Zazen is Everything

Another monk asked the ancient Chinese master, “What is zazen?” This time the master answered, “Zazen is everything.” This monk too was greatly enlightened, but I didn’t get it. “Didn’t you tell the other monk that zazen was nothing.”  It was years before I began to understand. The Zen master gives each student the medicine he needs at the moment.

I was confused by my idea of great meditators.  The heroes in the Zendo were the ones during sesshin who returned to the zendo to get some extra sitting in, often late into the night. How could I sit all the time? I wasn’t a monk. I had a job and a family. It was years before I began to understand. Maybe “Zazen is everything” didn’t mean “Follow the sitting instructions every minute.” The instructions are pointings to the moon. Maybe the master wasn’t talking about the pointings. Maybe he was talking about the moon. To understand what he meant, I had to experience zazen. The moon is the experience of “the oneness of life,” although those are only words, not the experience. There are other words which “express” the experience – for instance, “I am the Buddhas and they are me” – but these too are only words. Some of the meditation instructions definitely helped me to the experience which eludes words.

Zazen, the experience, not the instructions, is life, all of life. We work with the meditation instructions because there is all this testimony that if your practice follows these pointings, you increase your chances of having the experience. It’s a probability thing. It’s not true for everyone, not the path for everyone. The sitting, the posture, the breathing is a pathway – maybe – hopefully – to the experience of the oneness of life. “Zazen is everything” asks you to carry this experience beyond your cushion into the rest of your life. Roshi Bernie told us once, “It’s not about the number of hours that you log on your cushion.” He wasn’t telling us not to sit. He was pointing us beyond.