What is Zen ?
Zen is the healing practice of experiencing directly and in harmony with our embodied life, free and unbounded by our fixed concepts and ideas.
Zen is a practice of mindful meditation and action designed to free us to live compassionate, healthy and energized lives. The word “Zen” simply means meditation.
In Zen, we don’t try to cultivate special states of mind. Rather, we discover a new functioning in our everyday lives, in every moment. A Zen master once said, “my miracle is drawing water and carrying wood.” We learn to appreciate, see and cherish what we have already.
Zen practice is simple: sit down and be quiet. It asks us to believe nothing. It is compatible with any religious faith or none. Simple, yet it takes a lifetime to refine—it is a subtle transforming of our human lives.
Zen meditation can bring many benefits: greater attention and awareness, calming and healing our emotional lives, a growing sense of goodwill and kindness, and a desire to be of help in this world.
Zen practice can also help resolves deep questions we have: Who am I? What is my life? Why am I here and what should I do?
Three Fruits of Zen
Concentration: to be able to hold our mind steady, to gather our wandering parts of ourselves, to be present to our lives, to live open-hearted with friends and family and strangers; and ultimately with all beings. We learn to cherish what is right in front of us.
The second fruit of Zen is “seeing reality” or "seeing true nature.” This happens after a few years of practice, where we feel in harmony or united with all of creation, empty and vast, clear and boundaryless, with no inside and no outside, no separations anywhere. It is experienced as a “turning point” in Zen practice.
The third fruit of Zen is embodying or integrating a life of love and openness, with every moment of our lives, free of mental hindrances of grasping and aversion, so we can live our full human potential, appreciating all things.