WHAT IS MEDITATION

In our Zen training, a regular sitting meditation session typically lasts 45 minutes. That is 45 minutes out of the 1,440 minutes that comprise one day. If you sit once a day, that leaves another 1,395 minutes in the day. Now, multiply those numbers by days in a week, weeks in a year, years in your life up to this point. That represents many minutes you are not doing sitting meditation (zazen), or any type of meditation. So, what are you doing with all that time ?

I can hear the protestations now: I can’t sit more. How am I supposed to get all the tasks done on my checklist? I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got a family to take care of. Plus, I deserve at least some time for myself. I’m already stretched to my limit. Now you are telling me I need to meditate more? Not possible, not going to happen!

Before we directly address those concerns, though, we need to go back to the basic definition of zazen.

Zen ‘s Sixth Patriarch, Hui Neng (638-713 CE), describes meditation as being externally undisturbed and internally unperturbed. That is, when you meditate, you do not let anything from the outside distract you, and you do not allow thoughts arising from inside you to disturb you.

While sitting in this way, do not go blank and do not stagnate. Instead, be fully aware and engaged, cutting thought by thought, letting go moment by moment. While in this state, we can experience samadhi, which is the state of being “one with.” When we sit and train at the highest level of spiritual intensity, we can finally begin to realize that nothing exists to which our minds can attach.

This is the true nature of everything in the universe, of the universe itself. There is no difference between us and anything else. Any separation we think exists comes from our minds. Our journey is to experience how this realization of no-separation changes our perspective of who we truly are.

Now, back to those 1,395 minutes of the day when you are not doing sitting meditation. What—or who – creates the separation between mediation and not-meditation?

Meditation is not just doing zazen. We must be able to meditate in action, to have all our doing be zazen. Though we may be doing our work, relaxing or even sleeping, we must be in the state of samadhi. This is zazen in action; this is samadhi in action.

One of my old friends, another Zen master and former martial artist, once said to me: “Training is everything; everything is training.” There is no separation between Zen training and the rest of our life. It is all one thing. This is not easy to live, but it is critical for deepening our Zen training. Mediation does not relegate itself to one form. With this approach, we meditate 1,444 minutes of each day.