What is Zen?

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Good question. With patience, curiosity, and lots of zazen (seated meditation) you might discover that questions have a fondness for falling away. And when the mind finally 

becomes quiet, you might find that the sound of the rain replaces you. At such a time there's no Zen to be found anywhere. 

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But questions are important in Zen. Where knowing can shut down inquiry, questions can open a door. The Zen tradition has several hundred questions and scraps of text called koans that are specifically designed to uncover and deepen one's experience of intimacy with this world in this place at this time.

 

Most koans have been handed down from teacher to student for many centuries, so they're well-worn, pliable, and speak directly to the human mind and heart prior to nationality and other outposts of individual identity. Here are three koans: 

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How old is Buddha this year? 

What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?

What is your original face, the one before your parents were born? 

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In sitting with a koan, a kinship develops. You find that just keeping company with a koan 

is its own completeness and beauty. The koan is keeping company with you too, and its seemingly paradoxical quality begins to dissolve. Oh, this is my original face. Of course!  

 

The rich not-knowing at the heart of koan study is the same not-knowing at the heart of a creative life—an open, curious, and generous experience of being that's already here if we can just awaken to it.

 

As one gains freedom from narrow certainties and old narratives, allies and guides appear in unexpected places. You find that you are not, after all, a stranger in this world.

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Bamboo shadows sweep the stairs

but no dust is stirred; 

moonlight reaches the bottom of the pond

but no trace is left in the water. 

 (Zenrin-kushū, 1688)

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