5 things you didn't know about Zen meditation

This is a guest post by Louise Baker. Louise ranks online degrees for Zen College Life. She most recently wrote about the best colleges online.

After a hard day at work, we need an opportunity to relax and unwind. An excellent way to clear one's mind at the end of the day is through Zen meditation. This Buddhist practice will help relieve the body, calm the mind, and relax the soul. However, many people are unaware of the fantastic benefits that Zen meditation can provide. These five facts regarding Zen meditation will help you bring calmness to your everyday lifestyle.

1. The Traditional Aim of Zen Meditation is to Discover Your 'Buddha-Nature'

The religion of Buddhism states that all living being possess a 'Buddha-Nature,' or a type of unlimited wisdom, which is accessed by experiencing the mind's most natural state. In Zen meditation, you try to achieve this state by tuning out the outside world and focusing on your inner nature. It is believed that by tapping into your 'Buddha-Nature,' you will gain a deeper understanding of the world and its inhabitants.

2. You Don't Have to Be Buddhist to Practice Zen Meditation

Although the practice of Zen meditation is rooted in religious traditions and beliefs, you do not have to practice the religion of Buddhism to enjoy the benefits of meditating. Many people find Zen meditation's search for inner knowledge to be very relieving after a long day. By retreating into your own mind and ignoring the outside world, you can focus on promoting your own well-being, rather than constantly thinking about the issues you must deal with in your day-to-day life. This break from the trials of everyday life has a remarkably soothing effect.

3. You Can Meditate Anytime, Anywhere

There is no 'right' time or place to practice Zen meditation. As long as you can create an atmosphere within yourself that is suitable for fostering a Zen state of mind, you can meditate anywhere and at any time of day. The important part is that you ensure that you are in a place where you can sit comfortably for at least fifteen minutes.

4. Zen Meditation Can Take Practice

Many people have difficulty achieving a Zen state of mind the first few times they try to meditate. It can be difficult to ignore the distractions that are presented both in the outside world and in your own mind. However, you simply need to practice. In time, you will develop the ability to tune out all other sounds but the wisdom of silence.

5. Zen Meditation Provides Universal Understanding

After tapping into one's 'Buddha-Nature,' many people feel endowed with a new sense of knowledge. Meditation enables you to understand yourself and the world around you, adding peace and harmony to the world.

Image : Nitobe Memorial Garden at UBC by hermida

Into Great Silence

This is not a review of Philip Gröning’s work: to ‘review’ such a film would be as presumptuous as a book review of the Old Testament. But I will share with you here what I saw and felt in this film in order that you might wish to see and feel it also.

The Monastery of the Grande Chartreuse is considered to be one of the most ascetic monasteries in the world. In 1984, I asked them for permission to film on location. It was said that it was too early. Maybe in 10, 13 years. 16 years later I received a call from the Chartreuse. They were now ready.  – Philip Gröning

‘Into Great Silence’ is a fly on the wall’s view of monastic life in the Grande Chartreuse. It is a film like nothing you have ever seen before because what it sets out to do is make visible and palpable the invisible and the impalpable. And in this it succeeds like no other film you will ever see. How do you tell the story of a life devoted to the invisible Spirit, spent largely in silent communion with God, in menial tasks performed gratefully with a pure heart?

The Lord passed by. Then a great wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord,

But He was not in the wind.

After that there was an earthquake,

But the Lord was not in the earthquake.

After that came a fire,

But the Lord was not in the fire.

After the fire came a gentle whisper.  – Kings 19, 11-13

This is the first of several quotations from the Bible that occur like milestones or guiding stars along the journey of the film. And we are immediately seized by the power and poetry of those words. This feeling stays with us as their meaning is given form in the daily life of the monks. 

One of the earliest scenes shows a monk preparing vegetables in the kitchen. 30 seconds of watching a monk cutting the leaves off celery. One might begin to think to oneself that the director is setting the scene, preparing us for the action to come. But, with great courage, Gröning continues to show us the monk cutting the celery. There is no action to come. This is the action. The smallest of tasks are given their due place in life. It is borne in on us that all our daily tasks are noble and a meditation if performed in the right spirit. We need to slow down and pay attention to our lives.

In my opinion there is absolutely no doubt Gröning was divinely inspired and guided throughout the making of this film. Can you imagine that all the monks’ prayers - the whole monastery’s most earnest prayers - for a happy outcome to their film project would go unanswered? Think about it. Even I feel the breath of an angel over my shoulder as I write about it.

Gröning slows us down in every successive scene and makes more and more obvious the complete disconnection between our frenzied superficial world and this timeless, peaceful world of the Spirit. At first we may feel uncomfortable. Those afraid to be alone, afraid of the void, afraid to think, or afraid to be away from their cell phones for more than 5 minutes, may feel very uncomfortable. But after a while we begin to think that this quiet life is the real life and that other frenzied life is uncomfortable.

Interspersed with the scenes of daily tasks and prayer and silent communion with God are scenes of nature, time lapses of the stars at night, camera angles of the play of shadows on the wooden floor boards, dust specks floating in the light. Scenes that ordinarily might go unnoticed are now presented to us in their own right to make us look at the visible beauty of the world and how it suggests the invisible beauty of the Spirit that created it.

Anyone who does not give up all he has cannot be my disciple.

