What is Zen practice

This is the transcription of the talk I gave for the Zenways Sangha in January 2024

Welcome back to a new year of practice, how amazing! To still be here with our curiosity and openness for exploration, I must say that I am personally thrilled about that!

Very recently, out of the blue, I was contacted by an old friend of mine that found me on the net and found out that I became a Buddhist, that I teach or share with others Zen Buddhism. That, of course, I guess, came as a bit of a surprise and rose lots of curiosity in the person with many questions to follow. I was very happy to answer his questions as it gave me an amazing opportunity to just reflect on what I am doing, why am I practising? What are the benefits of our practice? So, perhaps, as I am going to share with you this evening how I tried to quench my friend’s curiosity about my practice, it can also become an opportunity for yourself to reflect on your practice, perhaps. What is this Zen practice we are engaging with?  Why are we doing it? Any benefits from doing it? 

I thought that the best place to start was really from the Noble truths as taught by the Buddha. That, I guess, is a kind of easy thing to realise, there is suffering, we can experience a sense of dissatisfaction with how things are for the simple reason that, at times, we want things to be different than they are. It only needs some pausing and reflection to notice this sense of dissatisfaction, pausing and reflecting. Once that has been seen, we want to know that the Buddha also said that we can end this suffering, we can do something about that. Of course, that answers the question, why am I practising? The answer is very simple, to end that sense of dissatisfaction. 

I expanded a little bit on that with my friend. If we pause for a little bit, if we start paying close attention to the way we relate to things that happen to us or around us, we can easily notice that sense of dissatisfaction when things don’t go the way we want them to go. That could be small things such as the weather (not as sunny as I wished), the flavour of our food (not as tasty as I thought), what somebody say which we don’t like. We often wish things to be different than they are. But, of course, it could be other things, perhaps more difficult to accept, the death of someone dear, the end of a relationship and so on. I remember to tell my friend how I realised that for each thing I didn’t like, rather than staying with it, accept it as simply another event or life situation, I would make sure I would create a diversion, a distraction. I have become very good at creating my personal way out, my exit. I think I never pondered before practising, the idea of staying with things as they are, accepting the impermanence of life, dancing with the impermanence of life rather than constantly fight it. And I think that here, I could somehow answer the question, what is Zen practice for me? And that is it, to give myself the chance to explore life as it is, to stop running away from it, to stop finding the exit doors from how things really are and simply align with this moment, moment to moment. And that, I said, is one of the reasons why we just sit, we practice Zazen, sitting meditation. We develop, through repetition, patience, love and compassion, the “ability” to sit with ourselves, to stay with ourselves, no matter what. I give myself a chance to be with whatever is arising in me, to realise that I can allow what is arising in me to simply arise and pass, I do not have to necessarily act upon it. It is a reality, the mental activity, which, little by little we can learn to live with without getting pulled in. Little by little we learn that we don’t need to find the exit every time things feel uncomfortable within us but that we can just stay with them, allowing them to come through us, as they are. It seems to me that, by simply doing that, we begin to feel less trapped by our own mental conditionings. And here, we have one of the main benefits of our practice, liberation.

So, I guess that the first step we take with our Zen practice is never outwards but inwards. Rather than walking away from what we feel and experience, we just walk towards the feeling, we walk inwards. Rather than living by what the mind likes or dislikes, I guess, we start simply embracing life as it is, fully, wholeheartedly, unconditionally. It seems to me a good reason for practice, developing the ability to live, no matter what, wholeheartedly. Not always easy, of course but that is what our practice is geared towards.

I don’t know about you, but I do enjoy the many dimensions of our practice. Of course, I have just talked about developing this closer relationship with what is going on within us. Understand it better, developing ways to respond to what arises in a more skilful way, and learning about the thousand and one “tricks” of the mind. However, the emphasis is not only in understanding that dimension of ourselves better, the real emphasis is on finding out what we really are. I am sure we have heard that a few times…. the 3 priorities of Zen practice, Kensho, kensho, kensho. Kensho meaning seeing one’s true nature. Creating the best possible conditions (pretty much our moment to moment practice) to get to this initial or renewed glimpse, clearly seeing our Buddha nature. Seeing that there is absolutely nothing fixed in us, in the me as I think to know it. There is not a fixed something which contains some sort of Riccardo-ness. My friend, of course, wanted to find out a little bit more about that. He asked, what do you mean there is not a Riccardo. So, I did ask him to find it and of course, all he could come up with were past memories, what I did, where I was from and so on and so forth. All plausible things and true but that doesn’t really get to the core of what are we really? I told my friend; Zen practice is the exploration of this question “Who am I?” “What am I really?” The great doubt that can help us to dissipate all our delusional thoughts about ourselves and can ignite what we have come to know as a breakthrough, breaking through the cloud of ideas, opinions, philosophies we have of ourselves and come to touch reality directly. With nothing interposing between us and that, no more split, no more sense of separation, this moment as it is. Our job as practitioner is to not get caught in that net of ideas, opinions and philosophies but to keep touching and living reality as it is, before thinking, what is this moment really requires?

Ultimately my friend asked, so, when do you have time to practice this Zen? 

We practice Zen every moment of our waking life or even dreaming life if you are into dream practice. It is not a practice we do when we have 5 minutes to spear from the busy-ness of our life, it is our life, it is our sitting, it is our walking, it is our running, it is our speaking. It is in taking care of each moment, staying with it, allow it to be and simply act in it as naturally as it might feel for you. Nothing forced, as simple as making a cup of tea and being simply present 100% with each step of the process. It seems to me that this simply remain present, this simply offering an open awareness is what gets things “transformed” for us. Not transformed in that things change; what changes is the way we perceive them and relate to them. That is at least my experience through practice.  

I was very grateful to my friend and to all his questions. He gave me an opportunity to go through again the reasons I am practicing Zen. How the practice seems to impact my life. He also gave me the opportunity to come up with my own year intention as far as my practice is concerned. How am I going to spend my time this year? Am I going to allow my delusions to interpose between me and reality? Or not? How am I going to practice letting go of these delusions? How am I going to make sure I keep notice them when they appear?

I hope I somehow helped my friend to have a better idea on what the Zen practice entails, I am not sure about that but little it matters. I hope you will all have a great year of practice ahead and, of course, I am not asking you to think of any year resolution for the year ahead, perhaps you already have one. However, I guess it will be nice for each one of you to think and to visualise what this year of practice should look like for you. Perhaps in the time we are going to spend now practicing together walking and sitting, you can take a few moments for that. How do I want my year ahead to look like in my practice?

Thanks for listening and wishing you a great year of practice ahead!