In Zen, the journey to at-one-ness, is about focusing on everyday events, and seeing the profundity that is there. If I am to become one with all there is, I need to contemplate all the “ordinary things”.
 
Zen asks me to extend my sitting zazen into mindfulness of everything I do and encounter, and in the face of there being no guarantees!

I am asked trust completely! 

Take the everyday event of a small seed in the ground as it transforms itself into a mature plant. It trusts the universe as it sends its sprouts towards the sunlight. 

In fact zazen is a process of trust. That trust is blind, yet all-seeing. I just need to get to see that I can see a “something” that is beyond the illusory wheel of life and death. 

There cannot be a guarantee as that would be saying that manifest and non-manifest exist, when in fact they are illusions. They are not even an illusions, because by its own definition, illusion cannot exist!

Through my Zen practice I get to observe my beliefs, and have found myself spontaneously coming to a realization of how I “create” everybody else who is in my life, or who comes into my life.

There are moments when the fact that I recognize that they are part of me is very vivid and profound. This I take to be the Zen “at-one-ness” that in my zazen I aspire to realize. But these moments disappear, and as sorry as I am to see them go, I recognize that I need to be drawn back into my “believing ego-mind” and continue to learn that elusive art of transcendence over and over again, until such time as I become totally transcendent… enlightened. 

Seeking for this state of awareness however, is a desire and I know desiring it will not bring it, because we cannot seek what we already are, or travel to a place at which we already exist.

Witnessing the mind does not involve any desire for enlightenment for how can I be what I already am? 

Just allow the mind’s antics to unfold. Notice what is ego, and see if you can get what is not ego.

In my zazen, I witness how the mind tries to seduce me into entanglement with its plans and decisions of past and future. 

There is nothing to get when we already have it!

It came up in my zazen this morning that what I was achieving in stilling my mind and focusing on the breath was no-thing at all.

For a moment my mind seemed totally still, there was really nothing at all! No thoughts or ideas, just the breath entering and leaving my body. Then suddenly, every trivial thought under the sun bombarded my mind and I recognized I was actually getting a feeling of fear. Fear from nothing at all? There was also a fascination because I was totally observing this mental phenomenon as if it was somebody else.

During this dream-like state, I remembered the Buddha’s word for this no-thing was shanyata and this word seemed much softer and more acceptable than no-thing. The empty void I was experiencing continued behind my chattering mind and then I had a prominent thought that I had experienced this no-thingness before. I had been in this space before I was born and I am and have been OK in spite of it. And my mind stopped again and only the breathing was there until my timer signalled the end of my sitting.

This period of 45 minutes I had been sitting in zazen, had gone in a flash and will never return again. It was truly timeless. There is only now.

The practice of zazen isn’t strictly speaking a meditation, more of a mind focus. It is the basis of Zen practice which is the intention of becoming mindful, recognizing that there is only now, that the past is gone and future is not yet.

It is the intention of a Zen practitioner to use the mindfulness practised in zazen into the tasks of every day life, meaning that the profound can discovered in the mundane.  There are many Zen stories and one that I feel illustrated this beautifully is…. There was once a student of Zen who asked his master, “how can I become enlightened”, to which the master replied, “Chop sticks, carry water… enlightenment”.

If we can become focused totally on mundane tasks “carrying water and chopping sticks” to the exclusion of all other thoughts, then we are mindfully in the here and now. At one with all and our perceptions of separation will disappear.

When I am totally present, focused on the here and now, I am totally detached from what was and from what will be. I can stay on the path to enlightenment if I can stay focused on what is.  This is my objective in zazen. I then need to extend the present mindfulness of zazen into my daily activities. This is to experience the path of true Zen.

The only thing that stands in my way of spiritual awareness is denial, the ultimate scepticism. In contrast, “I-don’t-know-ness” is a sign that my mind is open, so a wait-and-see, is a good philosophy. But…

When I get the feeling “I thought that would/would not happen”, I have the opportunity to realise that I have only pretended to be open-minded because I have been in anticipation of a result. Merely observing these traits and attitudes in meditation provide the impetus to de-structure them, which is part of the process of opening my mind more and more to ultimate reality.

Meanwhile, until I fully experience the domain of ultimate reality, my mind, through the Law of Attraction will bring me my goals and wishes, so my zazen is a powerful and useful tool to examine and edit what exactly I am wishing for!

Zazen is about focusing the mind.

Life circumstances are much less important than we think they are – they are just karma, the effect of our previous internal imaginings, feelings and thoughts.

It is the here and now thoughts and feelings that are important for they form our future life circumstances.

Through zazen we can focus our mind totally on any intent that we create in the here and now, creating a healing and letting-go of past karma.

The here and now, is therefore more important than anything that exists in time. The here and now is timelessness – it always is.

If we seek happiness we are acknowledging that we are not happy. In my zazen, I have realised that the moment I stopped seeking happiness, I became happy and when I started seeking again, I was less happy. There is only now, yesterday is gone and tomorrow isn’t yet. Right now is the only place we can really be happy.

Zazen (meditation), trains our mind to focus and when we can change our focus, we can change our thinking,  and our thinking can change our awareness of what is so. It is in this way, that we create our perception of the world.

In zazen, like in all tasks worth mastering, we need to exert effort. Not an effort to force the mind into a denial about what is going on with us, but an effort to focus our mind, whilst at the same time, allowing forceful conflicting thoughts to have their say without opposing them. Because it is only by opposition that conflicting thoughts grow stronger. With full acknowledgement, they have nothing else to say and begin the process of getting resolved, leaving us to create anew, the way we want our lives to be. But there needs to be discipline, dedication and effort to discover what the Zen of life has to offer us.