Zanmai
Samadhi

 It is the aim of zazen to awaken one to his True Self by bringing him in touch with boundless life and the absoluteness of being. If once a person touches the Absolute and returns to his originally True Self, he is instantaneously liberated from the illusory perception caused by self-centered desires and delusions.

Since ancient times very few people have had an insight into the fact that Dharma is none other than zazen. This means that zazen is not the means of attaining any other purpose than zazen. Zazen is not the way of learning Zen, but zazen is something that makes one sit in zazen.    – Omori Sogen

To sit in zazen well, posture, breath, and awareness must be realized as one. When they are harmonized, the self is naturally concentrated at the tanden (the vital center below the navel). Then kiai (spiritual power or life energy) will radiate throughout the body and the surroundings. Without this vitality, zazen is inert.

When Yamaoka Tesshu, a great lay disciple, swordsman, calligrapher, and statesman of the Meiji Era, sat in zazen in his youth, the rats which ran wildly in his house would suddenly disappear. Tesshu sat as though he were armed with a sword engaged in a life and death encounter. The dignity and power he exuded drove the rats away. In his later years, however, the rats played along his shoulders and arms while he copied Buddhist sutras. People who came to visit him left uplifted and freed of distress; the power of Tesshu’s kiai gave them fearlessness.

It goes without saying that the authentic way of zazen consists in sitting in alert stillness and that one should sit hard and a great deal. But the essence of zazen is not a fixed form, but inwardly to see the immovability of the True Self and outwardly to be free from the notion of form. If a person grasps this point firmly, whatever one does is zazen. When reading, one only reads; when eating, one only eats; when walking, one only walks.

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© 2005 Daihonzan Chozen-ji