What Is Zen?

I love it when folks ask me questions about zen and the practice of zen.

In any form of teaching or education:

Q. Who learns the most?

A. The teacher.

So in a very sincere way I was recently asked "what is zen, I don't get it."

A million cliché zen like answers come to mind:

"Nobody does."

"Go ask the cat."

"What's for lunch?"

Then there is the other response, a sincere answer. An attempt to distill a 2,500 year old culture into a few sentences.

The following is my shot at the answer to the question:

"Thanks for asking…

The core practice of zen is meditation. Zazen means meditation. All of the wisdom of zen, the practice of zen comes from the experience of meditation. So first off if you don't meditate I recommend you start there.

The culture of zen is the accumulation of wisdom discovered through meditation.

A lot of zen knowledge is knowledge of the mind. The knowledge of how the mind works, the nature of perception. you could say it's the history of the mind studying the mind.

So... what have all these meditators, zen practitioners figured out ? A lot.

I say the core understanding is that the experience of our lives is interpreted through the mind. The world of phenomena and matter is perceived, interpreted, understood by the mind. That the mind is itself part of, integrated with, made of the same matter and phenomena of the universe.

Is that helpful?"

Because zen is a culture it has developed a language to describe the experience of zen. If you want to study zen I recommend you learn the language of zen. The best tool in english is the Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen.