My zazen practice

The following post is about zazen practice in World Religion class at JFKU.

Sitting zazen for 15 minutes is very easy for me.  That is because I have practiced zazen in the morning and night for 15-20 minutes every day since two years ago.  Therefore, zazen practice becomes an essential part of my daily life.

During today’s zazen session, I visualized a path in a beautiful city in my mind.  It was so comfortable and energetic with a lot of greenery and beautiful sunshine.  It looked like Pleasant Hill.  I didn’t think of anything, but I only enjoyed the beautiful scene and relaxed in it.  During the session, I lost my time sensation and I found myself that 15 minutes already passed…

The reason why zazen practice is helpful in my daily life is that zazen makes me aware of being now and lets me relax.  Now, we tend to be surrounded by too much information, for example, internet, TV, mobile phone, and magazines...  There is a lot of information in our life, which we can’t handle, and is flooded into our mind.  As a result, we are apt to lose the sense of being now and feel busy and uncomfortable.  I suppose that zazen practice gives us the wonderful opportunity to restore the sense of being now.  Even if we live in a rush, we will obtain the feeling of freedom, calmness, comfortableness and relaxation if we have only to sit zazen for 15 minutes in a day.

For my experience, in the beginning of starting zazen practice, I couldn’t sit zazen for less than 15 minutes.  Practicing it every day, I became able to sit zazen for long minutes little by little, and I sometimes continued practicing for 40-60 minutes.  The hardest part of anything is taking the first step.  However, once you build up the habit of zazen in your daily life like brushing of teeth, you can achieve a true inner peace.