The Meditation Essence of Zen Chapter 1
Zen Meditation
Transcendence means a free world, where you identify yourself with the reality
now and here, getting yourself out of the capsule of intelligence and emotion. It is a pure
and monistic world, an extreme of simplicity. This is what we call “Zen.”
Zen meditation is the practice of Zen. It is an independent world transcendent of
everything. What is important is to simply devote yourself to the Zen discipline and
destroy the root of your persistent ego.
Usually we perceive through conceptualization the things passing by, even in a
very short period of time, say one millionth of a second. This way, you can never realize
the true living reality. You will lose yourself. This is what we call a “reversed vision.”
Zen meditation should be done to get rid of this habit of “reversed vision,” to
become conscious of the truth of nature, and to relieve yourself from your own ego, in
other words, to live in truth.
Transcendence means to identify yourself with the reality, to devote yourself
purely to the reality, to forget yourself, and to transcendence existence, getting out of
time and space. This is what I mean by “transcendence of self.”
It is an experience of emptiness ( sunyata). It is to be what you are, to be what the
universe is (“isness” of a thing). It is absolute. It is a salvation. We call this great state of
mind “satori” (emancipation). This is an experience of transcendence.
This is the spirit and resurrection of Buddha himself. The time when you practice
Zen meditation is a universe of Zen. This is transcendence.
Zen meditation consists in the concentration of yourself on now and here, the
absolute instance, the emancipation of yourself from the past, and the realization of the
genuine “now.”
Now is always now. Now is transcendent even of Zen meditation. No time cannot
be now. Now is the eternal and absolute now. It is the whole universe. Everyone can be so
while staying what he/she is.
This great truth is the Buddhist law ( buppo). The way to salvation is called
“butsudo” (Buddhist way). And this great realization is called “satori” (emancipation).
Then, how can you get rid of your habit of mind?
It is by resisting your old habit that you can rid yourself of idealistic habit of
conceptualization and scattered speculation. You must make an effort to prevent yourself
from considering various things, and to concentrate on, and go deeply into, the root of
concepts and speculation.
Zen meditation begins with the dedication of your all energy to doing this, and
with the throwing of yourself into an instant before your brain starts to function. It is an
effort to constantly cut off your habit of mind which tends to appear at any moment.
The most effective way to free yourself of such a habit is to reduce your pace of action to one
tenth what it is, and ever to divert your attention from this, slowly but clearly, without
using any conceptualization. This is opposed to scattered speculation. Therefore, the
harder you try this, the earlier you can get rid of your habit and the more clearly you can
understand your own behavior.
