AOHL-Understanding How To Practice Zazen Meditation

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Meditation And Religion

If you are a religious person and would like to deepen that connection with God, use your prayer time as a time of meditation. In the book Soul Sword Zen Master Vernon Turner outlines his Christian beliefs in connection with his Zen meditation practice. You can take whatever beliefs you have and pray meditatively and not with vain repetitions. Meditating through prayer will not take anything away from the prayer, it will actually deepen it. Prayer is the most widely practice and accepted form of meditation.

Meditation doesn't take much time, it only requires you to be consistent and persistent, and it is the one thing you can do everyday that will improve your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual state of being. Meditation is as essential to healthy living as breathing and eating.

Understanding Zazen Meditation

Zazen is a form of meditation that is associated with Zen. There are many different reasons why someone would take up Zazen or any Meditation for that matter. There are also many different reasons people would be against taking up Zazen or any other type of meditation. Many people seek to cultivate illumination, enlightenment or an awakening when they practice Zazen and many other forms of meditation. They see it as a means to an end. Other people who don't practice any form of meditation see it as a waste of time. Everyone has their own reasons but a few you might hear are:

I could be getting more work done
I am wasting my only free time sitting
I should be having fun with my free time
I don't have time
I don't think it makes a difference
I should be doing something

While Zazen is a form of meditation, it is ultimately supposed to be taken to the formless level. Everyday life becomes your meditation, Zazen thus becomes formless. there isn't a thing your doing that is not done without complete awareness. When you wash the car you wash it with all your being as though your life depended upon. As though it were your last moment to enjoy. You must let every moment become a moment of meditative practice. Zazen cultivates awareness of the mind and it's tendencies to be very self centered. Dissolution of the ego is a key component to Zazen practice.

Essentially there is nothing to be attained from Zazen that is not already there. It is not a process of adding like so many people think life is. It's a process of stripping away all the layers of the mind that hinder it from making wise decisions. If you have to much clutter to open the door to your house, how would you get inside? You would have to clear everything out so you can walk into your house. If there were no doors or windows to get inside an empty house what use would that house be to you? From this you can understand that it is what is not there that is useful. The fact that something has been removed gives an empty house a purpose. Before there was no entry or source of light but now there is and the house can be of use to someone.

When we sit down we are uncovering and discovering ourselves. Not the self we so commonly think of, not the I was born here, raised my him, went to school here, dated her type of self we so commonly think of ourselves as. Rather the self that is centered on all things, the self that is centered on Life. If we never seek compassion and true understanding of who we are developed by meditative processes, than any attempt to improve things will be done half hearted or for the wrong reason.

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