Zen as Compass

There is a real world about which we can speculate but which exists independent of all speculation, and in this unassailable realm of seething existence we have our moment. Curiosity and longing and the human capacity for imagining, inevitably create a haze of surreal projections and practical solutions to the ever-present presentment of the real. So how is this creature with such inexhaustible talents of invention to come into co-incidence with the factual in such a manner as to create a rewarding, peaceful, and productive existence.

To find ones way into this unexplored region of the existential real one must have a compass.

Zen is such a compass.

Observation, Idea, and the Doors of Perception

 

One can observe something, and one can have an idea about something, but clear, clean, observations are not ideas.

Zen is about clarity of observation, and all of Zen's procedural habits are about cleansing the doors of perception.

Natural Inclination and Zen

 

Behavior of any animal is a product of natural inclination interfacing environment, and it is only the accrual of learned experience that introduces agency. Just as a ball rolling down an inclined plane or water running down hill, life generally unfolds in the service of instinct. That Awareness which is the I AM of the living organism is exercised in the service of blind nature. The course of evolution must start from scratch.

The existence of Zen or its equivalent is the inevitable result of Awareness evolving to the state of Self recognition and emerging as agent. Zen is the cultivation of a new existential paradigm in the unfolding of living beings, and Zen is the opening of the eyes of nature.