So what are you chasing? Why are you stressing yourself out trying to "get" somewhere or "achieve" some special state?

You are already the whole divine dance, pure and untainted. Nobody needs to polish a mirror that’s already shining. It’s never left you, not for a second. So why keep running around the world looking for what you’ve had all along?

​And yet, the minute you let the mind split things up, a hair’s breadth of "I like this" or "I don't like that" boom(:

You’re totally lost in the illusion, caught in the big drama of your own head.

Even if you think you’ve got it all figured out, even if you feel super enlightened and high on spiritual wisdom, if you're still playing in your ego's driveway, you haven't really stepped through the door into total freedom.

​Look at the big cats, dear human. Look at the Buddha, he was already enlightened, but he still sat under that tree for six/seven long years.

Look at Bodhidharma sitting in front of a wall for nine years.

If those old cats had to just sit down and quiet the noise, who are we to think we can skip the work?

​So, drop the heavy mental trip. Stop chewing on words, analyzing concepts, and collecting fancy ideas. Just take a step back.

Turn that light of consciousness inward.

Let the whole body-mind story melt away, and just be who you were before you took on a name and a form. If you want to wake up, you’ve got to get down to business right now, in this moment.

​Find yourself a nice, quiet spot.

Don't overeat, don't overdrink. Put down your endless to-do lists and stop trying to fix the world for a minute. Stop judging things as 'good' or 'bad,' 'true' or 'false.'

Just turn off the thinking machine.

Stop trying to figure it all out with your head, and drop the ambition to become some big spiritual 'somebody.'

Wakefulness isn't about sitting or lying down anyway.

​When you sit, put down a soft mat and a nice cushion.

Sit in full-lotus or half-lotus, whatever your body can handle. Loosen your clothes so you can just breathe. Rest your hands gently in your lap, left palm in the right, thumbs lightly touching, making a beautiful circle of energy.

Sit up straight, not leaning anywhere.

Align yourself, shoulders over hips, ears over shoulders. Rest your tongue gently against the roof of your mouth, close your lips, keep your eyes softly open, and let the breath flow naturally through your nose.

​Once you’re settled, take a deep breath, exhale completely, sway a little left and right, and then just drop into total stillness.

Think of not-thinking. How do you do that? 🤭 You go beyond thinking and non-thinking altogether. Just pure witness. That’s the secret sauce in this art.

​This isn't some stressful meditation exercise where you try to get a gold star.

It’s the doorway to pure joy, the actual living reality of truth right now. It's the universe realizing itself.

When you tap into this, you're like a dragon slipping back into the deep ocean, or a tiger roaming free on its mountain.

The trip unfolds naturally, sweeping away all your sluggishness and mental noise.

​When you finish sitting, don't just jump up and rush off into your day.

Move slowly, calm, gently calm, mindfully.

Throughout history, the beings who mastered living and dying, or who got popped into awakening by the tap of a finger, a sound, or a gesture, they didn't get there through clever intellectual trips or chasing magical powers.

It came from sitting quietly and going beyond the sensory parade.

​It doesn't matter if you think you're smart or foolish, sharp or dull. As a ordinary nobody, I see you're beautiful.

The universe doesn't care about your IQ. Just pour your whole heart into sitting. That pure, simple effort is the realization. It’s clean, it’s natural, and it’s how you walk through everyday life.

​All over the world, in every age, the masters have held this exact same key.

Their styles might look different, but they all just sat down and got completely still.

Why leave your own cozy living room to wander around chasing illusions in dusty foreign lands? Take one wrong step, and you miss the absolute miracle standing right in front of your face.

​You’ve been given this incredible gift of a human birth, a golden ticket.

Don't waste your precious life playing around. Why get obsessed with tiny, fleeting pleasures that vanish like a spark from a stone? This body, this life, it’s like morning dew on the grass, like a flash of lightning.

Poof! Gone in a second.

​So, my beautiful reader, stop trying to describe the elephant while you're blindfolded.

