Welcome to my Zen Buddhism page
What is Zen Buddhism?
Zen Buddhism is a branch of Buddhism currently practiced in Japan and throughout the world. Its two main branches are Rinzai (best known for koan practice) and Soto. I am a Soto Zen practitioner.
The Zen Patriarch Bodhidharma set out from India over a thousand years ago. He wound up in China, where he sat in a cave above a valley for several years. There are many tales of his stern practice. In one story, he became so upset that his eyes kept closing that he cut off his eyelids and threw them to the ground. In some versions, tea plants sprouted from them and he discovered the ability of tea to combat sleepiness. Once he achieved enlightenment, he went down to the valley and became the leader of a Buddhist monastery. That monastery is now known as Shaolin.
The basic hallmark of Zen is that the core practice is the same thing that the Buddha did to achieve enlightenment - sitting meditation or zazen.
Eihei Dogen, a Japanese Zen student, went to China to study, and wound up studying Chan, the style based on Bodhidharma's practices. He brought that practice back to Japan, where he founded a school of Buddhism now called Soto Zen.
What are some of the basic practices of Zen Buddhism?
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Zen Buddhism has many forms and rituals, including chanting, wearing sitting robes, and formal and detailed ways of doing things, mostly designed to help the student focus on the here and now. Here are a few of those practices. |
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| zazen | sitting meditation | Zen is simple. Just sit. Shoes Outside the Door, Michael Downing |
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| bowing | includes formal and informal bows | Bowing is a very serious practice. You should be prepared to bow even in your last moment; when you cannot do anything except bow, you should do it. Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, Shunryu Suzuki |
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| oryoki | a formal meal ceremony which was the precursor to the tea ceremony | For the uninitiated, oryoki is a baffling combo of a meal and a shell game ...Properly performed, it is an elegant ceremony. Nothing is wasted - not a grain of rice or a drop of water, not even a word. Shoes Outside the Door, Michael Downing |
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More on Zazen from Shunryu Suzuki:
The most important thing in taking the zazen posture is to keep your spine straight...You should not be tilted sideways, backwards, or forwards. You should be sitting straight up as if you were supporting the sky with your head. This is not just form or breathing. It expresses the key point of Buddhism. It is a perfect expression of your BUddha nature. If you want true understanding of Buddhism, you should practice this way. These forms are not a means of obtaining the right state of mind. To take this posture itself is the purpose of our practice. When you have this posture, you have the right state of mind, so there is no need to try to attain some special state. When you try to attain something, your mind starts to wander about somewhere else. When you do not try to attain anything, you have your own body and mind right here.
More on oryoki from Michael Downing:
It goes something like this: You start the game with three nested bowls, a pair of chopsticks, a little wooden paddle with a cotton tip, and a cloth or straw place mat - all of which are wrapped like a gift in a generous napkin, whose ends are knotted so the tails stick up and the whole package can be quickly undone. If you are not expert, it is not so easy to undo the knot, spread the cloth, and organize your bowls before the servers start zipping around with the first of three vats - say, vegetable gruel, some sweet potatoes or scrambled eggs, and maybe a salad. The servers arrive at your place long before your bowls are properly aligned...You can waste a lot of time surveying your neighbors' arrangements, and, thus, barely get a bite to eat. There are also some secret hand signals you have to master to indicate to the servers whether you want the soup, and how much, and if you don't give the proper Stop! sign, you are supplied with way too much gruel or sweet potatoes, and then the lickety-split meal is ending and someone is standing before you with a giant kettle of boiling water, which is aimed at your biggest bowl (which should be empty by now, but you took way too much gruel; learn the hand signals). Here's where the little paddle comes into play; you use it like a big Q-tip to swish and swab the hot water in each bowl in succession - your oryoki will not be otherwise cleaned for a week - and then you drink the dregs, and stack and wrap the bowls up as fast as you can.
More on bowing from Terry Dobson :
I once saw an incident on a little mountain spur railway that wound deep through the Japanese Alps, passing little hamlets of houses clinging to cliffs.
It was Saturday morning. People got on and off the train. There were old people going to market, farmers with their chickens and pigs, and a lot of college kids on a mountain-climbing vacation. The sun was streaming in through the window. Everybody was happy.
The college kids had their gear stuffed up in the baggage rack, mostly rucksacks with ice axes tied to them. They were singing German mountain-climbing songs with Japanese accents, which I found greatly amusing. Across from me was this beautiful old bald man dozing in the warm sun. When the train stopped, most of the kids got up to get off. One of them was next to me; he yanked his rucksack off the rack and the ice axe fell like a guillotine right into the beautiful old man's bald head.
I froze. The axe clattered to the floor. The old man woke up and clutched his head. Blood started squirting from the wound. He looked up at the kid, who was absolutely aghast. The old man saw that the boy had no idea what to do. He reached down, grabbed the ice axe, and handed it to the kid with a bow. He said, "Have a good day. Enjoy your climb." How is that for deep humility?
I hope that when I get to be that age and have an ice axe in my head, I'll remember to bow.
It's a lot like dancing...an aikido journey, by Terry Dobson, Riki Moss, and Jan E. Watson.
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