What Is Zen Practice?

This is the transcription of a talk I gave to 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 who had found me online and discovered that I had become a Buddhist and that I teach, or perhaps share with others, Zen Buddhism. This understandably came as a bit of a surprise to him and generated quite a few questions.

I was very happy to answer them because they gave me an opportunity to reflect again on what I am doing. Why am I practising? What are the benefits of practice? What exactly is this Zen practice that we are engaging with?

I thought a good place to begin was with the Noble Truths taught by the Buddha. We experience suffering and dissatisfaction, and sometimes this happens simply because we want things to be different from the way they are. It only takes a little attention to notice this. The weather is not as sunny as we hoped. The food is not as tasty as we expected. Somebody says something we don’t like. We wish the situation were different.

Of course, there are much more difficult experiences: the death of somebody we love, the end of a relationship, illness or other painful events in our lives. I remember telling my friend that one thing I had discovered about myself through practice was how good I had become at creating diversions and distractions whenever something happened that I didn’t like. I had become very good at creating my personal way out, my exit.

Before practising, I don’t think I had ever seriously considered simply staying with an experience I didn’t like. My tendency was to find the exit door.

Perhaps this is one answer I can give when somebody asks what Zen practice means to me. It gives me an opportunity to explore life as it is rather than constantly looking for a way out when something feels uncomfortable.

This is one of the reasons we practise zazen. We just sit. Something arises: a thought, an emotion, discomfort, impatience, perhaps the desire to be somewhere else. We give ourselves the opportunity to stay with it for a while and see what happens. We may discover that we don’t necessarily have to act on everything that appears in the mind.

Little by little, perhaps we also discover that we don’t need to find the exit every time something feels uncomfortable.

My friend also asked me about the benefits of Zen practice. There are many dimensions to this question. Practice can help us become more familiar with our thoughts, emotions and habitual reactions, but Zen also asks another, rather strange question.

What are we?

We sometimes hear that the three priorities of Zen practice are kenshō, kenshō and kenshō. Kenshō is usually translated as seeing one’s true nature.

Naturally, my friend wanted to know what I meant by this. At one point I told him that there wasn’t some fixed thing containing a permanent “Riccardo-ness.”

“What do you mean there isn’t a Riccardo?”

So I asked him to find Riccardo.

He could tell me where I came from. He could talk about things I had done, memories, experiences and events from my life. All of these things were perfectly reasonable and true.

But where exactly was Riccardo?

This is where Zen practice can become an exploration of the question “Who am I?”

What am I?

We don’t necessarily need to rush towards an answer. In fact, perhaps rushing towards an answer simply gives us another idea to hold on to.

In Zen we sometimes talk about Great Doubt. Perhaps questions such as “Who am I?” can be carried in this spirit: not as intellectual puzzles that we have to solve, but as questions that we allow to remain alive.

My friend eventually asked another very practical question.

“So when do you have time to practise all this Zen?”

I liked that question.

Of course, there is formal practice. We sit in zazen. We practise kinhin. We may attend retreats and practise together with other people. But practice does not have to stop when we stand up from the cushion.

It can be our walking, running, working, speaking or listening. It can be something as ordinary as making a cup of tea.

Make the tea.

Notice what happens.

That is enough.

I was very grateful to my friend for his questions. They gave me an opportunity to look again at why I practise Zen, what the practice means to me and how it seems to affect my life. And because this conversation happened at the beginning of a new year, it also made me think about my practice in the year ahead.

How am I going to spend my time this year? What do I want to explore? What habits and reactions might I become more curious about? What questions do I want to keep alive?

I am not suggesting that we need another New Year’s resolution. We probably have enough of those already. But perhaps, as we begin another year of practice, it is worth asking ourselves a simple question:

How do I want my year ahead to look in my practice?

In a moment we are going to spend some time practising walking and sitting meditation together. Perhaps we can carry that question with us.

And perhaps we can carry another one too.

Who is practising?

No need to answer.

Thanks for listening, and I wish you all a great year of practice ahead.