Wayne Codling
Buddhism is a religion that loves lists and claims that meditation is one of the three necessities of a satisfying spiritual life. A human life without meditation is vulnerable to becoming unstable. Even if the other two necessary ingredients — knowledge and good behaviour — are present, a human life goes sideways very easily in inverse proportion to the presence of the integrating influence of meditation.
Any form of meditation practice will help stabilize a human life, but Zen meditation is at the centre of a spiritual practice that emerged within an urban, middle-class society. As such, Zen meditation is best suited to become a stabilizing influence in a modern life.
There is a difference between Zen meditation and Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism is optional but Zen meditation is optimal. They’re not incompatible, of course; but all too often the Buddhism obscures and even downplays the meditation. Buddhism begins with meditation.
Zen meditation is about coming to zero in as many modes as possible; and that includes letting go of the Buddhism. If we can get the meditation right, then a modern, right, eight-fold path will emerge. Figuring out what to keep and what to let go, what is important and what is superficial, is a major issue for modern day Zennists.
As a civilization we are fairly well behaved, at least in contrast to some. Canada is still a safe place to live. What this means is that we lack only an appropriate meditation technique in order to establish the optimal conditions for human life and civilization.
All ancestral religious traditions are a stabilizing influence, but they do this through the exclusion of many. The great and transformative thing about Zen meditation is that there is no exclusion. That’s what getting to zero means; nothing left out and nothing added on. Whenever the attention is focused on the breath and body, the activity of the mind slows. This is a fundamental fact of human life and a good thing to do in its own right. Many people find refuge in a quiet mindscape.
Zen meditation adds complexity to this basic model. In Zen meditation there is listening, there is openness, there is balance. The meditator does not lose contact with the breath but at the same time is attending to the soundscape and monitoring the precise configuration of the body.
In proper Zen meditation, everything known and knowable is relinquished; and what we are doing is reduced to simply being present in our own present. Sitting quietly, knowing and doing nothing; this can teach us directly what the stability behind such religious practices as the “parameters” or the “precepts” actually feel like.
This paradigm fits modern life well, quite aside from Buddhism.
Receptive, refined knowledge and wisdom give us the resourcefulness to deal with a complicated world. An ethic that makes kindness more important than rightness (or maximum profit) can help us once again become inclusive.
Zen meditation functions to impede opportunistic greed, ill will and ignorance from transforming into stress. Stress is the defining problem in the modern world.
Wayne Codling is a former Zen monastic and a lineage holder in the Soto Zen tradition. He teaches Zen-style meditation in venues around Victoria. Wayne’s talks and writings can be found on his blog, sotozenvictoria.wordpress.com
