What is Zen?
This text is an excerpt from my book The Secret Book of Zen.
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Zen assumes that all people are already enlightened. Therefore, when practicing Zen we do not need to seek or gain anything more. Our rational thinking mind prevents us from reaching this conclusion. For this reason, the Zen method assumes that the human mind has been filled, since earliest childhood, with false projections, constructs, and ideas. These ideas make us believe in an imaginary world. In this way we live in a dream world, without realizing it. This dream world causes suffering, grief, and pain. It creates the feeling in us that we are alienated from ourselves. It makes us depressed and moody. It prevents us from sleeping properly. It makes us suffer from performance anxiety. It leads to a lack of energy and to problems with our partners, children, parents and other people. It feeds our egos. It causes us to fear our own death. It makes us hate and kill.
Some of the techniques Zen uses are mindfulness, concentration and meditative awareness. They help us break through to our true nature and the true reality of all things, overcome our fear of death, and live in a permanently liberated state. Therefore all we need to do initially is to let go of our confused ego-based mind state, break through this self-generated dream world, and recognize that we have already been enlightened the whole time.
Human beings have been seeking their true nature since beginningless time. The goal of Zen is to enable people to directly experience this true nature. This means that Zen offers the pure experience of people’s true nature, far removed from all illusions and delusion; it proves that direct experience is possible in this world. In Zen, man's true nature is called true nature, Buddha-nature, or emptiness. The term emptiness should not be understood as meaning the absence of something; instead, it refers to nature, principle, or primal ground. According to Buddha's teachings, not only people but all living beings have Buddha-nature at their core. Thus, all living creatures seek this liberated state of happiness and harmony. But it is only granted to us humans to reconnect with our true nature within us.
Our thinking-consciousness that separates us from our Buddha-nature is responsible for our confused projections and ideas. It plays a new film for us day after day, which mesmerizes us. This film consists of our thoughts and feelings, which, unbeknown to us, produce our ego. Since we are simply not aware of that, we are totally absorbed, spellbound, by this film which only makes us believe that we are seeing the true reality. With Zen, we learn to distinguish between that film and reality. Among other things, we learn to become observers of the film. The film is not true reality; true reality can only be found behind the scenes. True reality is free of all delusions and is devoid of such mere appearances. Once we have felt this deep inside ourselves through satori, and have seen right through it, we are truly awakened to the true nature of all things. That is why satori is also known in this book as awakening. A Zen student should therefore first try to achieve the state of satori.
In this book, I distinguish between the following important mental states of Zen, which must be experienced successively:
- satori (awakening)
- enlightenment
- nirvana
Satori leads to an awakened state of consciousness. Most people try out Zen because they are afraid of death and want to clarify the question of the meaning of life itself. Instead of believing, they want to feel. They want to experience the truth within themselves. These questions are answered by the mystical experience of satori. Satori causes us to have a spiritual awakening and be one with the emptiness. Many students finish their Zen practice at that point; but for some, the experience of satori is not enough. They want more. Such students must undergo a mental purification stage after satori in order to attain true enlightenment and nirvana. Nirvana is synonymous with unshakable serenity, tranquility and peace. If you have an enlightened state of mind, it will support you in all life situations; all problems simply bounce off you. There are no real problems for those who are enlightened. If you can maintain this condition permanently, you have entered nirvana.
The path leading to enlightenment and nirvana requires that we let go. We must let go of old ideas, opinions, truths, behavior patterns, and convictions. We must let go of both our ego and our rational mind. We must let go of letting go, and ultimately of everything that we think is important, and of what still supports our lives. Once we have let go of everything, we can truly attain satori, enlightenment, and nirvana. After that, we are returned to living in a state of unimaginable riches and glory.
The special feature of Zen
This text is an excerpt from my book The Secret Book of Zen.
