This is a frequent question and the answer is simple: Zen practice is not a warm, cozy and fuzzy practice generating a “feeling good” state. The practice requires rigorous commitment, patience and discipline. It is designed, first, to help practitioners realize their genuine Self or True Self different from our social mind- controlled self. This […]
Student: “ Zen is teaching us to quiet the mind but I can’t. I am always thinking about this and that, about the past, the future, my current issues, my work. It is non stop, even if I have being meditating for months!” Our mind and its hardware component, the brain, are working 24/7 like […]
Contrary to our Western medicine, the Oriental one and Zen Buddhism consider Mind and Body as an unbreakable single unit in which each part affects the other one continuously and at different degrees. Body functions, thoughts and emotions are the jobs of our subconscious and conscious mind. If thinking does not affect our body, our […]
The word meditation comes from the Latin meditare, which is the passive form of the verb. It means "being moved to the centre" Please note: it is not the active form that means "moving to the centre" So, who / what is moving us? Meditation does. When we meditate we are being moved to the centre of self […]
French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes wrote his famous “I think therefore I am” in 1637. Is equating our identity with thinking and equating thinking with Being (I am) a delusion? Is Being more than thinking? Can we be more than our mind and our thoughts? Of course, to function as a human being would […]
I have been requested to talk about what is real and what is not. After some hesitations here are few thoughts. When asked to define reality and non-reality the Buddha replied in many ways often contradicting himself. Maybe his contradictions had a purpose since he did not like metaphysical or philosophical stuff, preferring being down to […]
When asked why he forgave the Chinese for taking Tibet and its temples and why he did not express any anger and resentment against them the Dalai Lame replied: “They took everything but I don’t want them to take my mind. By forgiving I am keeping my mind clear and serene”. One of the common […]
The key teaching of Zen Buddhism is the teaching of impermanence also called transiency or ongoing change. Look at yourself and around you and you will see that everything changes continuously and forever. Around 300 millions cells died every minute in your body. Not 100% of them are replaced, this is aging. No living beings, no trees, […]
How do we define the “self”? The way we define and delimit Self that is you, others and me living beings is very arbitrary and restrictive. This “individual self” is a living biological organism made of around 30 Trillions of cells made of 7 x 10 power 27 molecules. This self is capable of moving, […]
Nelson Mandela spent 27 years and 4 months in jail. A journalist asked him: “How did you survive breaking rocks and doing nothing?” He replies: “ It depends what doing nothing means. Doing nothing is doing something” By the way, Nelson Mandela was an avid reader of with Zen literature. When someone is asking you […]
