The Essential Principles of Zen Meditation

People are making the first, partial forays across borders, but are still falling somewhat short of the vital Path of total emancipation. Should I mention the Buddha, who had innate knowledge? The influence of his six years of sitting upright is still noticeable. Or Bodhidharma’s transmission of the spirit seal? The fame of his nine years of wall-sitting is still celebrated today. Since this was the case with the saints of old, how can we refrain from negotiating the Way today? You must therefore stop practicing based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following speech, and learn the step back that directs your light inward. to relieve yourself. Body and mind will naturally fall away, and your original face will manifest. If you want to attain suchness, you must practice suchness without delay.

A quiet room is suitable for Zen meditation. Eat and drink in moderation. Put aside all involvement and cease all business. Don’t think good or bad. Don’t manage pros and cons. Cease all movements of the conscious mind, all probing of all thoughts and conceptions. Have no plans to become a Buddha. Zen meditation has nothing to do with sitting or lying down.

Where you normally sit, spread out thick mats and place a cushion above them. Sit in the full lotus position or in the half lotus position. In the full lotus position, first place your right foot on your left thigh and your left foot on your right thigh. In half lotus, simply press your left foot against your right thigh. You should tie your robe and belt loosely and put them in order. Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left palm (facing up) on your right palm, with the thumb tips touching. So sit upright in the correct posture, not leaning to the left or right, nor leaning forward or backward. Make sure your ears are on one plane, with your shoulders and your nose in line with your belly button. Place your tongue against the front roof of your mouth, with both teeth and lips closed.

Click here for 6 tips for a great meditation posture.

Your eyes should always remain open and you should breathe gently through your nose.

Once you have adjusted your position, take a deep breath, inhale and exhale, move your body to the right and left and come to a stable, still sitting position. Think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Not thinking. This in itself is the essential art of Zen meditation.

The Zen meditation I am talking about is not a learning meditation. It is simply the truth gate of tranquility and bliss, the practice of fully attained enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once you have seized his heart, you are like the dragon when he takes the water, like the tiger when he steps into the mountain. Because you must know that it is precisely there during meditation that the Truth manifests itself and that dullness and distraction are pushed aside from the beginning.

When you rise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Do not get up suddenly or abruptly. As we survey the past, we find that the transcendence of both the unenlightened and the enlightened, and dying while sitting or standing, have all been completely dependent on the power of meditation.

Moreover, bringing about enlightenment through the opportunity afforded by a finger, a banner, a needle or a hammer, and bringing about realization through the help of a hossu, a fist, a staff or a shout cannot are allowed. fully understood through discriminatory thinking. Indeed, it cannot be fully known through the practice or realization of supernatural powers. It must be a behavior that goes beyond hearing and seeing; isn’t that a principle that precedes knowledge and perception?

If this is the case, intelligence or the lack thereof does not matter: there is no distinction between dull and astute. If you concentrate your efforts single-mindedly, that in itself is negotiating the Way. The practical realization is by nature uncontaminated. Making progress (in practice) is an everyday matter.

In general, this world, and other worlds too, both in India and China, bears equally the Buddha seal, and above all predominates the character of this school, which is simply a devotion to sitting, a total involvement in sitting motionless. Even though it is said that there are as many spirits as there are persons, yet they all walk the path exclusively in zazen. Why leave the chair that is in your home and aimlessly go to the dusty spheres of other countries? If you make one misstep, you will stray from the Way that is just ahead.

You have achieved the crucial opportunity of the human form. Don’t use your time in vain. You maintain the essential functioning of the Buddha Way. Who would take wasteful pleasure in the spark of the flint? Moreover, form and substance are like the dew on the grass, fate like the flash of lightning: emptied in an instant, gone in a flash.

Please, honored followers of Zen, long accustomed to groping for the elephant, do not be suspicious of the true dragon. Spend your energy in a way that directly indicates the absolute. Honor the person who is fully accomplished and beyond all human intervention. Come in line with the enlightenment of the Buddhas; succeed in the legitimate line of the meditation of the ancestors. Continually performing this way will ensure that you are a person like them. Your treasure room will open automatically and you can use it as you see fit.