On Meditation, Soyen Shaku
About the Sensei: Harvey Wood-Cohan, Sandan (USAF) has been meditating for over 30 years and leads the Saturday morning meditation class. He has completed a two-year training as a Gestalt process facilitator with Dr. John Heider, Esalen Scholar and author of "The Tao of Leadership."
What is Meditation?
It is like the pacification of turbulent waters by pouring oil over them: no waves are roaring, no foams are boiling, no splashes are spattering, but with a smooth, glossy mirror of immense dimension, and it is in this perfect mirror of consciousness that myriads of reflections, as it were , come and go without ever disturbing its serenity-
A monk asked master Chi-Ch'en: "What is the way upward?" The master replied, "You will hit it by descending lower."-
J.Wu
Meditation helps us retreat from all the wheels going around. It relieves us from self-inflicted trains of thought, trains driven by and loaded with the fossil fuel of ancient emotions. It returns us to the way we were, before the thundering trains came, back at play in the world, in that open, trackless landscape where life's distractions are less intrusive.
Zen meditation is a relaxed attentive state, a passive activity. Both aspects are important. So when Zen talks about "no mind," it does not mean complete mental blankness, as though one were asleep. It implies freedom from thought pollution. When the incessant chatter drops out, what remains are those few mental processes essential to the present moment. Nor does Zen meditation mean a voluntarily override of thoughts. Thoughts are as natural to the world as are clouds and trees. Rather does meditation pacify those pressures from the I-ME-Mine which drove the excesses of thought in the first place. Thoughts then drop off by themselves. As Shunryu Suzuki expressed it," You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm."
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