Once upon a time, a new monk approached an older, more experienced zen buddhist monk and said,
“I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me everything you know.”
The older monk asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?”
“Yes,” the younger monk said, “I have eaten.”
The older monk replied, “Then you better wash your bowl.”
That told the younger monk all he needed to know.
We all want an extraordinary life - and this want, this burning desire,
is what makes us miserable. Zen Buddhism can teach you how to be happy and satisfied,
but only if you learn to appreciate the ordinary.
‘Zen’ is a term derived from the Japanese pronunciation of the Middle Chinese word, chán,
which means ‘meditation.’ It is also a form of Buddhism that distinguishes itself with its almost
exclusive focus on personhood and the present. Rather than meditations on life, death, religion,
or the world, ‘Zen’ urges you to focus inwards and on the ordinary only. Like all other forms
and practices of Buddhism, Zen is not an ideology or belief, but rather a way of life.
Buddhism was created in India but gradually travelled through Asia throughout the
centuries - and in every country, it spawned multiple sub-sections of Buddhism. The Zen
subsection of Buddhism was created in China, leading to the Chinese School of Zen Buddhism
becoming the most successful school of Buddhism in the entirety of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
One of the ways to become a ‘Zen person’ is by ‘shikan taza’, which translates to:
‘just sitting.’ It means to meditate without
any distractions nor egotistical interests or concerns. How to ‘just sit’, focus on yourself,
on the present, on the ordinary, and more - will all be discussed in this video.
Zen’s focus on the little things and its disregarding of external factors leads to
lots of insightful lessons, but the biggest benefit is that you will realise you don’t
need the extraordinary to be happy - you just need yourself, and your ordinary life.
Since Zen Buddhism is a practice not created by a singular person,
there will be quotes from multiple Zen Monks. These are:
BASO DŌITSU DŌGEN ZENJI
RYŌKAN TAIGU KŌDŌ SAWAKI
SHUNRYŪ SUZUKI , and SHŌHAKU OKUMURA
In this video we will teach you how to start appreciating ordinary life,
and how doing so can transform you and your life into the very best versions of themselves.
The secret is all in the simplicity of washing your bowl after eating from it.
Meditate
Kodo Sawaki says “The more you meditate, the less you need.”
The very first practice that Zen Buddhism recommends is often meditating. ‘Zazen’ in
the practice of Zen Buddhism, is the word for ‘sitting meditation.’ Zazen embraces a
range of sitting positions, but the most general posture is sitting crosslegged,
hands folded in your lap, and your spine upright but relaxed. Try it out. Close your eyes.
When meditating, it is helpful to focus on three aspects, in order:
The body Breathing
Mind
Focusing on the body means focusing on your position. But it also extends beyond that:
you need to keep your body well by feeding it right, moving it enough, granting it the sleep
it needs, and helping it achieve anything else it might require to thrive. Your body is like a plant
you have to take good care of: An unhealthy or unhappy body can greatly distract from meditation.
Then, there is your breathing. Zen does not believe in intense or intense
breathing exercises that some forms of meditation or sport might use,
but rather encourages you to pay attention to the way you normally breathe. Count the
number of breaths you take. Observe how long you breathe in for, how long you hold it,
and how long you breathe out for. Doing so will not only allow your body to find a pace
of breathing that suits you best, but it also calms the mind and brings you into the moment.
Emotions influence your breathing: when feeling intense emotions - such as anger,
joy, or fear - you breathe quicker, rougher, and less deeply than in other
situations. Focusing on your breathing and guiding it back to its normal,
calm pace is incredibly beneficial to calm down from heavy emotions and still your thoughts.
Then, when your body and breathing are calm and observed, and have identified your calm it is time
to adjust the mind. Your mind is filled to the brim with thoughts, knowledge, memories, and most
of all: concerns about your daily life. That fight you had at work, your visit to your grandfather
tomorrow, your meetup for a friend’s birthday, and more… it’s all constantly on the forefront of your
unconscious and conscious mind. So are temporary worries, fears, and even joys. Your mind can’t
just stop all these thoughts simply by having you command it to do so: it would just result
in your mind fighting itself, like trying not to think of a pink elephant… See…? You just did!
