Category: Teachings

Introduction to Zen Part 2 – The Practice of Zen

The second part of John’s three part talk on the origins, practice and rituals of Soto Zen, focusing on the practice and posture of Zazen.

In this video, John talks about how the Chinese tally is sometimes used as a metaphor in Buddhism. The tally was an object broken into two parts which would then fit back together exactly; they were used in transactions.
Using this metaphor, we can think of our relationship to a sutra or a teacher. In the fitting together, a dynamic wisdom is created, now.

In this video, John talks about the commentary Master Zongmi wrote about the seven Zen schools of his time. It gives helpful explanations of how each school understood the common but confusing metaphor of the ‘bright jewel’.

In this video, John talks about the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment. This describes three approaches to meditation: Samatha, Samapatti and Dhyana. We can look at these as three different practices. We can also look at them as being three aspects, although not the only aspects, of our own practice.

In this video, John talks about Dogen’s view on attaining the Buddha’s truth. Dogen says that since this truth is reality, in order to avoid it one has to resolve not to attain it. Without this intention not to pursue the Buddha’s truth then 

everything is your ally

In this video John talks about non-separation and what Dogen describes as ‘taking the backward step’. This can be described as ungrasping in terms of each of the five skandhas.

In this video John explains what we need to understand about the purpose of a teacher: it is to wake us up from the dream of the self. And that our teachers’ incompleteness and our incompleteness and the incompleteness of all things is the hand that opens and reaches out to all things.

In this video John talks about Dogen’s Shobogenzo Dotoku. With this he was recasting Buddhist practice by changing what we think our idea of practice is. Rather than struggling through a storm to an imagined tranquillity, we are to see ourselves and all beings as ‘expression’.

But Dogen’s idea of ‘expression’ is not to view it as an attribute of the self. If we ungrasp from the grip of the self, even what we understand to be delusion, is in itself expression.

In this video John talks about vitality – the aliveness of the body – and its central role in meditation. If we ignore it then we may end up just thinking of meditation in terms of consciousness, what we will give attention to is the ‘contents’ of consciousness, primarily thoughts and emotions.Aliveness shows itself at the level of sensation, which goes ‘upwards’, becoming emotions, becoming thoughts. It will also show itself as an energetic patterning underneath our emotions.  If we’re not aware of that, then what we’ll see is simply the top layers.

In this video John looks at the fantastical content and structure of many of the Mahayana sutras. What’s going on? In the Pali sutras, the language is simply faithfully recording what the Buddha said.
In the Mahayana sutras by contrast, the language is expressive and performative, so the teaching isn’t, as it were, set out in the sutra. The sutra is like a teacher who will change you.