You learn so much by sitting.
sitting in zazen
the silence—
so loud
座禅して沈黙の音大きくて
zazenshite chinmoku no oto ookikute[1]
Zazen, often translated as Zen meditation, is a bit different from what most people probably think of when they hear the word meditation. Some don’t even like to use the word meditation, and will argue that zazen is not meditation. It may seem like arguing semantics, but actually the word Zen itself means “meditation”, the za meaning “seated”, so zazen literally means “seated meditation”, but the meaning of “meditation” in most people’s minds is a bit different than what Zen Buddhists mean by the word.
Zazen, or more specifically shikantaza, the object is not to distract the mind with chants or with listening to the breath like in other styles of meditation. In those styles, the idea is that you need to learn to ignore the mind in order to enjoy the peace of meditation, but since ignoring the mind is really really hard, better to distract the mind with something while we enjoy some moments of peace. Not unlike parents distracting their kids with the iPad so they can enjoy an hour of quiet and peace.
In Zazen, however, the idea is to watch the mind. Listen to whatever you hear in the room, but don’t focus on it, take it all in, and observe how the mind responds to them. If the mind starts a thought, don’t focus on it either, but watch the process of the thought coming and then going when we don’t interact with it. Instead of distracting the mind as in other styles, in zazen we let the mind do as it will, we let thoughts come and go. They are born, have life, and die away. In doing so, we train ourselves not to cling to thoughts and to recognize that those thoughts aren’t us in a manner of speaking.
As you might imagine, Shikantaza is a much more difficult style of meditation.
The above haiku came to mind after I had done my twenty minutes of zazen one night. The silence is indeed so loud, as you find when you start to listen to it.