Instead, the adjustment of your physical position as well as your breathing serves as the first
distraction from your day-to-day worries. Then, when you’re well and focused on your breathing,
you slowly start to drift. When you observe your breath for long enough, it will stabilise,
after which you’ll calm down. Your mind will stabilise. You’ll be at rest.
Of course your mind will not be completely empty, that’s literally impossible, but if all goes well,
you will be focused enough to observe your thoughts without interacting with them. In other
words, the words, ideas, or images that pop up in your mind are like the trees you pass on a walk:
you know they are there, you might acknowledge their existence, but you don’t walk up to touch
them. They’re just decoration. As Shunryu Suzuki says, “In zazen, leave your front door and your
back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Don't just serve them tea.” Or, as Ryokan Taigu says:
“The mind is like a clear mirror, reflecting everything, but not clinging to anything.”
When you experience this, you’re meditating. You will end up truly ‘seeing’ yourself;
witnessing your own nature. You will acknowledge and recognize what is usually unconscious,
find the source of thoughts that may have always puzzled you, and witness your deepest desires,
motivations, and fears.Most importantly, as a result of getting to know yourself intimately, you
will realise that you can be at peace despite your worries, your criticisms, your disappointments,
or anything else. Your concerns fade away in the light of the internal power and
strength that you possess. You now know you don’t need anything but yourself,
your body to sit, your lungs to breathe, and your mind to flow in its own, unique way.
2. Recognize Your Ignorance Dogen Zenji says, “The true purpose of Zen
is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.”
The water does not flow, the bridge does. Now, this statement might seem like a riddle:
Everything you know about water or bridges goes against this statement,
and you probably find it hard to even imagine what this could look like. But this is just ignorance.
Your ignorance is a fact: all humans are ignorant in some way and it is impossible to eliminate
all ignorance. You will never know everything, understand yourself completely, or live a flawless
life. In fact, Zen Buddhism is of the opinion that our reasoning minds can never understand
the totality of reality. Just like fish don’t understand maths or dogs can’t study history,
there are many things the human brain will not be able to reach or comprehend.
As a result, Zen embraces that reality can seem absurd, contradictory, and unpredictable. As
Shrunryu Suzuki says, “In the practice of Zen, we do not seek to find answers,
but to let go of our questions.” One way to learn how to do this
is by embracing the concept of ‘sunyata.’ Sunyata means ‘nothingness’ or ‘emptiness.’
It means that everything that exists, exists without clear explanation, purpose, or causation:
there will always be confusion or ignorance about everything. Our bodies, existence, lives, and
that of everything around us, is all incredibly complex. There is no way to explain everything.
In our everyday lives, we think in terms of oppositionals. Something is either there or
not there. It exists or it does not exist. While functional in daily life, Zen Buddhism considers
these binary views to be un-meditational. When meditating, one will experience a non-binary
world: one that is infinitely deep, complex, and contains multitudes upon multitudes.
Zen Buddhism’s non-oppositional views are often expressed in the word ‘no’,
or more often, ‘nothing.’ To the binary question: ‘Am I a buddhist or not?’,
the correct answer would be ‘No’ or ‘Nothing.’ This means that a Buddhist is not something
you can be or not be. It is something that you can be in some ways and not in others,
and those things you can be sometimes, but not always.
Thus, embracing nothing means embracing the nuance of life:
the fact that everything can be multiple things at once, serve multiple purposes at once,
that things can be oppositional, and things can be incomprehensible.
In other words: the way to battle your ignorance is to recognize,
accept, and admit it. By realising that you will never know everything,
you will also learn how to be okay with the idea of not knowing everything.
It is our inability to understand our conclusions or boil them down to a binary scenario that can
often make us miserable: when something is not ‘good,’ we label it ‘bad.’ If the party
was not ‘fun,’ it was ‘boring.’ If your job is not ‘fulfilling,’ it is ‘unfulfilling’ and thus
‘bad.’ Our lack of understanding of the complete nature of something causes us to draw quick,
inaccurate conclusions about that something, which in turn can make
us miserable, making the world seem so much more negative than it actually is.