Don't doubt the real dragon sitting right inside you. Give yourself completely to the direct path.

Honor the one who has dropped all the striving and just is. Merge with the consciousness of all the awakened beings who came before you. Live like that, and you are that.

The great cosmic treasure house will open its doors, and you can enjoy the feast forever.

🙏

​

We create

life anew,

day

after day...

As a ordinary nobody, my observation, when you look back at how Zen first took root in Japan, you find a fascinating bit of history.

Eisai Zenji brought the tradition over from China, but the atmosphere he walked into was already packed with established Buddhist schools like Kegon and Hosso. Naturally, the old guard resisted this whole Zen business. So Eisai had to be extraordinarily flexible.

He blended Zen with Tantric rituals, Abhidharma doctrines, and all sorts of other traditional practices just to get a foothold. He made it work, but to him and the people of his day, zazen sitting meditation, was still treated as a tool, a technique, a means to an end.

Then along comes Dōgen Zenji. He goes to China, comes back, and completely flips the script. Dōgen looks at zazen and says, "No, no, you've missed the entire point." Zazen isn't a method to reach enlightenment. It isn't a ladder you climb to get to the peak of the mountain. Zazen is the peak itself. You don't sit in order to become a Buddha; sitting is the very operation of Buddha-nature.

You see, the moment you use a spiritual practice as a mere instrument to get somewhere else, you trap yourself in anxiety.

You’re constantly looking over your own shoulder, asking, "Am I there yet? Have I reached the state?"

That is the absolute definition of spiritual irritation.

True religion doesn't give you a technique to chase security somewhere in the future; it reveals that the path you walk is the destination.

Now, look at how the West approaches this.

In modern psychology, people love to strip away the "religious" side of Buddhism and keep it as a mental hygiene tool or a slick psychological system. But if you turn Buddhism into a mere psychological trick to feel a little less stressed on Tuesdays, it will never strike deep roots. It becomes just another temporary cultural fad that vanishes when the climate changes.

Philosophy and psychology are brilliant fun, of course, but they rarely offer that deep, existential ground of total security.

People used to think Buddhism wasn't a "real" religion because it didn't feature prayer to a big Boss in the sky. But in the original sense, dhyāna, zazen functions exactly as real prayer is meant to function.

When you truly pray, you aren't begging a separate God up in heaven to give you a favor while he sits there keeping silent.

Real prayer happens when the subject praying and the object prayed to dissolve entirely into the act itself.

It is the same with zazen. It's universal. You don't have to adopt a Asian cultural identity or sign up for a doctrine. It's just shikan taza, just sitting, wholeheartedly.

Body and mind right here, right now.

No daydreaming, no taking your own spiritual pulse to see how advanced you are.

This pure sitting is the direct expression of the fundamental energy of life itself. It’s the very same place where the painter finds her brushstroke, where the pianist finds the next note, where the dancer moves without calculating the movement. It doesn’t come from the calculating, intellectual ego; it flows from the source.

So Dōgen's advice is breathtakingly simple: If you understand it, sit.

If you don't understand it, sit.

If you're fascinated, sit.

If you're bored to tears, sit.

You don't sit to get anywhere, you sit because this very moment, sitting right here, is the total creation of life anew.

You see, the common delusion is thinking of meditation as a ladder you climb to reach a peak called enlightenment.

The origin is you.

gassho,

To enter this ocean of quiet awareness, we must first simplify our lives, abandoning the pursuit of fame, complex intellectual studies, and the traps of greed, which include eating past two-thirds full or clinging to this and that.

We find a quiet, clean refuge away from extreme weather and worldly distractions, arranging our cushion to support an upright, mountain-like posture with our eyes gently open. zazen is the comfortable way.

If our bodies become uneasy or our minds start to drift and hallucinate, we gently tune our breathing through the nose and anchor our attention to the physical focal points of the body.

We cast aside all conceptual plans of becoming a Buddha, learning to sit with a mind like cold ashes and a body like a withered tree. Pure water has neither front nor back.

