The Way of Zen summary

According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha sat under a tree one evening after seven years of meditation and ascetic living. He had been following all the correct practices to train his body, yet he still couldn’t find his true Self. So, eventually, he simply gave up and decided to eat some nourishing food beneath a towering tree.

While sitting under the tree, Buddha found a sudden clarity. He realized that as long as man continues to try to grasp what his own life is, he will fail. This aspect of Buddhism – the sudden awakening – eventually became a central aspect of Zen.

When curious people asked the Buddha questions about the nature of the self and the origin of the universe, he told them such questions were irrelevant. Asking them wouldn’t lead to liberation.

But some Buddhists – those who would become the Mahayana – were unwilling to take no for an answer. Mahayana Buddhists still sought liberation and weren’t aiming to construct a completely new philosophical system. But they were highly interested in their own psychology. This difference between Mahayana Buddhism and traditional Buddhism was key to the later Zen tradition.

The story goes that the Indian monk Bodhidharma brought Zen to China in 520 AD. When he arrived, Bodhidharma entered the court of Buddhist emperor Wu of Liang. But, it’s said, Emperor Wu didn’t like Bodhidharma’s attitude or doctrine. So Bodhidharma withdrew to a monastery. There, he met monk Hui-k’o, who would eventually become the Second Patriarch of Zen in China.

While this origin story is generally told in the Zen School, its historical accuracy is highly suspect. Instead, we might find the true origins of Zen in the teachings of a young monk named Seng-chao, who lived in China around 400 AD.

For many people, the ultimate goal in life is simple: to be happy. But what actually happens after you attain that happiness?

In Zen philosophy, the pursuit of happiness is considered absurd. It’s actually the product of a false premise: that it’s possible to experience only the good, with none of the bad.

A major focus of Zen is naturalness, or not striving to “be” anything in particular. In a sense, Zen is about allowing yourself to be aimless – essentially, to do nothing.

To a Westerner, doing nothing might sound like a huge waste of time. But, in fact, it’s the natural state of most everything in the world. A cat doesn’t try to be anything other than a cat, and your ears don’t try to do anything other than hear. Zen tells us we should allow our minds to operate the same way: as spontaneously and naturally as possible.

If you currently practice meditation, what is your goal when you sit in silence? Perhaps to purify or clear your mind, or to achieve some sort of understanding that remains elusive.

For Zen, all goals associated with meditation are misguided. In Buddhism and Taoism, for instance, the goal of sitting meditation is to empty the consciousness and purify the mind. But in Zen, our nature is already pure – it’s already Buddha. And if you strive to purify it, you’re actually contaminating it with your desire.

There is a Zen expression that states that “one showing is worth a hundred sayings.” And there is perhaps no better way to show an idea than through art.

The major theme of all Zen art, whether in painting or poetry, is the aimless life. What Westerners might call an empty or meaningless existence is actually, in Zen, one of boundless freedom. Zen art evokes that sense of joy in freedom by using the evocative power of empty space.