The Three Things the Rest of Us Should Know about Zen Training: The Value of Zazen Meditation (Personal Transformation series Book 2)

by Dennis E. Bradford

Freud, for one, understood the problem.

Meditation can cure the problem.

Axiological theories, theories about value, always depend upon underlying theories of human nature.3 The claim that meditation works critically depends upon the truth of a certain view about human nature. Since what is most distinctive about human animals is our minds, it's not surprising that the claim that meditation works depends upon the truth of a certain view about how our minds work.

All meditation is based on the idea that states of mind are what really count.

Dissatisfaction (discontent, misery, suffering, dukkha, off-centeredness) is our default condition.

The real problem is not theoretical. It's the practical problem that we must claim our birthright.

Nobody can train another's mind, and nobody lives well with an untrained mind.

All meditation comes down to is noticing when the mind is being undisciplined and returning its focus to the practice. Noticing and returning, noticing and returning--thousands of times!4 With perseverance, instead of being incessantly controlled by the mind, we become able to control it.

Meditation is the cure for the dis-ease that ...

All that is required for living well is that we stop misusing our most important ability, which is our ability to

control our focus. It's possible for you to prove that for yourself.

To have a mind is simply to be aware or conscious. Awareness or consciousness is always about some object or other. Some of those objects are concepts and the judgments we make using concepts.

Concepts are principles of classification, typically qualities (commonalities) or sets of qualities. To conceptualize is to judge that some object is a member of some kind (sort, group, category) or other.

So judgments are conceptualizations, which are just classifications (separations, divisions, sortin...

To understand something correctly is to make a true judgment about it, whereas to misunderstand ...

There is, however, everything wrong with being in thrall to the tyranny of incessant conceptualization. Instead of using the mind to assist us to live better, we are constantly letting our great capacity run amuck. We cannot ever be free until we put an end to that tyranny. Living well requires using the mind well, and using it well requires training (disciplining, purifying, stilling) it.

There's nothing theoretical (conceptual, intellectual) about meditation. It's not a matter of explaining or understanding anything. It's a matter of doing something, namely, persistently practicing directing the mind so that its focus is on where one wants it instead of elsewhere.

To meditate is to train yourself how to pay attention well. It's to train yourself how not to suffer from a split between where your attention is and the present moment (for example, what you are doing).

Meditation, in other words, is not an escape from life: it's a way to experience life more deeply.

The present moment is the only moment we have to live.

Zen training is spiritual training, meditation. Its purpose is to enable us to live better by enabling us to live more fully in the present moment. It is able to do that because zen training cures the disease of the mind, inattentiveness, which prevents us from living well.

1. The practitioner may be able to empty the mind completely of all judgments, which is known as "awakening" (the experience of no-self, satori, kensho).6 2. The practitioner may be able to infuse the insight from awakening throughout all activities, which is known as "enlightenment."

Awakening is not the real purpose of Zen training; it is, however, the first of the two important goals. Enlightenment, which is using awakening to live well, is the real purpose of Zen training.

Zen Buddhism is not a religion. It's a practice, a way of living. There's nothing supernatural about it. It has no creed.

As one benefits from the practice, the need for belief diminishes. Since they have actually discovered its benefits, masters of any practice need no belief in it. Belief evaporates with success.

a mind being trained in meditation "thrashes about in agony" like a fish hooked and left on the sand.10 The mind resists discipline, but disciplining it brings benefits essential to living well.

Training the mind means disciplining it in order to live better. It means going beyond our egocentric evaluations, including—and especially—our egocentric preferences concerning what is good and bad. It results in practitioners becoming healthier and happier with balanced minds.

To wake up is to become "free of all conditioning."12 To wake up is to let go of selfish attachments: "Don't get selfishly attached to anything, for trying to hold on to it will bring you pain.

The problems of living are caused by our selfish attachments to which we are addicted. To let them go is to wake up to freedom.

To wake up is to become wise.

"The wise are disciplined in body, speech, and mind."14 Meditation is the way to wake up. "Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. . . There can be no meditation for those who are ...

Acting morally comes from being wise. "Those who meditate and keep their senses under control never fail to do what ought to be done, and never do what ought not to be done. Their suffering will come to an end."16 This moral ideal is the ideal of living well. "Best among men is on...

The key is to "[g]o beyond all likes and dislikes" by using meditation to train the "mind to be still" and to reach "the supreme goal of life."22 The mind is like a tool or resource to be used:

"As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds."23 The quality of our lives is determined by how we use our minds. "Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think."24

"The Great Way is not difficult / for those who do not pick and choose. / When preferences are cast aside, / the Way stands clear and undisguised."

Egoistic desires are either positive (attachments) or negative (aversions). There are all kinds of goods we typically desire, and there are all kinds of evils we typically try to avoid. This is the way of the world: ordinary life is a ceaseless quest to gain what we like and to avoid or lose what we don't like.

The Buddha says, "Don't follow the way of the world."31 Instead of endlessly trying to possess what we like and to avoid what we don't like, we have seen how he thinks it much better to train our minds to let go of all egoistic desires.

When I have unsatisfied desires, I am dissatisfied. I am always finding myself dissatisfied about something; I am always lacking something.

the Buddha (Gotama) teaches how to reduce and eliminate cure dissatisfaction, how to end suffering.) No separation, no dissatisfaction.

The only good desire is a non-egocentric desire, and the only non-egocentric desire is the desire to get rid of egoistic desires, in other words, the desire to awaken and become enlightened.

The idea is to use the focus of practicing to replace the constant conceptualizing or mental chatter that is otherwise always the background noise of life. Instead of letting the running commentary or story continue endlessly, the task is to let it vanish simply by noticing Mu continuously.

When the mind is completely empty of judgments, awakening will occur.

Traps may be understood as efforts by the ego/I to prevent its own annihilation.

It's critical that working on Mu is merely noticing Mu. It is not thinking about Mu or anything else. There has to be a complete absence of conceptualizing, of judgment mongering, for awakening to occur.

The more attention we expend on something, the more important it becomes.

It's because the more you work on Mu, the more it will expand in importance. If you keep working on it, eventually it will crowd out all judgments from the mind. When your mind becomes empty of all judgments for a single moment, you'll realize your true nature. You'll achieve a spiritual breakthrough. You'll awaken. Instead of trying to live well, from then on your only task will be continuing to live better and better (by, in koan training, continuing to work on additional koans and letting the resulting insight permeate your life).

When Jianzhi Sengcan talks in "Affirming Faith in Mind" about apprehending everything with "equal mind," he's referring to the harmony of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned. Without gratuitous evaluations, the mind is centered and perfectly balanced.

samsara is the conditioned domain and nirvana is the unconditioned domain.

The truth, which can shock, is that samsa...

There is one reality, but there are two ways of apprehending it, namely, from the Conditioned...