Category: Meditation

Buddhism, Enlightenment, Meditation, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q63. I once practised Zen for ten days with little sleep, but I only got some problems with my body without getting anything. How hard should I practice?

Zen Fools

A. You seem to be in a hurry. “Don’t make haste where you should take it easy, and don’t be idle where you should be in a hurry.” “Practice just like putting out a fire on your head.” “Practice just like a hen incubates its eggs.” These are very well known maxims in Zen meditation practice.

Don’t make haste where you should take it easy, that is, you should not be impatient for the final goal. The purpose of Zen is to do away with attachment and illusions. To intend to obtain something fast is also a kind of attachment or an illusion that prevents you from concentrating on practice. Be unconcerned about when or how soon you will reach the final goal as if it were none of your business. No one knows when you will reach the final goal. However, when the time is ripe, you will reach it as easily and naturally as you touch your nose while washing your face, and (you will feel) as if it reached you. Leave it alone until the time is ripe of itself just like a hen incubates its eggs. The more impatient you are, the farther you will get away from the final goal.

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However, don’t be idle where you should be in a hurry, that is to say, you should pay all your attention to your question when practising as if you were being chased alone by hungry lions. There is no time to lose in producing an original idea, no one to help you and no shelter to hide yourself. The only way you can avoid being devoured by them is to run faster than them. Don’t try any other way than focusing on your question. Don’t try to have the same experience as you heard from others, or read in books, that seem to be nice or mysterious. Don’t take understanding for the final goal, which is you are serving your enemy as your father or mother. Never try to understand it. It can’t be explained and understood, but must be felt or experienced through the whole body. Don’t care about how far away the final goal is, but care about only whether you can keep your question. The harder you try to find a better way, the farther you will get away from the answer. Focus all your attention to the question just like putting out a fire on your head. You will undergo something new sooner or later. What is important here is that you should never attach yourself to the new experience. Just keep your focus on your question, leaving it alone, however nice or novel it is.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Buddhism, Koan, Meditation, Truth, Zen

Q62. (Master was ill and a student visited him to ask a question.) Student: Sir, what are you when your body is not you?

Zen Fools

A. Master: Not ill.
Q. Student: What is it that is not ill when you are ill?
A. Master: Ouch! Ouch!

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Commentary:
Master reveals himself naked when he who is not ill cries, “Ouch! Ouch!”
Why don’t you see him instead of hearing “Ouch! Ouch!”?
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

illusion, Meditation, Mind, Zen

Q61. Masters say that we should eliminate discriminating mind. How can we live without discriminating mind?

Zen Fools

A. It seems to leave room for misunderstanding. It is impossible to live without discriminating mind in our everyday life. Our life is a series of discrimination every moment: crossing the street, buying things, meeting people and so forth. In a word we are living in the world created by a discriminating mind, which is also referred to as the world of illusion. The happiness and the success of our life can be said to depend on how good the decisions and choices that we make are, which rests on how well we discriminate things in our life. Our education is to provide us with the methods by which we can make good discrimination.

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When masters advise us to eliminate discriminating mind, they mean not that we should not discriminate at all but that we should see both the world of illusion and the world out of illusion at the same time. In order to see the world out of illusion, we should be able to stop discriminating, when we can see the essence of things which is covered with an illusion. When we can see not just the illusion of a thing but also the essence of it, we can make better decisions and choices in our life. That’s why masters are encouraging people to eliminate discriminating mind.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Meditation, Truth, Zen

Q60. How can I obey the precepts (Buddhist commandments) well?

Zen Fools

A. Once upon a time there lived an old man in a village, who was well known as a good Buddhist and respected by all the people in the village. People often came to him for advice when they had problems in their lives. One day he happened to talk with an old monk.

Monk: I’ve heard that you are much respected as a very good Buddhist. How do you lead your life?
Old man: I always try to obey five precepts.
Monk: (looking surprised) Do you still obey the precepts?
Old man: (looking surprised) Of course, don’t you obey the precepts?
Monk: No, I don’t.
Old man: (looking more surprised) Do you break the precepts then?
Monk: Of course not.
Old man: What do you mean by that?
Monk: I neither break the precepts nor obey them.

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Let me take an example. What do you think is the most important to keep your life? Of course, to be alive we need a lot of things such as food, water, air and so on. However, no one can deny that air is the most essential of all we need to keep our life because we can’t maintain our life even for a few minutes without air though we can stay alive for a few days without water and even for over a month without food. In other words, not a moment can we live without breathing. Then do we feel ourselves breathing every moment we breathe because breathing is very important?
Of course, we don’t feel ourselves breathing as long as we are healthy even though we can feel it if we try to feel it consciously. If someone, feeling himself breathing every moment, tries hard to breathe, he must have a problem in his health, especially in his breathing system of his body. Likewise, if someone, Buddhist or Christian, conscious of the precepts every moment, has to try to obey them, he must have a problem in his life.

