Why talking about Zen is like talking about a recipe...

August 14, 2008

I've been speaking about the San Francisco Zen Centre, because of it's relationship with Greens restaurant, and in case you were wondering about zen practice I found this on the web and wanted to share it with others...

What is zen-practice?

from a lecture by Genro Seiun Koudela, Osho

What is Zen practice? Well, it is difficult to speak about Zen, and something I really dislike doing, because you can talk, and talk and talk about Zen, but never really experience Zen quality. It is like talking about a cooking recipe. You can talk for hours about this and that kind of recipe, but you have to eat the dish in order to know what it is all about. It is the same with Zen practice.

So, talk is necessary to a certain extent, but to experience it is quite a different story. However, you may know that in Zen, you have to sit on the floor for many hours and practice zazen, as we call it. That is meditation, sitting on a cushion, but that is not Zen yet. This is just practicing zazen, which is the kind meditation that we have developed specifically in Zen.

To come to the Zen experience, you will have to do a lot of work, sitting for many years. But the time you are using in order to get to that point where you really experience Zen is not wasted, because all along on the way to the real Zen experience, you will undergo many transformations and changes – many experiences of liberation. And that is all setting the groundwork necessary for the actual Zen experience.

What the Zen experience is actually, I cannot tell you exactly in words, other than that it is something to do with your mind. Zen is by and large nothing other than mind discipline. In order to reach the level of consciousness where we can speak of Zen, you have to really work hard with your mind to prepare it to be open for the Zen experience. It is like if you plan to have a nice garden, you will have to do a lot of groundwork first – clear out the stones and the old roots, remove the weeds, and really prepare the ground and put in the seeds, then tend to the seeds, water them and make sure they are OK, that they are not hit by frost and so on. Eventually the seeds will sprout and a little plant will grow from them.

It is very similar with Zen work. We have to spent a long time just to prepare the ground, but preparing the ground is in itself very beneficial to us in our daily life. And Zen is not something that we should look upon as something special we want to do to enhance our life, but Zen is our daily life. Zen should be our everyday activity, our everyday life. It should not be something set aside for special occasions. Zen is the daily activities, the ordinary activities with which all of you are very familiar.

Now, you may ask, "well, what is Zen?" Well, Zen I would say is to do the ordinary in a very special way. Do the ordinary thing that you always have been doing, but in a different way. That is the only difference. By doing the ordinary daily things differently, you have a totally different experience. This way of living the daily life in a different way is more or less what Zen is all about.

For more on this talk, visit http://www.buddhistforbundet.no/zen/practice.html