The Zen monks liked also to cultivate gardens which took advantage of an existing natural setting,
 to arrange rocks and plants along the edges of a stream, creating a more informal atmosphere,
 suggesting a mountain canyon adjoining the monastery buildings.
 They were always sparing and reserved in their use of color, as were the Sung painters before them,
 since masses of flowers in sharply varying colors are seldom found in the state of nature.
 Though not symmetrical, the Japanese garden has a clearly perceptible form,
 unlike so many English and American flower gardens,
 it does not resemble a daub in oil colors, and this delight in the form of plants carries over into the art of flower
 arrangement inside the house,
 accentuating the shapes of single sprays and leaves rather than bunched colors.
 The best image might be a garden consisting of no more than an expanse of raked sand as a ground for several unhewn rocks,
 overgrown with lichen and moss, such as one may see today in the Zen temples of Kyoto.
 The media are the simplest imaginable.
 The effect is as if one had hardly touched it, as if it had been transported unchanged from the seashore.
 But in practice, only the most sensitive and experienced artist can achieve it.
 This sounds, of course, as though Zen flavor were a studied and affected primitivism.
 Sometimes it is, but the genuine Zen flavor comes when one is almost
 miraculously natural without intending to be so.
 The Zen life is not to make oneself,
 but rather to grow that way.
 Daoism is then the original Chinese way of liberation, which combined with Indian Mahayana Buddhism
 to produce Zen. It is a liberation from convention and of the creative power of day.
 Every attempt to describe and formulate it in words and one-at-a-time thought symbols must, of necessity,
 distort it.
 If we are going to introduce
 Westerners to the
 fundamentals of Zen,
 we need to revise a bit the
 procedures and rationale of meditation.
 So that it doesn't become a competitive
 one-upmanship marathon as to who can take this, who can endure,
 because then that puts it under the domain of time.
 The important thing to emphasize is presence,
 being completely here, and
 not feeling guilty if you enjoy it.
 And you can do that
 most easily in any kind of activity that does not require
 much discursive thought.
 So in other words, if you want to be
 shucking peas, or
 digging a plot of ground, or
 putting up a fence, or
 anything which you can do without a great deal of discursive thought, it's been perfectly good for meditation.
 In Buddhism, there are what they call the four dignities of man, and they are walking, standing, sitting, and lying.
 And so Zazen is simply sitting Zen. There is also lying Zen,
 which is sleeping
 Zen, of when you sleep, sleep.
 There is standing Zen, and there is walking Zen.
 And
 there is a very good method of meditation, is the walking method. That's where you have a cloister that you can simply stroll around.
 But be here.
 Now there is a difficulty that people come into with this.
 They get
 the feeling of, well, is it only this?
 I mean, is this all? Nothing seems to be happening much, just what's going on. I don't feel, I feel a little frustrated.
 I feel particularly enlightened.
 It's just nothing special at all.
 I mean, I wonder, do I have to do this longer in order for something to happen, or what?
 No, there's nothing special supposed to happen.
 It's just that this here is it.
 But you see, you have difficulty in accepting it.
 Because
 you still feel,
 how shall I say,
 the lack of nerve
 to see that you are all of it.
 You are not an observer who is witnessing the present moment as something happening to you.
 If you feel it that way, then you naturally ask, well, what next?
 The important thing is that this present,
 which you are experiencing,
 is all of you.
 It's not you here looking at the floor there.
 The floor is just as much you as the
 organism looking at it.
 You are doing the floor just like you're doing your feet. It's all one world.
 And you're responsible for it.
 So have a good time.
 We hope you've enjoyed this Audio Renaissance production of The Way of Zen.
 [Music]
 [Music]
 [Music]
 [Music]
 [Music]
 [Music]
 [Music]
 [ Silence ]


{END}
Wait Time : 0.00 sec
Model Load: 0.64 sec
Decoding  : 0.44 sec
Transcribe: 589.30 sec
Total Time: 590.38 sec