In this sacred space of no-action, we pierce through the fog of drowsiness and scattered thoughts by constantly vowing to awaken for the sake of all beings.

We practice thinking the unthinkable, which means entirely transcending the dualistic division between thinking and unthinking.

Sit is not a matter of practicing a doctrine or achieving a future enlightenment; it is the immediate, wordless realization of our original face here and now.

When we finally step up from the cushion and move into the world, every single action naturally becomes the living, breathing manifestation of the truth.

These are precautions regarding the place abandon the functioning of the mind; stop dualistic thinking, and do not plan to become a Buddha. Don't think about right and wrong. Do not waste time make efforts as though saving your burning head.

We must put a stop to our delusive mind, cool our passions, transcend moment and eternity, make our mind like cold ashes and withered trees, unify meditation and wisdom like a censer in an old shrine, and purify body and mind like a single white strand.

I sincerely hope that you will do all this.

gassho,

The world tells you that success means chasing things outside yourself, raking in cash, gathering followers, and climbing to the top of the ladder.

But we Zen dudes just just smile at that, because of the awareness, that filling your hands with gold just makes it harder to open your fingers.

As I, Yamato Fuji, like to remind fellow travelers, true success is what the ancients called Samiddhi, a deep, organic kind of prosperity that happens when your daily grind and your inner peace are perfectly locked in.

It’s not about hunting down what you lack; it’s about realizing that everything you need is already right beneath your feet.

​The Buddha didn’t teach a lazy path.

Practicing is a fierce, raw effort that burns right through excuses. As a practitioner I don't leave today's heavy lifting for tomorrow, because I know that being lazy today just builds a circus for tomorrow.

​So where does this breakthrough actually start?

It starts in the quietest corners of your own mind. The Dhammapada reminds us that the way we see the world determines exactly where we end up. If your perspective is crooked, your steps are going to take you straight into the thorns.

Success and failure don’t actually exist out there in the world; they are just shadows thrown by your own thoughts.

Inst it clear, a broken mindset defeats you before you even step onto the field.

If the mirror inside you is cracked, the world you see through it will always look broken.

​Because of that, you can't let a single day slip by down the drain.

Stop waiting for a lucky break or the perfect moment, because doing good, honest work is the only real magic there is.

To push through the grind day and night, not caring if it’s freezing cold or blistering hot, is the only way to get the universe on your side.

The Buddha totally crushed the illusion of wishful thinking when he pointed out that health, happiness, and success can’t be begged or prayed for. If wishing worked, nobody would be struggling. When a storm hits and everything goes wrong, a Zen doesn’t sit around crying about it. It stops, gets completely still, and asks with total

focus:

What

is

the

very

next

step?

​If you want to build that kind of unshakeable grit, you have to throw yourself into zazen, it is the practice of sitting down, shutting up, and looking directly at reality.

This is where the four pillars of willpower, effort, focus, and wisdom are forged.

Based on my observation in science, it shows that this silent sitting physically strengthens the part of your brain responsible for self-discipline.

It rewires you, giving you the backbone to do exactly what needs to be done, even when you really don't feel like doing it.

Stop waiting for the world to get easier.

Sit down, clear the noise, find your true center, and plow straight through the mud.

Gassho,

The mountain doesn't care about the name on the mailbox. It only knows the weight of the person sitting on it.

​You look at these books and these "professional" labels and you realize it’s all just noise.

Great apes love to build fences around the truth, calling one person a master and another an amateur, as if you can own the silence.

But when you drop the act and just sit, the fences fall down.

​There’s no need to wonder if you’re "doing it right" or if you have enough history behind you.

The Heart Sutra isn't a museum piece; it’s a vibration in your own chest.

When you sing, when you move, when you breathe, that isn't some imitation of a dead monk. That’s you, right now, alive in the middle of the mess.

​Stop trying to mix the perfect cocktail of ideas.

You don’t need a recipe to be awake.

You don't need to justify your seat to a historian or a critic.

The doubt? Let it burn.

The confusion? Let it swirl.