Now, this is not to say that you should not seek knowledge. Learning and reading is always good
and beneficial. Accepting your ignorance just means acknowledging that whatever you learn,
you will never know everything about a single topic - Even Zen Buddhism! When somebody asks
why they should practice Zen Buddhism, they would probably not be met with an easy answer. Instead,
the most likely answer would be the following, as said by Dogen Zenji:
“In the practice of Zen, there is no goal. The goal is in the practice itself.”
So let’s come back to this beautiful quote from Dogen Zenji: “Water does not flow,
but the bridge flows.” In some ways, this quote will remain incomprehensible to you.
That’s the point. However, Zenji says, this statement is also the perfect metaphor for
Zen Buddhists in meditation. When you meditate well, you will find that the
world around you is not the neverending flow of chaos that it normally seems: instead,
you find that the world is just what it is, and it is your mind that can flow and improve your life.
Trying to eliminate all ignorance is an impossible task - and trying to do it will make you
miserable. Only when you realise that you won’t ever understand or know everything can you start
to flow and learn how to be happy with the way things are. Life does not have to have a singular
purpose, your day does not have to be ‘good,’ and happiness is not something that can be found and
kept all the time. These realisations will help you come to peace with your ordinary life and
achievements just the way they are. 3. Get To Know Yourself
Ryokan Taigu says “The ultimate truth is already within you. You just have to discover it.”
As reiterated, ignorance is permanent and unavoidable - but there is still
plenty of room to learn, especially to learn more about yourself. One of
the most important parts of Zen Buddhism is the study of the self. Paradoxically,
Zen Buddhism recommends you do this by thinking less about yourself.
Most people spend a lot of time thinking about who they think they are and want to be. Think
of the woman who thinks being a good mother is the most important part of her identity
and spends all her time and energy living up to this. Or the man who thinks he will
only be fulfilled when he is a CEO, or the person who wants to be a famous painter,
or the student who thinks they need to keep getting the best grades of the class. These
people all think that certain achievements or lifestyles are essential to who they are,
but in trying to achieve these goals they actually focus on the wrong things.
External achievements are not essential to be who you are,
and thinking so can actually result in you getting lost. You won’t feel like a person
or complete until you’ve reached your goal - your self-worth and identity is given away,
tied to something external. Instead, Zen Buddhism reasons, you should look
inward - to your personality, to who you already are, whatever your external circumstances.
Zen Buddhism believes that, like everything, the ‘self’ is nothing and bottomless. Your urges,
ideas, desires… they all come from this pit. Zen does not believe
that you are prone to deceiving yourself; instead, if you just listen closely to your
feelings and take the actions you feel like taking, you will realise you’re
a unique individual. So you will get to know yourself the best when you do ordinary things.
When you meditate, when you are in the flow, and when you do the same things everybody
else does. Because during these moments, you will find what distinguishes you from others.
What kind of thoughts do you have? Where do you find joy in daily life? What are your
likes and dislikes? What motivates you? You will find that you are already a complete,
complex, and interesting person even in the most uninteresting of circumstances.
So when you learn how to observe yourself casually, you will also learn that you don’t
need anything else to be who you want to be. It is already inside of you. The less you think about
what you want to have and be, the more you will be satisfied with what you already have and are.
Love The Ordinary
Shunryu Suzuki says “Zen is not some kind of excitement,
but concentration on our usual everyday routine.”
Engaging in ordinary activities, as mentioned before, is helpful for getting
to know yourself. But ‘the ordinary’ is much more than that. According to Zen Buddhism,
our ordinary mind is simple: we are naturally calm and focused on just what is needed. This
does not only offer insight into who you are, but also calmness and serenity.
The chaos, confusion, and alienation we experience in reality is a byproduct of
external distractions. Yet most people feel like their mind is a source of chaos, anxiety,
and worries. So how is it that we’ve become so disconnected from our ordinary, natural mind?
Well, this is because we seek out and allow ourselves to be carried away by
all forms of external distractions. In fact, we often feel like distractions are good. We
want to flee ordinary life; everybody wants to experience and become something extraordinary,
something special, something overwhelming. But instead of being fulfilled by always
trying to do more and more, we become more and more dissatisfied.
