Zazen - A Way of Strengthening Awareness and Letting Go!

Like a musician practicing scales or a golfer practicing swings, practicing awareness and letting go away from the arena of action - away from everyday life - can really help strengthen these skills for use in our everyday lives.

Beyond that, practicing being aware and letting go away from the arena of action, without being engaged in anything else, can open us up to realizations about ourselves, and about life in general - even to the point of receiving intuitive answers to the big questions of life: “Who am I?” What is life all about?”, etc.

This practice comes notably from the Zen tradition: “Zazen” means “sitting Zen”. In Zen, it’s sometimes also called “Shikantaza”, which can be roughly translated, “Just sitting”.

It could be considered a form of meditation, but it differs from other types of meditation in that there is no object or “anchor” used, such as the breath, a mantra, etc. It really is “just sitting”: just sitting there, just being open to whatever’s happening in the moment, and letting go of that to be present in the next moment, and the next…

It is also “just sitting” in that (despite the skills and realizations mentioned above) there is no goal to strive for, no purpose other than to “just be”. Maybe a better way of saying that is to say that there are purposes and benefits to the practice, but we let go of thoughts about them while we practice, too!

I like to use a question I was given by Zen Master Barbara Rhodes (Zen Master Soeng Hyang) from the Kwan Um School of Zen: “What is this?” In other words, “What’s happening right now?” The Zen Master also helped clarify the practice by telling me “Just be with whatever’s happening right now”.

This question isn’t repeated like a mantra, but I like to use it at the beginning of a zazen session, and again whenever I notice my mind’s been lost in thought.

Speaking of thoughts, rather than trying to stop the mind from thinking or pushing thoughts away, thoughts are part of what we’re aware of, whenever they come up, and also what we let go of, to be present in the next moment. This part of the practice has wonderful benefits (which, of course, we don’t think of, or, more accurately, we let go of thoughts of, during the practice).

When we’re really aware of our thoughts as they come up, we’re not as prone to accept them unconsciously. We give ourselves that split second to “see” them clearly, intuitively recognize them as worth keeping and acting on, or not, and then, regardless of that decision, let them go to come to the next moment.

That letting go - of all our thoughts during zazen - helps us be more able to let go of thoughts during daily life; even those that would normally grab us strongly and be hard to let go of. And seeing that we can do that is a really liberating experience!