the human dharma realm is concerned. It follows that prayer to the Buddha or worship of the Buddha makes no sense.
Zen is not a conventional philosophy. A conventional philosophy has a worldview, an outlook as to how one should think and live. Zen is about un-knowing, dismantling neat packages of thought that purport to explain things.
Liberation does not come from an accumulation of mundane knowledge; it is a dropping off of body and mind. A large accumulation of knowledge-based opinions is a hindrance to awakening.
Zen is non-religious and non-philosophic. Zen is a practice. Roshi Philip Kapleau explained that Zen is a religion only to the extent that those who practice it have faith that they are creating the conditions that allow awakening to occur. The practice of Zen opens the gateless gate.
Books about Zen philosophy are bunk. The Buddha taught that metaphysical speculation is a waste of time. Practice is the answer to every question, not philosophy.
Going to church might make us feel good, especially if the preacher tells jokes or convinces us that we are somehow better than those who don’t go to church. Unlike church-attendance, Zen is active work, not passive entertainment. Going to church gives us a nice feeling that quickly fades. We don’t practice Zen so that we can get a nice feeling.
We don’t practice Zen to get anything. If we practice Zen to get something, we are not practicing Zen. We practice Zen to practice Zen.