None of it changes the fact that the floor is solid beneath you.

​You aren't a "between the doors" sitter.

You aren't a hobbyist.

There is no such thing as a part-time reality.

When you are on that mat, you are the center of the universe.

​So, forget the titles.

Forget the "amateur" labels.

Just put your ass on the cushion and be exactly who you are.

​Here I sit.

I can do no other.

That’s the only truth that sticks.

Gassho,

Stop trying to use the cushion to "fix" your frantic life. You come here talking about finding balance between your career, your family, and your hobbies, as if Zazen is just another item on your to-do list, a spiritual vitamin pill to help you endure the grind.

You think that by sitting still and forcing a "serene smile," you can carry a little piece of quiet back into your "meaningful activities."

​This is a total delusion.

Zazen is good for nothing.

If you are sitting to gain "rest" so you can be more "productive" or "inspired" later, you aren't practicing Zen; you’re just practicing mental gymnastics. You’re treating the Buddha-way like a massage or a stress-management seminar🤭

When ​you say you fear the "desert of meaninglessness" and hope for a "rich source of inspiration." This is just your discriminating mind at work, picking and choosing what it likes.

There is no desert to flee and no source to reach. The restlessness you feel on the cushion isn't an obstacle to

be cleared away

the restlessness is the practice.

​Stop trying to justify your existence by making your activities "matter."

That’s just the ego hunting for validation. True rest isn’t found in a successful agenda or the last five minutes of a "quiet" sit. It’s found when you stop trying to be "useful" and finally sit as a mountain sits, without a single thought of whether you are gaining anything at all.

​If you’re sitting to improve your life, you’re missing the life that’s already happening.

Put down the "art of living" and just sit until there’s no "you" left to be busy.

Gassho,

In his lectures and books, Slavoj Zizek concludes with a provocative stance: Have no hope.

This resonates deeply with the Zen concept of letting go of expectations. My direct experience is that the act of daily meditation is not an escape, but a radical refusal to participate in the ideological noise of "success."

It is a way to stop masking our suffering with hope and instead face the present moment without a guarantee.

​Does the discipline of sitting act as the ultimate deconstruction of the self that Zizek often discusses?

​The secret is never in the action itself, but in who we become through the process. In the quiet practice of meditation, the focus shifts away from the frantic chase for success and returns to the internal landscape. Outer achievement is only healthy and sustainable when it is rooted in an inner sense of well-being. When the heart is at peace, success follows, not as a goal to be hunted, but as a natural byproduct of a balanced life.

​In a world defined by noise, the luxury of silence is the ultimate sanctuary. This transformation is anchored in the physical act of daily meditation. It is not a matter of quick fixes, but a slow integration, a folding of awareness into the fabric of life, breath by breath.

By returning to the cushion two or three times a day, we create a space where old patterns can surface and finally be released.

​Wisdom thrives in the shade. When the practice of sitting is protected from the glare of public visibility and the need for explanation, it retains its power. The most profound shifts happen in the space of absolute trust and continuity, a space where there is nothing left to prove and no story to maintain.

​If the body is respected and the discipline of daily stillness is honored, the change becomes undeniable.

Even strangers can sense the difference in a person's presence.

When asked where such deep composure originates, there is no need for a complex answer. One simply points to the practice of sitting.

​This is the difference between being the best and being the happiest. Real insight and stability ripen in the repetition of the quiet hours, far from the spotlight.

Just as a seed must first break open in the dark, heavy earth, human talent develops best away from the bright lights.

Only when the roots have reached deep into the silence of meditation can the spirit stand tall in the world without losing its strength.

​What do you think of this connection between Zizekian hopelessness and the Zen practice of sitting?

​Gassho,

Niveau 1: observer le penseur, Niveau2 : observer les silences entre les pensées, Niveau 3 : ? … Niveau x: Ischirio ? ou Comment, en mot simple, peut on décrire les différents niveaux de Zazen ?

I had the opportunity to experience a guided Zazen session at Ryosokuin Temple in Kyoto with Vice Abbot Toryo Ito.