Now thats not to say that you should never take a risk, change your job, travel, or any
of that. Buddhism highly recommends seeing more of the world and gaining new experiences. But,
whatever it is you’re doing, never forget or neglect the ordinary as well! You might
try out a new job during the day, but don’t forget to cook yourself a nice
and healthy meal in the evening. And you might go out with friends on the weekends,
but make sure to take the time to meditate, clean, and take a walk, too. How many people’s houses are
a mess? How many people don’t like to cook for themselves, or participate in sports, or never do
anything creatively, ever? And how many of those complain about being tired, uninspired, or down?
The ordinary represents the time and place where your mind can rest and grow and so
it is extremely important for your energy levels and mental health to allow your mind that space.
Everything in life should be a balance, and this balance includes that all extraordinary things in
life should be matched with ordinary activities to enjoy. Moreover, according to Zen Buddhism,
participating in ‘ordinary activities’ such as cooking, cleaning, working, being creative,
being active, taking a walk, and more - they can result in achieving ‘flow.’ Think back to that
quote ‘the water does not flow, but the bridge does.’ Being in a sort of flow can look like this:
effortlessly flowing forward, yet not passively nor without power. Imagine it like this:
You’re acting almost automatically, but not mindlessly. Your attention is effortlessly focused
on the activity at hand, with little-to-no inner monologue or distractions, you feel like you’re in
control of the situation, time goes by quicker or less-noticeably, you are neither bored nor
overwhelmed, and the activity allows you to feel a sense of achievement. However counterintuitive
it might seem, it can be the most simple of activities to allow you to get in the flow.
Trying to cook a new recipe, walking a new path, clean the house,
things like that are all great choices. Being in flow is one of the most satisfactory and
inspiring experiences one can have; it is extremely good for your mind and body. So,
everybody who wants to get the most out of their life should, in fact, embrace the little things in
their days. Focus on the ordinary, because the extraordinary alone will never make you happy.
Live In The Here And Now In our final quote for this video, Shohaku
Okumura says “We cannot expect any ecstasy greater than right here, right now-our everyday lives.”
One of Zen Buddhist beliefs is that time and space are necessarily connected and
cannot be separated. Zen Buddhists don’t say ‘live in the here and now’ because that
implies you can live here but not now, or now but not here. Instead,
a more logical phrase would be: ‘live in the here-now.’ Or, just: ‘Live now.’
We often feel trapped in our circumstances and fantasise about the freedom the future
can offer. We think in the future we will be financially comfortable, creatively free,
physically better, or anything else. Zen Buddhism understands freedom a little differently: freedom,
according to this practice, can be understood as ‘purposeless purpose’ or ‘actionless action.’
You are free when you are in the flow, you get a sense of
achievement from the things you do, and you feel satisfied with
the options you have - whether you had the choice to do those things, or not.
Freedom means being free in your mind. Therefore, according to Zen Buddhism, freedom can only be
achieved in the here-now, and only if you set your mind to the things you do. Many of these actions
will concern the ordinary. Your mind might not constantly urge you to do something impressive or
groundbreaking. In fact, these urges might be rare if not entirely absent. Most of our
desires focus on the details of everyday life; eating a sandwich, going to bed, going for a run,
expressing yourself creatively, working hard, working less, and any other ordinary actions.
Zen monk Baso Doitsu famously said ‘the mind as it is is the way.’ You are free
and satisfied when you allow yourself to be calm and follow your mind. This can only be done in
the here-now. If you focus on the future, you are not acting, and the same goes for the past. So,
if you live in the here-now, you will find that you are the most satisfied you could be.
So, in conclusion, it’s a lack of focus on the ordinary that makes us feel dissatisfied
with life. When you learn to focus on the simple things in life - meditation,
acceptance of ignorance, self-exploration, and the present time - you will find
that you don’t need anything you don’t already have. It is all inside of you.
If you enjoyed this video, please make sure to check out our full philosophies
for life playlist and for more videos to help you find success and happiness using
beautiful philosophical wisdom, don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much for watching.