ZEN
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ZEN

Zen can never be seen as a means or as an end, as it is beyond such concepts and volitions. However one cannot deny its value inside an Initiatic path. It balances and puts into perspective the various degrees of the path, it calms the Initiate's soul, it is like an oasis that refreshes in a profound and essential manner. The Initiate, as he progresses, becomes anxious, his imagination becomes extravagant, he's obnubilated by the profoundness and by the numinous force of the guessed destination... Zen teaches us how it is not this final station that is existentially important, but the whole process, the Path itself. Follow this intuition!

Beyond and above all desire lies a serene absence of desire and attachment, a longing, an un-longing, a going beyond wanting and not wanting, just sitting down and concentrating in the present moment, here and now, without any spirit of profit or gain (mushotoku). With time, it will be clearer to you how the world is a flux of Essence-less existences, how chimerical the idea of Being is, how only perpetual Becoming exists... But remember this: never expect anything from zazen, as it is not an activity but the only "activity", forever existing independent of our knowing... Zazen is Reality itself, right now!

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SHIN JIN MEI - Poem on the Faith in Zazen, by Master Sozan (died 606 CE)
(first 10 lines, Deshimaru version)

The real Way, the essence of the Way, is not difficult, but we should not specially like it or choose.

If we do not like or dislike, the Way appears clearly, like the entrance of a cave on the mountain's side.

If a difference of the size of an atom is created, immediately an infinite distance will separe heaven and earth.

To attain enlightenment here and now, we should free ourselves from the idea of right and wrong.

When right and wrong battle, the spirit is sick.

If we do not know the deepness of the origin, our mind tires.

The true Way is like the infinite cosmos, it lacks nothing and nothing is superfluous to it.

Addicted to gain or loss, we are not free.

Do not run after phenomena, do not linger on emptiness.

If our spirit stays calm and serene, in its original state, it will disappear naturally and spontaneously like in sleep.

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Zen reminds us of the great despised possibility that was Heraclitus to the West, Heraclitus the Obscure who ended up obscured by Plato and Aristotle, great thinkers of the equivocal notion of Being and founders of what came to be our Western philosophical tradition...

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Compassion. Real compassion, not the one that comes from some inconstant sentimentality, derives from the clear perception that our I am happens to be situated in this specific body (our body) by what seems to be some Cosmic aleatory caprice. There does not seem to exist any (cosmic or human) Justice in this particular fact. At the most basic level, where each individual's specific personality does not matter, we are all identical copies of a same I am, of a same Presence. A Presence that is not even specifically human...

The intellectual acknowledgement of this fact might be banal, but it should not be apprehended in this way. Mingle yourself physically with the daily mass of people in the streets of a big city and live this fact with every fibre of your being, feel how you could in fact be anyone of these people... You could be anyone of them for on a deeper level you are each one of them simultaneously, you are a solitary and profoundly alienated particle of the Universal I am.

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This story aims at a very precise point of the practice. Should you truly understand it it, it will subtly influence your life in a general way. Deshimaru relates the dialogue in the following way (L'Esprit du Ch'an, ed. Albin Michel, pp. 49-50):

Yakusan was practicing zazen alone in the dojo; his master, Sekito, entered the room and asked: "What are you doing?"

He answered: "I'm practicing 'doing nothing'".

- In this case, why are you seated? asked the Master. Yes, I understand, you are "doing nothing". Well, then why don't you "do nothing"? You, Yakusan, you say "I do nothing". But what does it mean to do something, what does it mean to do nothing?"

Yakusan answered: "Even ten thousand sages cannot understand it, Master. Neither can the Buddha."

After this, the Master transmitted the shiho to his disciple.

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New
If you have arrived this far, dear curious reader, perhaps you might be interested in the following note.

While Buddhism and Zen are a respectable Path for the masses endowed with a slave morality, the Dao and Daoism are the respectable and select Way for a discreet elite endowed with a master morality.

They are respectively the exotericism and the esotericism of the Meditative Path.

Alchemy and its Stone or Pill is one sole thing in our entire planet. Differences are due to the outer or inner instruments. There is a natural transition from external to internal techniques. This perception is clearer as a civilization gets older and remains uninterrupted.

If it be your Destiny, search for this Virtue and this Way.

Lü Tung-Pin

The Eight Immortals

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