Customer Reviews

The art of Zen meditation

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Meditation as I see it is a process of intense concentration on a particular duty at hand. This I feel relieves the subconcious mind to work on important aspects of life without the interference of mundane thought.
The humble non-pushy approach of the author is the first striking thing about this book . He gives a wonderful idea about zen and the purpose of meditation. I found his approach very useful.
Let me tell a few things that I have learnt about meditation. It might be useful for you too. Our mind has a compulsive need to flow. It always thinks about the past or plans for the future or just dreams. It hardly stays in the present. It is reflected not only in our thought preocess but also in our overall living. We interpret the reality by our experience and knowledge. There is a famous zen story. Once a student wanted to know what zen really means. He raised his question to a zen master with great expectations. But, the master remained still as if he did'nt even hear the student's question. Many say that real zen masters realize the complexity of zen that they dont talk about it. But, in my opinion he did answer the question, and I feel complete silence is what zen is all about. The complete stillness of mind where it becomes one with the universe and becomes aware of reality without any contamination of the thought process is what we are trying to achieve through meditation. As Fast points out, one of the purposes of meditation is to stay in the present. Relaxation of body and concentration of the thought on our breathing will be very useful to achieve this (This book explains the method wonderfully). I would like to mention here that our mind has been programmed to flow for so many years that we should not get discouraged or feel guilty with initial failures. We should practice, persevere and be patient with ourselves during our practices. The decision to be patient with ourselves will be a great boost in learning this art. Also, our mind has the character of branching out. One thought comes in, we interpret it and it branches out in another direction, we interpret again and it branches again and the process continues. When we meditate we should try and not interpret any of the passing thoughts forcefully. This will assist in our mind becoming calm as the practice proceeds. Concentration on some words like "om" or " ave maria" or just "relax" with that in mind helps a lot too.
I read this book along with " Zen in the art of archery" and I suggest this combination for others too.