I read the chapter of Buddhism in “The World's Wisdom: Sacred Texts of the World's Religions
.” This is the text book in World Religion class at JFKU, but this is so amazing. This book includes a lot of wisdom in the world great religion. Just as the title says, this is the sacred texts of the world’s religion. Today, I was struck by the following sentences. The author said “In Buddhism, practice and enlightenment are one and the same. Since enlightenment is already contained in the exercise, there is no end to enlightenment, and since it is the exercise of enlightenment, it has no beginning.” As I posted my zazen practice in my blog before, I have practiced zazen for almost two years. To tell you the truth, the reason why I stared to practice zazen was that I wanted to reduce my stress and become relaxed. When I began to practice zazen, I was struggling with the stressful business world (Before coming to America, I was an international tax consultant for two years in Japan). It may be true that we can reduce our stress and become relaxed though zazen, but that is a by-product of zazen. In my view, the aim of zazen is to embody the four noble truths and the eightfold path not through our mind but through our experience, sitting zazen.
Perhaps, there may be no aim or purpose in zazen… Zazen is emptiness! Emptiness is Zazen!
I suppose that Zen practice is enlightenment in itself, and therefore, Zen has no start and end to enlightenment. For me, Zen practice will last forever, and then, enlightenment will last forever, too. My life is emptiness.
