The Way of Zen

Theory compact

May 28

We must have beginner's mind, free from possessing anything, a mind that knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. Before the rain stops we hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow we see snowdrops and some new growth.

— Shunryu Suzuki[1]

The Way is inseparable from everything else. If it is something separate it cannot be called the Way.

— Master Boshan[2]

What’s Zen practice about? “Why are we even doing this?”—this question was raised by the abbot of a Dutch Zen monastery, Tenkei Coppins, during a somewhat arduous practice period. His suggestion: “The Buddha is often called omniscient which, I think, means that he always knew how to make the best of a situation. Wouldn’t that be great, to always know what to do? That to me is real happiness.” And, according to Tenkei, it's something that we can work towards with Zen practice. He also writes:

According to the Buddha, who lived over 2,500 years ago, the cause of our confusion primarily lies in wrong perception. We simply do not hear what we need to hear, do not see what we need to see[…]. Generally, we do not respond to what is actually happening but react impulsively, led by our own misguided projections and highly conditioned ideas about what is going on. Fortunately, we can do something about it. It is possible to clear out our channels of perception and open ourselves up to a broader perspective that allows us to see more clearly what we should do.[3]

One thing that’s at the core of Zen practice is clearing and opening our hearts and minds.[4] So, Zen practice is (at least also) about observing smoothly, thinking freely, and learning to accept and understand things as they are[1]—in other words, it’s about mindful and adaptive sensemaking. Moreover, when our minds become open and soft, we begin to perceive more readily how all things, including ourselves, are interconnected and mutually dependent. And that tells us much about how we wish to partake. How then does Zen practice empower such transformation?

On a usual day in a typical Zen monastery, bells will ring you awake at about 4.30 am. Half an hour later, you sit in the silence of the meditation hall, for about two hours. Morning ceremonies follow, with incense burned, chanting, and lots of bows. Before breakfast, you might get some time to study Buddhist sutras. The day will fill with samu (all the work required to keep the monastery going), meditation, and meals that adhere to lengthy traditional procedures. Plenty little rituals serve as continuous reminders to return to mindfulness. The day ends with a final long meditation session after dinner and the chanting of the Boddhisatva vows that Zen practitioners aspire to live by. All these various elements of Zen practice—including exacting monastic schedules—help us to develop the meditative mind which lets the compulsive clamor of our desires fade away and glances beyond the limited views they impose on us.
The practice need not always look like what you find in a monastery—the Japanese term “zen” originally just means mediation. Nevertheless, Zen Buddhism brings all a religion’s abundance of meaning and historical baggage. It emerged in India, fused with Taoism in China, grew in Japan, and only recently arrived in Europe. If we strip it of its cultural heritage to make it more conveniently importable, we lose the wisdom of practitioners of over 2500 years and the unique pathways they point out for us. We lose much of what’s beautiful about it, and we lose what’s going beyond big business mindfulness. So, as we inquire what Zen practice can mean to us today, I’d say we don’t simplify but work piecemeal on a many-voiced whole that’s too big for us to know.

What is the meditative mind of Zen? Meditation, or zazen, is center stage in Zen practice. There are various types of meditation in the many branches of Chinese and Japanese Zen, for instance, mindfulness of breath or breath counting, working with turning words or koans, and natural awareness or just sitting. Seated meditation is a focused, formal practice of the quality of mind that ultimately we wish to carry into all our activities. One critical aspect of this quality of mind is stable, non-judgmental attention to what’s happening right now—in other words: mindfulness. As Shunryu Suzuki says,

When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely.[1]

In Zen, however, a meditative mind does not mean stopping all thinking. Thinking is essential to human life. Instead, we try to let go of the attachments that entice thought to grip tightly and fuel its ruminative cycles. Zen master Kosho Uchiyama called this “opening the hand of thought.”[5] Indeed, that our mind be open is the distinct endeavor of Zen practice.
Uchiyama’s successor, Shohaku Okumura, writes:

For me, this is the meaning of our practice of zazen: letting go of thought. Letting go of thought is letting go of my yardstick. But this doesn’t mean I should discard this yardstick because it is all I can use. Letting go doesn’t mean it disappears; it is still there, but we know it is relative and limited. That is the way we can see things in a broader perspective. Our minds become more flexible.[6]

Letting go of thoughts implies letting go of our yardstick, that is, of what we think we know. Knowing interprets and gives direction by canceling other interpretations and directions.[7] Letting go of knowing means being ready to drop what we think we know and to remain happily unknowing where we do not need to know something to get by. Thus, we can broaden our view of a web of interconnections that dissolves rigid conceptual boundaries.
From this viewpoint, we can gain an insight that’s crucial to Zen. In Suzuki’s words:

The reality of life goes beyond my idea of myself as a small individual. Fundamentally, our self is living out nondual life that pervades all living things. The self is universal existence, everything that exists. [W]e usually lose sight of the reality of universal self, clouding it over with thoughts originating from our small individual selves. When we let go of our thoughts, this reality of life becomes pure and clear. Living out this reality of life as it is—that is, waking up and practicing beyond thinking—is zazen.[1]

Zen practice can transform our sensemaking and relationship to thought. We learn to adopt, generate, and drop meanings with greater freedom, dwell in ambiguity comfortably, and move along the flux of events with versatility. Zen can teach us to refrain from escaping to reassuring yet constraining certainties where the world refuses ordering. Ultimately it demands that we become free of its own teachings as well—“Kill the Buddha!,” Zen master Linji exclaims.[8]
As existential philosopher Martin Heidegger too argued, if we dwell in ambiguity, in anxiety and wonder where things are at their most nascent yet undefined—if thus we remain in the open then there is space for transformative meaning to arise. Here, life may be “lived on the cusp of its own dissolution, its being nothing that can be stated, or classified, or named, but which is there and which vibrates, or shimmers, or bristles, with concealed possibilities.”[9]
Zen provides the practice and the teachings to work towards such transformation. It helps us to find clarity and calm amidst constant change where not even our meanings persist, where every moment is—can be—a new beginning. To close in words of Dōgen, founder of Japanese Sōtō Zen: