Prayer and Zazen

Listening to a friend who is a pastor discuss prayer. From his notes from spiritual formation class, He shares this Thomas Merton quote, ‘In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there.’  

His class discusses "doors" of contemplative prayer which are not sequential. Concerns on how is your time is being spent in busyness and self preoccupation. Become one with the prayer word if you use one. Shift your attention from the thought to what is aware of the thought, the awareness itself.

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Zazen is to Buddhism what prayer is to the Judeo-Christian traditions. Just as prayer is a giving up of our small petty desires and asking that God's will be done, zazen is also a giving up of our egotistical evaluations of ourselves (whether as superior or inferior) and entrusting our life to the power of zazan as embodied in the fourth seal, all things as they are.

page 19 Opening the Hand of Thought by Zosho Uchiyama

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Most religions have the important practice of prayer; without prayer religion doesn't make sense. Buddhism doesn't seem to have prayer and this appears to be a big difference between it and other religions. In the 19th century, Western people didn't accept Buddhism as religion because it didn't seem to have prayer; it was not what is called revealed religion. Revealed religion emphasizes revelation from God are a higher source of being. Toward the end of the 19th century, several Western Buddhist scholars began to study Buddhism and gradually Western people have come to understand it and how it is different from other religions. The Buddhism doesn't seem to have prayer, it does have dhysna. Dhysna means zazen (meditation), and dhysna is exactly the same as prayer. Shakyamuni Buddha says Dharma is a light you can depend on, the self is a light you can depend on, but this self is really the self based on the Dharma. Dharma is the ultimate nature of existence, or holiness or the truth itself. So, Buddhism is not a revealed religion, but an awakened religion - it is awakening to the self or to the truth. This is the characteristic of Buddhism. 

In Buddhism, however, this dhysna or zazen, which is exactly identical with the practice of prayer, must not be a sort of means to an end; even prayer in Christianity is not to pray to a divinity that exists apart from us. If we pray in that way, there is no religious security, because the more we pray to God existing apart from us, the more God keeps us silent. Real prayer is completely beyond whether God speaks to us or not, or whether we feel satisfactory or not; all we have to do is just pray. That prayer is just process itself, the process of the prayer itself, that is all we have to do. This process or practice itself really manifests the source of our life or the ultimate nature of our existence. Within such a practice of prayer, there is no object to try to pray to or no subject who is doing the praying; this is real prayer.

Returning to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life by Dainin Katagiri, Right Zazen pages 98 to 99

Being time

Being Time: Dogen 

We are time, we are space. We are not traveling through it. We are then living our lives. Rather than trying to finish an activity to get on to the next one, we can have a sense of fulfillment can develop in our lives.

There is no such thing as the present moment. You don't come out of something called the past our present moment. It's just a concept. It's just the transience of circumstances coming and going and changing all the time. We call that the present but it's not a static thing. It's a flow of changing circumstances and impermanence. That's what we come back to each time. If you're just observing your life, you're not one with your life. If you're complaining about your life, you're not one with your life. If you're comparing your experience to other people's experience are something you've experienced before, you're not one with your life. That is the essence of Zen practice. No matter what circumstances you are, it's about totally being in the process, totally in the stream of it, not being on the outside looking in. 

Be here now ( revisited): The Ordinary Mind Zen School Sydney podcast: Dharma talks given by Geoff Dawson.

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In another famous story from 13th century Japan, Dōgen Zenji (the founder of Sōtō Zen) traveled to China to study Buddhism. There he met an old Tenzo (Head Cook) who had walked 12 miles to buy some Japanese mushrooms brought over on Dōgen’s ship. Dōgen was puzzled by the distinguished monk and asked him, “Venerable Tenzo, in your advanced years why don’t you wholeheartedly engage the Way by doing zazen or studying the sutras instead of troubling yourself by being Tenzo and just working? What is that good for?” The Tenzo laughed loudly and said, “Oh good friend from a foreign country, it is clear you have no idea what it means to whole-heartedly engage in the Way!” 

Sangha Work Days: Austin Zen Center