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07-27-00     

Abstract: The nature and lack of goals in Zen practice are noted.

I.  General remarks about introducing aspects of Zen.  The origins are as much Taoist as Buddhist.

A. Recommended beginning works:


Daisetz T. Suzuki, Introduction to Zen Buddhism.  Grove, 1991
Philip Kapleau, Three Pillars of Zen.   Anchor, 1989.
Alan Watts, The Way of Zen.  Vintage, 1999.


B. Zen Buddhism emphasizes ...


1. A way of life by direct insight into your own nature.

2. Intuition and a distain for intellectual or formalistic methods, dogma, institutions. Zen seeks to transcend the relativity of cultural conditioning.

3. The nature of self is the nature of change itself. 

A. There is no connection between the "I" of yesterday and the "I" of today. There is an "eternal now" of the mind.


1. When you desire, you give up your own precepts.

2. You don't have to justify your existence by works. We don't exist for something else--just ourselves.


B. Always be a beginner: express your own nature by doing.


1. Everything has a Buddha-nature: do things the natural (right) way with "no hurry."

2. Listen to yourself as the first step. Note Vasudeva's relationship with the river in Hesse's Siddhartha..

3. Sometimes when we try too hard, we develop a "purposeful tremor."

A. If you think "I" do x, the ""I" is extra and unnecessary. There is no "I," just the doing of "x."

B. Compare "losing yourself" in activity.

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