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To practice, or not
A week ago, I had an online meeting with a group of senior Buddhists. I used the occasion to talk about The Song of Enlightenment(證道歌), which is attributed to Master Yung Chia(永嘉玄覺). The Song of Enlightenment is a Zen classic. It opens with the following statements:
Don’t you see, the leisurely man of Tao?
Practicing wu-wei, he has stopped learning and doing.
He neither tries to rid of fantasies nor to seek Truth.
During my presentation, I asked my audience a few questions: Why is the man of Tao so leisurely? Why doesn’t he seek to rid of fantasies and illusions? Why doesn’t he want to know the Truth? Isn’t the point of the Zen (Ch’an) practice to seek enlightenment? No one could answer my questions, at least not on the spot.
In the West, very few Zen practitioners have studied the Zen classics. Most of them practice some kind of sitting meditation (zazen). Many of the American meditation centers follow the Japanese Zen tradition. There is a historical reason — Zen was introduced in the US mostly through Japanese Zen masters. For many American Zen practitioners, to practice means to sit in a formal manner. But what is the point of practicing if one does not understand what one is doing? One can better understand Zen by reading the Zen classics. They include, but not limited to the Song of Enlightenment, Xin…