We try to imagine what it must be to give up all we have and become a monk, a disciple. We fail. These words are old but for these monks they are new and imperative. We look on with a kind of awe. Gröning has no qualms presenting us with several series of 30-second full-face shots of the monks. Humility, kindness, simplicity, forgiveness: all manner of virtues are to be read on their faces as they look us benevolently right in the eye. One might even say God looks us right in the eye.

The ‘aha’ moments are many in this film, although they are no doubt somewhat different for each individual. I found the following quotation particularly poignant. It perhaps sums up the whole meaning of Christianity and the spiritual imperative in its two lines:

Behold I am become human. If you should not want to join me in becoming God, you would do me wrong.

‘Join me in becoming God’: that is what the monks wish to do with all their heart. And their journey, revealed to us by the inspired hand of Gröning, is very poignant and uplifting. Poignant because a life devoted to the Spirit is what we are born to and what we would desire above all things if we only knew it, but we don’t know it. Uplifting because these monks, although only men like us, have been able to choose this path and to follow where it leads.

You shall seek me and you shall find me. Because you seek me with all your heart, I will let myself be found.

I hope I have encouraged you to see this important film. I am sure it will change the way you look on your own life - perhaps at first in small, imperceptible ways - as it has changed the way I look on mine.

I will leave you with the following clip that shows many of the aspects I have discussed and has an excerpt of the beautiful Night Office at the end. (Unfortunately the presentation of the opening quotation has been modified but do not mind it: the rest is worth it).

Footprints in the snow

Feeling ‘in a high state of grease’ (as Stephen Maturin would put it) from too much eating and too little moving, I decided I better go for a walk tonight. Nothing like a walk ‘to set you up’ (as Jack Aubry would put it).
It was 10 degrees below zero, but Canadians consider that quite mild to go for a walk. Where was it I read that only at minus 60 is it considered ‘too cold to go to the mall’…? So wrapped up like an astronaut I set off on my usual circuit that takes me along by the baseball park. There was a beautiful thin blanket of snow on the ground, just enough to make everything pure and white but not thick enough to hinder walking. The ‘crunch, crunch’ of my steps lulled me into a state of meditation.
I thought of the recent holiday dinner where my new girlfriend met my son for the first time and my daughter for the second. After my daughter’s first meeting my girlfriend would say ‘she is so beautiful and charming, so different than you…ha, ha’ and comments along those lines. After my son’s meeting it was ‘he is so handsome’ to which I replied ‘yes, he’s my son’ to which she replied ‘no, no, he doesn’t resemble you… ha, ha’. After the third or fourth comment of this kind I went to dig out my first (and only) British passport, issued in 1979 when I was 22 years old, 1 year older than my son today. ‘I hope you are ready for this’ I said, as I passed her my passport containing, basically, a photo of my son. Perhaps a more intense look in the eyes, but for the rest, copy and paste. ‘There!’ I exclaimed triumphantly. ‘Let us hear no more of this ‘Oh, your son is so handsome…’’
I came to the end of my path and turned around to walk back the way I had come. There on the path, unmistakably mine yet curiously alien, my footprints in the snow.

Photo by MsJimmy

The Observer - I am not my anger

Following my last post The Observer Within, I wondered where I had come across the concept of the observer. I did a Google search and quickly found this talk entitled The Observer by Sri Vasudeva. Here is an excerpt that is very à propos:

In all our activities, if we look carefully, we will see that there is an observer involved. Sometimes we are so identified with the activity that we are not able to experience this observer self as distinct from the activity. In other words, we become the activity. For example, instead of seeing that there is the emotion of anger within us and being able to observe it objectively we become carried away in the feeling ‘I am angry’. If we are really observing we will experience the observer as being separate from the anger and will be able to say ‘There is anger within me’ rather than ‘I am angry’. Do you see the difference? This is extremely important to understand when seeking to experience the full or pure state of the observer. So there is a part of us that can observe the process of thinking, feeling and physical sensation whilst feeling the sense of separateness. Focusing on this observer can lead us to the Source of our being.

Vasudeva goes on to expound the great virtues of meditation in developing our awareness of the observer, since in meditation we practice observing many things – our body, our breath, our thoughts – without attaching to them. The practice of meditation then is an ideal way to get in touch with our centre, our inner, higher self: our observer.

Give attention to the observer within and seek to centre yourself in the seat of the pure observer. It is the seat of the ‘I am’ consciousness. It is the seat of your freedom and joy in the human experience. It is the seat of connectedness with your Source. Seek to live and act from this space.

Sri Vaseduva’s advice to train ourselves to see anger from an observer’s point of view rather than ‘becoming’ the anger reminds me of a Taoist practice expounded by Stephen Russell in his ‘Barefoot Doctor’s Guide to the Tao’ called ‘The Nobody Contemplation’.
Russell asks us to make a list of our possessions and say ‘I am not these possessions. I am not this house. I am not this telephone. I am not this rubber biscuit.’ Then do the same for our hopes and desires: ‘I am not that different house. I am not that personal satellite phone with built-in modem, fax and organizer…’ On to the people in our lives - ‘I am not my mother, I am not my son…’ - to our habits, addictions, aversions and phobias and finally to our body with all its aches and pains: ‘I am not my body’.

Feel it. You’re not your possessions, your desires, your people, your habits, your fears: you’re not even your body. You’re simply nobody. Revel in the freedom of it, then move out onto the street, a busy, grimy street preferably, and be nobody, absolutely no one at all. Being no one at all, you’ve nothing to lose, you’re just atoms moving in the everything, child of the Tao, and everything is yours.