Zen [antikvár]

Every religion at its highest tells us that life itself Is holy, and that the full experience of the transcendent nature of life is a homecoming. Zen is a Buddhist way of attaining a direct realization of the truth of these statements. Based on the highest teachings of the Buddha, it was taken in the sixth century AD from India to China, where it came to be known as 'direct pointing to the heart of man'. This direct pointing is to the living experience of Reality, to what life is in itself, unmediated by words or Ideas. Zen points to a specific state of awareness in which the mystery and beauty of life In this very moment is perceived wholly and directly and with pure objectivity. In the words of one of Its teachers, Dogen, 'To learn the way of the Buddha is to learn about oneself. To learn about oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to be enlightened by everything in the world. To be enlightened by everything is to let fall one's own body and mind.' Zen is a religious path, but it expresses Reality not in theological explanations but in everyday conversation and advice. On how to act in accordance with Reality, Ummon says: When walking just walk, When sitting just sit, Above all, don't wobble. And that age-old problem of how to live in the world, and yet find liberation, Is dealt with in this fashion: Bokaju was once asked, 'We have to dress and eat every day, and how can we escape from all that?' The master replied, 'We dress; we eat.' 'I do not understand.' 'If you do not understand, put on your clothes and eat your food.' The usual conceptual mode of thinking is upset by the apparently unsatisfying advice given in this last statement - the logical mind has nothing to feed on. Intellect and imagination are told to come to a full stop so that eating food and dressing can be experienced as they really are. Because Zen desires to loose us from the grip of concepts, to shatter the rigid thought-forms in which we seek to possess life, it also makes devastating use of contradiction and paradox. When Joshu, a great Zen master, was asked what he