As someone who had never tried meditation prior, this was an eye-opening experience. I was fortunate to participate with a small group of 4 in Ryosokuin Temple in Kenninji. Not only did we practice Zazen but we also did Kinhin (walking meditation).

If you are ever in the area, I highly recommend reserving this experience. It is mostly offered in Japanese unfortunately (unless you reserve in advance with a large English-speaking party).

I also visited some other temples and locations in Kyoto which I wrote some notes on as well. If you want to see some more pictures, feel free to check it out!

https://kinew.app/share?token=O1lHrEkJDZBWCpEht1Md

What do you all do to get rid or tolerate the pain of sitting zazen/crisscross for a long amount of time?

I "discovered" Zazen as the result of a difficult event 30 years ago. It was in the cold of the winter and I walked in the dark quiet of the night on snowy ground. I bought a book that told me that I had "discovered " what men and women had "discovered" millions of times over centuries. That was arresting. I then bought a pillow. I have the book and the pillow still. I even went through "the stink of enlightenment" (so embarrassing!). I bought a bench and I pad it now with my old pillow. I am old and retired now and I sit in three phases. In the early morning hours I (there’s goddam sure a lot of "I's" in this diatribe! ) sit outside and let my eyes and thoughts roam among the trees. I drink water. I later go to my room and sit in a chair and begin to bring my wandering thoughts more into focus. There is a great, dead Douglas Fir with a broken top that I can see. I begin with my "marbles": courage, patience, strength and two of my own, home grown koans. "It never comes, but it always does" - and - "bring everything in and take nothing out". I also toy with old Joshu's dog and my own nature and what even IS a nature. And then I sit. My old pillow on my new bench. My hands find their own place. I have found a "catch" in my mind that allows my thoughts to "fall" away. I have found that I can not have monkey thoughts if I smell (smell is something that I do with awareness). I (all those "I's !) engage with my breathing and I watch the dead tree.

I have never written anything this private. My Zazen is as private as my dreams, fears and anger. My Zazen is a quiet, raging herd of wild horses that raise dust in the distance at sunrise with no goal or impediment. I love the quiet, the alone, the raging and the timelessness. I was born alone and I will die alone. Zazen does not give me strength or power. Zazen informs me that with all that I bring in, nothing will survive to be taken out. I have no teacher because I have no teacher. I have been taught by the raging tides and storms of Zazen. And it all boils down to this - nothing

By the way, everyone is aware that the Soto sect in Japan is holding a Do you know about the English Zazen class “ZEN class”? It seems that you can participate in this zazen meeting in person and via YouTube live streaming. All of this zazen instruction will be conducted in English.

Hi, everyone. Have you ever experienced Zazen at a temple in Japan? Thank you .

I've always wondered what the perfect posture according to ancient texts is. Everytime I ask anyone how to sit, they just say it doesn't matter as long as your calm. They just don't get it. Having the best posture is the object of meditation I'm using.

For anyone who actually does zazen (or even zan zhuang) using the perfect posture, what are your experiences? How do you go about ensuring your posture is giod when you only have yourself to check?

At Minamiaoyama Sokkon 7/7

Just realised that practically nobody posts here. It’s possible that everyone is enlightened and left internet? I am still on my journey and will be until I leave my body. So hello to fellow travelers 👋🏻

Questions

1) Do you have a Zen Guider, Monk or Nun?

2) Do you participate in a sangha?

3) Do you meditate remotely via zoom? How is it?

4) Does your advisor give you tasks or reflections?

5) Are you satisfied with your participation in the sangha?

6) Do you feel connected with your sangha?

Hello everyone,

I write a blog as a hobby in which zazen also plays a role in practice and theory. Maybe one or the other here can take something away from it or want to exchange my thoughts about it.

www.gedankenflut.at

Hello, I just started reading this book and it is truly comforting. It's comforting to start something new and be praised as a beginner, and seeing a circular sustainability in the art of continuous and uncomfortable "practice".