zen

'Chop that wood. Carry water. What's the sound of one hand clapping? Enlightenment, don't know what it is. Every second, every minute. It keeps changing to something different..'
Van Morrison


Most people have heard about it, few know what it really is and even fewer actually practice it. Zen was rooted in China by Bodhidharma, who came from India in the sixth century, and was carried eastward into Japan by the twelfth century. It has been described as: 'A special teaching without scriptures or explanation, beyond words, pointing to the essence of man, helping to see directly into one's nature, attaining enlightenment.' Zen was known as Ch'an in China. The Ch'an Zen masters, instead of being the followers of the Buddha, aspire to be his friends and to place themselves in the same responsive relationship with the universe as did Buddha or Jesus. Zen is not a sect, it is an experience, a way of eating, breathing, drinking. The zen spirit has come to mean not only peace of mind (jaku) and understanding of the ways of man, but devotion to art and to work, opening the door to insight. Zen carries all the meanings created by oneself. Zen is a philosophy of will power - to shape a mind that only knows gratitude towards the past, service to the present and responsibility towards the future.
The fruits of zen practice are awareness, a heightened sense of feeling and sensitivity that one develops in doing what comes naturally. There is no deity to depend on, you are saddled with the responsibility for yourself. There is no result in Zen practice. It is the effort you make to improve yourself that counts.
There many ways of practicing Zen such as kendo, judo, ikebana (flower arrangement), chanoyu (tea ceremony), or Zazen. In Zazen one sits in cross-legged position. With your hands, arms and shoulders relaxed, you begin to breathe in a controlled, rhythmic breathing that quiets your activity. Finally you abdomen, the tandem, breathes for you. Then the thoughts increase: the day's activities, your problems, your fear, a million things fly by. Your breathing helps you to come back all the time to where you are. Practice will teach you to regard your thoughts like stones falling into a pond, to watch and not move with them. You will find that the more you concentrate the more they slip away. You will then realize that nothing outside of you causes you trouble or anxiety or fear or guilt or doubt. When you can spend time thinking about a thought occurring to you , it is said that your mind has stopped. This 'stopping the mind' is the heart of the problem. When your mind 'stops' to question, to decide or judge -when you are concentrating on that, you lose track of what is still going on.
But the flow of life does not stop when you stop. It just passes you right by, you are simply 'not quite there'. If your mind stops too long, you may find yourself in great trouble. When your mind 'stops' too long because you feel guilt or fear or anxiety or regret or nervous anticipation, you are no longer living in the present but in the future of past.
In a famous Zen story, Nan-in, a Zen master, was visited by a university professor who wished to know all about Zen.
Nan-in served the professor some tea. He poured the cup full, and then continued to pour. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. "Stop it! No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," said Nan-in, "you are full of your own ideas and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

Zen is a practical philosophy and discipline to 'empty your cup' and keep it empty (see also creativeness). When we are empty we have no preconceived ideas and there is a better chance of seeing things the way they are. The empty mind does not make judgments or distinctions it just sees, both danger and opportunity. Very much what creativity is about. Zen teachings are concerned with the practitioner attaining an intuitive experience. The nature and the context of the experience are irrelevant. As long as there is no intrusion by the intellect, as long as the experience is immediate. It is understanding without words an intuitive experience. It is to apprehend a situation clearly and to see it for what it is, and not what you think it is. The intuitive experience is quick and without hesitation. Like in sword fighting or any other sport, the body is allowed its own wisdom, and is completely free from any mental steering. It is a natural action, like bamboo stalks that bends under the force of the storm, until the storm is over, leaving the stalks where they were before.
'Man is only a reed,
the weakest reed in nature,
but he is a thinking reed'
Blaise Pascal
Creativity is like Zen that it is not the result that counts but the practice. In every activity is can be practiced. It helps to break down the barriers and blocks created by our own thinking. The practice helps you to experience reality as it is. Verbal instruction is futile, there is no word to accurately describe quality or love or fear. A Zen exercise to make one realize the futility of language is called koan. The Zen master Hakuin asked the question, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" The koan, or 'riddle', is offered to point out that at times there are no intellectual answers. Intellectual understanding is not always sufficient to effectively communicate. In creative practice problems can be regarded as koans and so become a challenge to measure one's intuitive perception. The Zen mind understands that the senses cannot grasp reality from one viewpoint (cf. mu).
When looking at a 'Zen picture' (sumi-e), one sees the brushwork amid an otherwise empty background. The zen painter wants you, in one instant, to feel and understand, in the deepest sense of the word, what you are experiencing. You have to be aware. When Vincent van Gogh saw these paintings he became so enthusiastic that he studied the technique and applied it to his own work. In 1888 he writes to his brother "I am convinced that my personality will continue to develop when I stay here longer. The Japanese artist draws fast, very fast, as fast as lightning, this is due to fineness of his nervous system, his simpler feelings. I have been here only a couple of months but do you reckon that I could have made the drawing of the fishing boats in half an hour in Paris?" He had been able to do this sketch of the Fishing Boats On The Beach Of Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer by working in the Japanese sumi-e manner: by 'letting the pen go its own way'. The Japanese Van Gogh expert Tsukasa Kodera says that it must have been quite difficult for Van Gogh to renew himself and break away from the traditional styles. However, by copying -to Western eyes- completely new work, he found the freedom to find a new style. The mind mapping technique explained should be seen in this light, act naturally and just do it.
When the light goes on, one says: "The light is on." But are you aware of the absence of darkness? Have you considered that side of the situation? Van Gogh really took the trouble to regard his objects from a different viewpoint. It helped him to develop.
Another Zen master, Dogo, observed: "If you want to see, see right at once. When you begin to think, you miss the point." The idea is that in order to see you must not intellectualize the experience. A good joke or satisfying sex are cases that may help to understand this. To know and to act are one and the same.

Creativity>> Be your natural self, just do it.

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