Zen Philosophy

Introduction

Zen aspires at the perfection of personhood. To this end, sitting meditation called za-zen is employed as the foundational method of praxis across different schools of this Buddha-Way, through which Zen practitioner attempts to embody non-discriminatory wisdom vis-à-vis meditational experience known as satori (enlightenment). Aprocess of discovering wisdom culminates in experiential dimension in which equality of thing-events is apprehended in perceptive them. The most distinguishing characteristic of this school of Buddha-Way is glimpsed in its contention that wisdom, accompanied by compassion, is conveyed in everyday life-world when associating with one's self, persons, and nature.

Meaning of period Zen

The designation of this school of Buddha-Way as Zen, which means squatted meditation, is drawn from from the transliteration of Chinese phrase Chán. Because Chinese term is in turn the transliteration of Sanskrit term dhyana, however, Zen owes its historical origin to early Indian Buddhism, where the deepened state of meditation, called samadhi, was singled out as one of three components of study the Buddhist was required to master, other two being an observation of ethical precepts (sila) and an embodiment of nondiscriminatory wisdom (prajña). The reason that meditation was singled out for designation of this school is based on fact that historical Buddha achieved enlightenment (nirvana) through practice of meditation. In context of Zen Buddhism, perfection of nondiscriminatory wisdom (Jpn., hannya haramitsu; Skrt., prajñaparamita) designates practical, experiential knowledge, and secondarily and only derivatively theoretical, intellectual knowledge. This is, Zen explains, because theoretical information is the form of language game (Jpn.; keron; Skrt., prapañca), i.e., discrimination through use of dialect, as it is built in part on distinction-making. Zen believes that it finally carries no existential significance for emancipating the human being from his or her predicaments, for it sustains that discriminatory information of any kind is delusory/illusory in nature. To this effect it holds that it is through the functional transformation of psychophysiological constitution of one's being that one organises for embodying nondiscriminatory wisdom. This preparation involves training of whole person and is called self-cultivation (shugyo) in Japanese. It is the practical method of correcting modality of one's mind by correcting modality of one's body, in which practice (praxis) is given precedence over theory (theoria). (Yuasa, 19-87.)

Zen's Methods

Koan Practice and Just Sitting

There are basically two methods utilized in meditation practice in Zen Buddhism to assist practitioner to reach above-mentioned goals, together with the simple breathing exercise known as observation of breath count (Jpn., susokukan); one is koan method and other is called just sitting (Jpn., shikan taza), the form of single act samadhi. For example, former is employed mainly by Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism, while latter by Soto school; they are two main schools of this form of Buddha-Way still flourishing today in Japan. In Rinzai school, koan method is devised to assist practitioner to become the Zen person (Kasulis, 19-81) who fully embodies both wisdom and compassion. A koan is formulated like the riddle or puzzle and is designed in such the way that intellectual reasoning alone cannot solve ...