How can we obey precepts as naturally as a healthy person breathes? In a word, the precepts should become part of ourselves, and we should be able to obey them so naturally that we can obey them unconsciously just as we breathe.
Only then can we be said to obey the precepts perfectly.
Strictly speaking, to obey precepts perfectly means not that we hold back our desires to break the precepts but that we have no precepts to obey in our mind because we have realised by practising that everything including desires to break the precepts and even the precepts themselves, is an illusion.

I don’t mean that we need not obey the precepts until we realise that everything is an illusion. We should try to obey the precepts consciously because trying to obey the precepts is not only part of practice but also the minimum moral attitude we must take as human beings. Whenever you are tempted to break a precept, trace back the temptation to its root and the temptation will die away before you know it. That is a good Zen practice as well as a way to obey the precepts. With time the precepts will become part of you naturally like breathing.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Meditation, mindfulness, Zen

Q58. Now I try to live at the present moment, trying not to think of the past or the future. Am I right?

Zen Fools

A. Don’t try to live at the present moment. You can’t but live at the present moment. There is no one who doesn’t live at the present moment. Whether you think of the past or the future, your doing is happening at the present moment. If not thinking of the past or the future increases our happiness, why do schools teach history to students, and why do many people try to make correct forecasts about the future?

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If you do want to live at the present moment, break away the present moment. As long as you are attached to the present moment, you can’t escape from the past and the future since the present moment exists based on the past and the future. How could the present moment exist without the past and the future? The moment you break the present moment, the past and the future will disappear as well. Only then can you be said to live at the present moment. ‘Live at the present moment’, referred to as ‘Live here now’ in Zen, is to live out of the illusions of time and place and not to be attached to the present moment.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Meditation, Mind, Practice, Zen

Q52. What shall I do when I don’t seem to make any progress in my Zen practice?

Zen Fools

A. That is a very common feeling novice practitioners can have. You don’t have to think you are not making progress because you don’t know what progress is like, and I wonder what your standard of making progress is. If you can keep good focus on the question, you are doing well regardless of whether you feel a change or not. If you can’t make concentration on your question, ask yourself what thinks you can’t make concentration and you are not making progress. In other words, trace back your negative thinking to its root.
Your negative thinking is the very form of your final goal.

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All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Enlightenment, Koan, Meditation, Mind, Truth, Zen

Q50. Student: What are you when your body is not you?

Zen Fools

Master: Two plus three is five.
Student: I know that, too.
Master: Then you are a master, too.
Student: I didn’t ask you about numbers.
Master: I didn’t talk about numbers, either.

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Commentary:
Master is pointing to the moon with his finger.
Why aren’t you looking at the moon but the finger?
If I were the student, I would say, “You are wrong, sir. Two plus three is seven.”

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Enlightenment, Meditation, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q49. Do we become emotionless, not feeling sad or happy after reaching the final goal?

Zen Fools

A. Many people think we will not have feelings like sad, anger, pride, lust, happiness and so on after reaching the final goal. Some people use being emotionless as a scale to measure how much progress they have made in meditation progress. This is one of the most common wrong ideas about Zen meditation. Why should we continue our life, not to mention practising to reach the final goal, if we become emotionless like a wooden craft? We have the same feelings: feel sad when seeing sad things, angry when encountering unjust situations, and happy when seeing happy things.

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When we’ve reached the final goal, we can see things as they are, which means we can see things as neutral. Then we see things like a movie: we are sad during a sad movie and happy during a comic play. What counts is that we never become frustrated however sad the movie is and never become so attached to the movie as to disturb our life, since we know it is not real. Likewise, when coming upon a sad situation in reality, we feel sad but never feel so frustrated as to damage our life because we know it is neutral in itself. Meeting with a good thing, we feel happy but never become so proud of, or attached to it, as to mess up our life because you know it is also neutral in itself.
In a word, we have the same feelings but in a different dimension.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Enlightenment, Meditation, One, Truth, Zen

Q48. When practising at home alone, how can I know whether I am doing well or not? Can I feel any change when doing well as told?

Zen Fools

A. In the beginning you might feel it difficult to focus on your question, but it becomes easier and easier over time and the question will be internalised sooner or later.
Once your question becomes one with you, your practice feels very easy and even interesting, and you feel as if it is going on of itself, with little effort. Whatever you do, you feel your work is not separate from your practice, when we say work and practice are one. Then you start to feel what you couldn’t feel before: see and hear what you couldn’t see and hear before. For example, you can be surprised or shocked to hear a sound from a bird, a dog, a car, a person, the wind or anything. On hearing a sound, not knowing what it means, you feel it as the sound of the truth, feeling yourself becoming one with the universe. Sometimes you may feel as if your body has disappeared or collapsed down, becoming one with the universe. You are so happy at that moment that you might burst into tears.

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The feeling doesn’t last long but your practice seems to go better and you get more confidence. Experiencing such changes, you come to grasp the words ‘see with ears and hear with eyes’. What is most important here is that you must not be attached to them, nor must you try to avoid them.
No matter how good or marvellous things are that you may experience; you must not attach yourself to them, keeping it in mind that it is also no more than an illusion. You should not be attached even to enlightenment.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.