Zen
One of the problems addressed by Zen is that of having an experience.
People talk about trying to learn the meaning of life.
Life has no meaning. What’s the meaning of
a flower?
What we are looking for is an experience of life, getting the experience.
But we’re shoving ourselves off the experience by naming, translating,
and classifying every experience that comes to us. You fall
in love. O.K., is this going to lead to marriage or is this
illicit or whatnot. You’ve classified and lost the
experience. So, put your head in the lion’s mouth and just
say, “I don’t know what the hell is going on.” And something
will come of it. TMTT 205
I
had a very strange experience when I was invited to lecture at a seminary in
Long Island where priests are trained. The priest who wrote
and invited me said he was very eager to have me come because I had in my
writings introduced him to the inward life. So I go there and
find these men studying Zen. I was stunned because I was
brought up a Catholic and I would have received nothing like this kind of
reception forty years ago. Meditation has to do with finding
the Christ in you, finding
the
energy in you. Well, that is what sitting zazen is
all about, too: realizing one’s own Buddha nature. G19