From Chapter 1: What Is Zazen?

To practice zazen is to study the self. In its early stages, zazen has the appearance of what is normally called meditation. But we should understand that zazen is more than just meditation. It is not mere contemplation or introspection. It is not quieting the mind or focusing the mind. Zazen is sitting Zen—one aspect of Zen. There is also walking Zen, working Zen, laughing Zen, and crying Zen. Zen is a way of using one's mind and living one's life, and doing this with other people. No rule book has ever been written that can adequately describe Zen. You have to go very deep into yourself to find its foundations.

The great Zen Master Eihei Dogen said,

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self,
To study the self is to forget the self,
To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.

To study the self is zazen. To forget the self is zazen. To be enlightened by the ten thousand things is zazen—it is to recognize the unity of the self and the whole phenomenal universe.

The Buddha attained enlightenment while practicing a form of seated meditation. Zen practice constantly returns to that basic seated form. This practice has continued for twenty-five hundred years, transmitted from realized practitioner to realized practitioner, from generation to generation. It traveled from India to China, from China to Korea and Japan, and in the twentieth century it arrived in the West.

Zazen is a very simple practice. It is very easy to describe and very easy to follow. But like all practices, it takes “doing” in order for anything to happen. And what happens with zazen can transform our lives.

Most of us spend our time preoccupied. We are constantly carrying on an internal dialogue. While we are involved in talking to ourselves, we miss the moment-to-moment awareness of our life. We look, but we don’t see. We listen, but we don’t hear. We eat, but we don’t taste. We love, but we don’t feel. The senses are receiving all the information, but because of our preoccupations, cognition is not taking place. Zazen brings us back to each moment. The moment is where our life takes place. If we miss the moment we miss our life.

Every other creature on the face of the earth seems to know how to be quiet and still. A butterfly on a leaf; a cat in front of a fireplace; even a hummingbird comes to rest sometime. But humans are constantly on the go. We seem to have lost the ability to just be quiet, to simply be present in the stillness that is the foundation of our lives. Yet if we never get in touch with that stillness, we never fully experience our lives.

When the mind is at rest, the body is at rest—respiration, heartbeat, and metabolism slow down. Reaching this still point is not something unusual or esoteric. It is a very important part of being alive and staying awake. All creatures on the earth are capable of manifesting this stillness.