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By means of his original teachings, Buddha wanted to end, or at least improve and make more bearable, the painful lives of people. He attempted this by means of the meditative awareness of the divine. However a number of Buddhist sects which developed after his death have added to his initial teachings various techniques, gods and other rituals as tools. Over time, the Buddhist teachings became greatly expanded and quite colorful and diverse. After some time, some Buddhists grouped together who wanted to return to the essence of the teachings of Buddha: namely terminating painful lives. They called their movement Chan, and reminded themselves that Buddha had attained enlightenment through meditation. Therefore, the Chan movement acknowledged that tools such as recitations or the worship of saints could help along the path, but they had little to do any longer with the initial teachings of the Buddha. So the followers of Chan turned away from “bloated" Buddhism and searched again where Buddha himself had found redemption: in meditative insight in the here and now. Chan became Zen. Although Zen still belongs to the Mahayana school, today it aims to return to its origins, and for this reason it rejects any kind of saint or doctrine, even those of Buddhism itself. This is because Zen consists of the teaching of emptiness.
If one is looking for a comparison, Zen is perhaps what Buddha experienced intuitively. What he said about this is what constitutes the Theravada or Mahayana school. It was already distorted by the attempt to express it in words. And thus, Zen is neither Mahayana nor Theravada. Zen is Zen. Zen represents a direct, mystical access to emptiness, and is basically not even Buddhism, but instead transcends religion. The important thing in Zen is not to spend hours reciting the scriptures. Zen even believes that all writings should be disregarded, because everybody can find true reality only within themselves, not in writings or recitations. Such tools and aids may be useful, but satori or enlightenment can never be found by spending hours reciting or reading writings. The same is true for this book. This book can only show you the way; you alone can experience it.
In the true essence of the teaching, Zen leads directly to the emptiness of satori, enlightenment, and nirvana. However, this teaching of emptiness is also very hard to understand -- precisely because it must likewise be experienced, and yet cannot be described. For this very reason, Zen made, and makes use today, of the typical Mahayana tools such as holy buddhas and bodhisattvas. All of these aids have their uses and serve a purpose, but they did not originally belong to the essential teachings of Zen.
In Zen, nothing more actually needs to be done than to sit down and let go of the rational-thinking ego-mind. One can then access the intuitive truth of emptiness and one’s own Buddha-nature. Zen therefore assumes that liberation already exists within the seeker and does not first need to be developed or obtained. In this way, Zen not only calls interpretations of Buddhism into question, but also our thinking mind. It is in some way a radical, anti-authoritarian school, without, however, disregarding the other paths or discounting them as being insignificant or null and void. Zen is only one path and can by no means be the only true path for all seekers, just as Buddhism itself cannot be. Zen is of the opinion that we can gain access to our Buddha-nature only in a direct way, without getting involved with insignificant trivialities. The original Zen has basically no doctrine of Buddhism, karma, rebirth, or any other Buddhist concept.
As already described, Zen places great significance on meditation, because only in meditation can you identify yourself and get rid of the ego. Zen trains our consciousness to be aware of nothingness. In this nothingness satori, and later enlightenment and nirvana, can take place. This is done by purifying the consciousness in meditation. Satori therefore happens when the consciousness is purified enough of rational thinking.
In addition, however, faith is also important. Faith is the basis of any kind of spirituality, because by your faith you yourself determine your personal commitment and the intensity of your practice. However, what exactly you want to believe in, whether in something transcendent, Buddha, or some other power, is a decision you should make for yourself. Zen is not a religion; but each religion includes meditation as a basic practice. Because Zen is a special form of meditation, it can be said to be included in every religion and also on other spiritual paths.
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But is Zen synonymous with satori? No, because Zen only evolves along the path to satori. Zen is in everything we do and experience: in driving the car, in office work, in family life. Zen is a way of life in which one’s own ego delusions become progressively clear and letting go of the ego gradually becomes the normal state of mind. After satori, Zen consists primarily of working with one’s own internal concepts and karma. Only after giving up erroneous concepts and detecting and eradicating one’s own karma can enlightenment and nirvana be achieved.
