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Zazen is not meditation
Zazen is translated as Zen meditation. But the 2 practices are not quite the same:
- Meditation focuses on the head. It's a mind exercise, structured dualistically, with a sitting body as a container & a meditating mind as the contents: the body sits while the mind does something else.
- Zazen focuses on a holistic body posture. Not a state of mind. Through correct sitting our mind learns to find its proper place & function within a unified mind-body field: “Just sit with correct posture’’
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Zazen Steps
Zazen is just sitting with the correct posture. However, there is a sequence to a zazen session:
- regulating the body (choshin)
- regulating the breath (chosoku)
- regulating the mind (choshin).
Dogen, the father of zazen, wrote “In our zazen, it is of primary importance to sit in the correct posture. Next, regulate the breath and calm down.”
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Zazen is going out of the business of being a human
People think of zazen as a solution to personal sufferings or the cultivation of an individual. It is not. Zazen is the posture in which a human being does nothing for the sake of a human being, the human being is freed from being a human being and becomes a Buddha.
When sitting in zazen we unconditionally surrender our human ignorance. In effect we are saying “I will not use these human capacities for my confused, self-centered purposes. By adopting zazen posture, my hands, legs, lips and mind are all sealed. They are just as they are. I can create no karma with any of them.”
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Life-long learner. Passionate about leadership, entrepreneurship, philosophy, Buddhism & SF. Founder @deepstash.
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