Last Wednesday I went to “Zen night” which is traditional Zen practice lead by this guy named Peter and consisting of twenty five minute sitting meditation, followed by ten minutes of walking meditation, followed by twenty five minutes of sitting meditation, followed by chanting, followed by a dharma talk.

It was fun, very formal in a relaxed kind of way, lots bowing and having specific posture and gestures. The meditation itself was eyes open breath centric meditation – the eyes open bit was new for me, and kind of fun – it’s was neat to visually see things and try not to engage with them, to just “let them be” as it were.

The dharma talk was cool, Peter is helping this seventy five year old Japanese Zen guy translate an ancient Zen master’s book (Dogen I think, from around 1200) from ancient Japanese into English. The Japanese guy has been working on it for forty five years, Peter for the last six. He read some of the translated work and talked about it, and it illustrated a couple of things about Zen practice to me.

Paraphrasing Peter (poorly): Dogen (I think) is talking about a young monk.

When the monk first arrives at the monastery the master greets him by saying “What is it that thus comes?” The young monk meditates for eight years. When his interview with the master comes up he says “When I first arrived here you instructed me ‘What is it that thus comes?’ and I think I know, but I can not express it in words.”

It was funnier when Peter said it, the hook is viewing the question “What is it that thus comes?” as an instruction, and Peter pointed out that this is a fundamental of Zen practice, to view everything from the perspective of this question, to essentially live the question.

What this really illustrates for me is how poor Zen (and really all spiritual practices) are in communicating the basic information required to come to any sort of spiritual understanding; and I only told half the story. The rest of it is roughly:

the master says something equally profound; the young monk goes away and meditates for another eight years before becoming enlightened.

So this poor monk basically spends 16 years, with only two basic guidelines, for the most part he is left to his own ingenuity (viewing the question as an instruction) and resources (16 years of meditation.)

There are very good reasons for this. First enlightenment isn’t conceptual, it’s experiential, which makes it pretty much impossible to describe, and even harder to understand. Just like someone can tell you what it’s like to be drunk, but you won’t really know what they mean until you have had too much to drink yourself. Second spiritual realization ultimately come from within, meaning everyone needs to slog through their own mess during meditation to arrive at an understanding that is wholly their own truth, and not just something they have been told.

That said, it still seems like Zen practice is particularly vague when it comes to instruction. “Sit with your eyes open and remain aware of your breath. Walk slowly and remain aware of your feet. Sit and breathe again. Here is a story, which is also a joke and a riddle, and might also be profoundly insightful instruction.”

Still, there is something essentially beautiful about it. Maybe not in summary, but in the doing of it.

This week the old Japanese guy will be in town, I’m so going to that – zen practice with an authentic old Japanese dude…