Simon Müller You are new to Zen? No problem, today I will show you the basics of Zen philosophy. Enriched with the statements of three Zen masters. Equipped with this knowledge, you can decide for yourself whether and how you want to incorporate Zen meditation in your life.

What is Zen?

The Buddhist movement Zen (from the Chinese “Chan”, meaning meditation) teaches people how to live in harmony with themselves and their environment through the practice of meditation.

Zen meditation means: No thinking. Simply being in the moment. And if, according to Zen, we have managed to find stillness within ourselves, we can also enter a state of harmony with our environment.

So what is the benefit of Zen meditation? According to Zen master Maria Fröhlich, daily meditation increases your ability to concentrate, helps you find inner peace and balance, and enables you to approach life with greater focus. When you reach the level of a Zen master, you are able to control the direction of your own thinking. And what does science say about this subject? According to Tokyo University, your brain calms down and becomes less active during Zen meditation. So as a Zen meditator, you can more easily let go of thoughts and focus on being present in the moment.

The origins of Zen meditation

You have learned the definition of Zen and the effects it has on your body. In this part, I would like to explain the origins of Zen. This knowledge will help you develop a feeling and a vision for Zen, so that you can ultimately see the world through “Zen glasses”.

The development of Zen dates back thousands of years. As a result, it’s difficult to trace its exact origins, and several versions of the story have emerged over the years. One of them is that the historical figure of Buddha Siddhartha Gautama was the first to discover Zen meditation. He was born 2600 years ago as the son of a prince at the foot of the Himalayas and experienced a carefree childhood of abundance. As a young adult, he suddenly became aware of the misery of the world and set out to find a solution to this problem. He learned and practiced all the philosophical movements of his time, but none could help him.

After many fruitless years, he finally sat down in the zazen posture and decided not to move until he solved the problem of life and death. Zazen is meditation in the posture of enlightenment, sitting with an upright spine, concentrating on posture and breathing. In this posture he ultimately found himself and his center. He understood the problem of suffering: how it arises, how it develops, how to free oneself from it.

Following the Zen approach, you can understand the problem of suffering for yourself through meditation. You can discover where your suffering arises and how to eliminate it from your life. All by observing your thoughts without judging them.

Practicing Zen meditation

Now that we have an idea of what Zen stands for and where it comes from, it will be easier for us to learn how to practice Zen. The concept is easily explained: Every time you are fully engaged in meditation, you are practicing Zen. So you may have already experienced Zen without being aware of it.

During Zen meditation, we seek to observe everything that is going on in our mind. There are different ways to achieve this. You can integrate Zen into everything you do. For example, listening. You know how sometimes your own thoughts distract you from a conversation and prevent you from listening properly. However, if you listen mindfully according to Zen, then you are already meditating. You are fully engaged in the conversation and fully aware of the present moment. Other forms of Zen meditation include zazen, meditative sitting and kinhin, meditative walking. When practicing kinhin, you vary the speed at which you’re walking and combine it with a mindful posture. This video shows you what kinhin meditation traditionally looks like. In Zen, both forms, zazen and kinhin, are considered complementary. Since zazen is the entry point to Zen meditation, I will focus on this practice here. You can read more about kinhin in this (link: http://www.howtopracticezen.org/kinhin/text: article).

Traditionally, zazen is practiced in a quiet environment outdoors, but you can practice zazen anywhere - why not on an airplane while it’s taking off? Zen is about not just seeing things, but experiencing them in their entirety. As if you can grasp them. In an airplane, you’ll feel the noise and the pressure affecting your body, and you can do so in a mindful way. In nature, you can experience silence and stillness. Through Zen meditation, you can use both these examples to achieve a calm state of mind.

Practise makes perfect

As with many things in life, Zen meditation becomes easier the more you practise it. Similar to what you might have experienced in sports, the motto for Zen is: it’s better to perform short sessions on a regular basis than long ones from time to time. The recommended length of meditation sessions varies between 10-15 minutes and 15-25 minutes, depending on the master. These sessions will help you achieve noticeably more than if you meditate for half a day every week.

When it comes to the technical implementation, you should start by following the instructions of experts. Once you have developed a feeling for the individual elements of Zen meditation, you can find out whether you want to modify your practice according to your preferences. Ultimately, it is important to find exercises that suit you. Zen meditation is always about finding stillness and silence. If you have problems with your knees, for example, and therefore cannot adopt the suggested sitting position, Zen meditation invites you to find a modified form of this sitting position. Each body is different, so not all exercises can be done in the same way by everyone. The main point is to find stillness at the end.

Especially at the beginning, zazen, or mindful sitting, will feel unfamiliar and maybe uncomfortable because you are sitting in an upright position. However, once your body and mind have adapted through regular practice, these exercises will eventually become easier. What was once uncomfortable and strenuous becomes easy and can be accessed in your daily life. This is how Zen students manage to spend periods of 14 to 18 hours in a sitting position. Once you achieve a more relaxed sitting position, you will notice that it feels natural. However, sitting for 14 to 18 hours will hardly be comfortable, or even feasible.

People in the western world are good at separating meditation from their daily lives. For example, I like to meditate before or after stressful situations. Since the Zen philosophy states that our body and the world are one, this kind of selective meditation doesn’t fit with the approach. Had I been practising Zen before, I would have meditated during the stressful situation as well. So Zen meditation is about always being in the moment. The traditional techniques of meditative sitting or standing can help you achieve this. However, you can also accomplish it without these aids by trying to focus your entire attention on the current situation. Even if you are having a stressful conversation, you can meditate and listen actively. This will help you let go of your hectic thoughts and bring more peace and harmony into your day.

So if you manage to practise Zen meditation, you will come closer to the goal of Zen: to enter into a state of stillness, to have fewer thoughts and thus to find inner peace. No matter what is going on in your world, no matter how the weather is affecting you, you go deeper into yourself and find stillness. I hope that this introduction to Zen meditation will encourage you to give Zen a try.

Picture Source Wouter de Jong auf Pexels