Intro To Zen

Have you ever heard the saying,

Show,

Don't tell?

Show,

Don't tell.

I think it applies to the word zen.

As soon as you start to tell Zen,

Or talk about Zen,

You likely lose what Zen really is.

Which isn't even an is.

It's more of a verb than a noun.

That's one way of thinking about this stuff.

It's often like we're on the search for a noun,

But really what we're looking for is a verb.

It's a way of being.

Zen.

To be Zen.

And to be Zen is to just be fully doing what you're doing when you're doing it.

And that's it for me to just be talking right now,

Not to be thinking about what you might be thinking about me talking or thinking about what I'm going to say next,

But just to be talking.

Talking.

And then not talking.

Just moving.

Just.

Taking a sip of water.

And not rushing,

Not dragging.

Just doing what you're doing.

So I'll close here.

With one example of a singing bowl.

And so I'll play the sound of this bowl.

And our task is to just be the sound while the sound is happening.

The sound will dissolve,

And then we become something else.

But for the time that the sound is occurring,

See if you can just be the sound.

The mind will struggle against it.

It will try to go somewhere else and be something that is not zen.

Here,

The bowl offers you the possible experience of being zen for just a few seconds.

So we'll see if we can just be the sound until it totally dissolves.

In three,

Two,

One.

So I won't say much more.

I've said a lot in a course on Zen,

If you're curious.

I have a course that is 111 sessions long,

So a lot,

But they're all just this one,

And they're all just five minutes in length.

So if you're curious,

If you want to go deep,

I do share about Zen Buddhism and sort of the history of it,

But it's mainly an attempt to bring you into an experience.

All 111 five-minute sessions point back to this same experience and hopefully deepen it,

Deepen it,

Deepen it.

It into whatever it is that is at the center of you.

As an old saying goes,

There's a sleeping Buddha in the pit of your stomach who wants to wake up.

Are you ready to wake up?