The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen, wrote D.T. Suzuki. However, the question of integrating wisdom into daily life is not always straightforward. When it comes to Zen — the whole point is to be practical.
In the Introduction to Zen Buddhism, D.T. Suzuki explained,
Being practical and directly to the point, Zen never wastes time or words in explanation. Its answers are always curt and pithy; there is nothing added in Zen.
Zen teachings are presented from the accessible, familiar, and approachable side. Life is practical by nature and the basis of all things; apart from it, nothing can stand. Despite Zen philosophy's grand and enhancing ideas, we cannot escape life as we live it. Suzuki observed, “Star-gazers are still walking on the solid earth.”
How practical is your philosophy of life? Does it help you to see things as they are? As Suzuki said, “Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen.”
In the classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki wrote,
The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes… Zen practice is to open up our small mind.
According to Suzuki, no amount of reading, teaching, or contemplation will make one a Zen master. Practical wisdom leads us to experience the only time — the here and now. In the Way of Zen, Alan Watts put it this way: If we open our eyes and see clearly, we discover there is no other time than this instant and that the past and the future are abstractions without concrete reality.
To quote Suzuki a final time, “We teach ourselves, Zen merely points the way.”
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Until next time, be wise and be well,
JW
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