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Every exit is an entry somewhere else -Tom Stoppard |
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I have studied many "religions", both modern and ancient. Organized religion has over the centuries played a fundamental role in the essence of the human experience. Our need for belief, faith and guidance. The need for purpose and answers. For me, learning of Zen has made things quite clear. With all the differences and variance of customs one thing seems to be universal in religious pursuits. This is prayer. And whether you call it prayer or meditation it reaches the same result. Enlightment and the "answer". But Zen meditation, as opposed to "traditional" prayer follows what I have always believed, that instead of searching for answers and guidance outside of ones-self, it leads to the search within. |
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Enlightenment means seeing through to your own essential nature and this at the same time means seeing through to the essential nature and truth. In Zen, it has been called nothingness, the one hand, or one's original face. The essence of Zen is most directly conveyed in the language of everyday experience and not in the phrases of the theologian or academic. The aim is to lead to a direct experience of life in itself. To eliminate dualistic distinctions such as I/you, true/false, subject/object and to come to an awareness of life unconditioned by words and concepts. The word Zen is an abbreviation of Zenna or Zenno, the Japanese way of reading the Chinese characters Ch'an-na, which is Chinese for the sanskirt word dhyana which describes both the act of meditation and the state of non-dualistic consciousness. Zen is not to form conceptual understanding but to become aware of ourselves as we really are and to appreciate what it means to be consciously self-aware. |
Links 
| Everything Zen? | Writings on Buddhism | Dharma Ring |
| Buddhist Bookmarks | Buddhist Door | Buddhist Student Associtation |
| Zen Master on-line | Zen@SunSITE | The Electronic Bodhidharma |
| Taoism and Poetry | Dark Zen |
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