Since the beginning of our silent retreats at Maitri-Retreats, our format of meditation practice has been zazen, which translates into zen meditation in Japanese; za, to sit, and zen, the transliteration of dhyana, meditation in sanscrit.
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Zazen is at once a bare-bone form of meditation and at the same time it is not one. Historically, it’s a twice millennial practice passed on through generations by the Buddha as the unique gateway to liberating us humans from the rounds of birth and death and the suffering that comes from entrapment in samsara; the world of delusion and ignorance. But, it also is not meditation the way we commonly understand it.
This practice has no object as such and is not meant as a means towards reaching some end. It is not meant to take us from here, where we find ourselves, to an elsewhere where we desire to be.
Zazen in its simplicity is disarming since it is not a stepping stone to realizing some higher state of consciousness, or an enlightenment experience, whatever we may mean by these terms. It is not something we do as a preparation for something else, some projection of the mind into future. If anything, zazen helps us realize that what matters most is being fully present to and perceptive of what is happening right in this moment.
Clearly, there is a paradox at the heart of Zen practice and Zen meditation.
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The sitting that is nothing other than sitting is what this practice is about. The Japanese name for it is Shikantaza: just sitting. The emphasis here is on the word just. Just being wholeheartedly aware of body, mind and breath, as this practice of paying attention to what from moment to moment unfolds.
In the process, we become more aware of the resistances and discomforts that inevitably arise as we sit in the openness of just this moment, just this sitting, just this being. As the body carries a lot of contractions and tensions from past experiences and the mind is mostly involved with thoughts about both past and the future, it is difficult to give the present moment our full attention.
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To practice necessarily involves sitting on the edge of what is uncomfortable.
Slowly, we become intimate with the resistances, we soften into them. Noticing the arising of our cravings and aversions and the tensions they create inside. Then the next moment, in the next awareness of body-mind-breath presence to this moment returning to the just sitting. Returning to the release and ease of this just sitting.
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Zazen is the practice of paying one’s full attention to just this moment in its arising and falling as silence and stillness deepen.
Zazen is the art of just sitting beyond the projections of the mind, not being disturbed by the mind creates.
When I can just sit, just breathe, just be the being that I am, then I return quite effortlessly to a simplicity where whatever I encounter is also just the being that it is.
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What I find compelling in the Zen way of looking at things is how we slowly begin to lose interest in projects, noble as they may be, such as enlightenment or self-realization, the more we move into experiences of immediacy, the more we sense with our pores what intimacy means. Intimacy is letting go of goals, drives and strivings.
Intimacy with ourselves, intimacy with others, intimacy with the world.
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When we become intimate with our experience of the moment, a moment fully lived is timeless, we lose some of our restlessness and feel less compelled to search for something that is not here.
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Cessation of searching is serenity.