Discussions

What Zen is essentially about :

Zen is essentially about rebirth from the experience of Being.
Zen teaches us to discover that transcendental core of our own selves in an immediate and practical sense, to " taste" divine Being in the here-and-now. It has nothing to do with analytical logic, dogmatic belief, or even speculative metaphysics, but points the way to an experience we can have and, indeed, are meant to have. Once we have had it, we come to see that our earthly existence, between the twin poles of life and death, is rooted in a transcendental state of Being, which forms the hidden ground of our own nature and which we, as human beings, can and must bring to consciousness. But to have this experience and have it validly, we must first discard the old consciousness, which has hardened into habit and determines the way we think and act.
... A loved woman exists fully and has meaning only for the man who loves her, an enemy only for those who fear him, a friend only for those whom his understanding warms, and a healer only for those who seek a cure. In the same way, Zen exists only as a living answer to real-life problems, to the sufferings and longings of individual human beings. If we try to take Zen objectively and to judge it by the standards of logic, ethics, or aesthetics, then we shall simply miss what it has to say, or misunderstand its message completely and reject the whole thing as obscure and abstruse. Whenever we try to force the inexplicable into an image or concept, we are really trying to tame and make it familiar--and there is always a danger that it's real and vital meaning will be lost.
... The three components of human happiness are vitality, beauty, and a sheltering sense of community. We always start by relying on ourselves looking for those three things in power, order, and fellowship as the world understands them. Failing to find them there, we eventually seek them in the only way that makes sense--in Being, which transforms, fulfills, and brings us to new life.
Turning to Being is turning inward, but turning inward for fulfillment would surely be a futile exercise unless what we found there was, in some sense, absolute and totally divorced from the agonizing ego-World complex in which we are entangled to start with.
The way forward leads from the anguish rooted in the old self to the experience of what we really are, and from the experience of what we really are to fulfillment in a new self; it leads to the death of the old self to the birth of a new self from what we truly are-i.e ., to the true self.
Zen knows about redemptive Being and the life that springs from it. Zen knows about our inner nature, in which Being is present within us, offering us salvation and the genuine hope of a new life that will transform and remake us. Zen knows about the wall that cuts us off from Being, and it knows how we can tear down. But we shall understand Zen only if we can hear within ourselves what Zen, in its own way, is saying. To receive the gift that Zen offers us, we must first ask ourselves, what is the anguish, the human anguish, that afflicts us today? And what are the signs that promise us that it will end?
Excerpts from " Zen and us " by Karlfried Durckheim