The Happening
The mind functions on reason. Reasonableness is the function of duality – opposites which attract, such as this-not this, good-bad, right-wrong, desirable-undesirable and so on. The human mind does not cause this to happen. It is created from the essence, life, universal energy or could be called God or any number of many names. And the way we know that we are reasoning is that have moved from a moment of non-reasonableness into reason. But exactly how that has happened is not possible to know, for that would be more reasoning which will be the effect of asking the question of how we are reasoning. Explain it we cannot – but we would possible believe that we could explain! ButZen is not philosophy.
In my posts here I often talk of
zazen (Zen meditation) as being a way to have the answer to these questions resolved. The paradox is that true zazen is not an action, but a state of being. Zazen is a happening. It comes to us when we are passive, not in activity. Therefore it could be said that zazen is not considered meditation, it is just sitting. There is nothing to 'do".
This can be fully realised by sitters who recognise that zazen itself, which is just sitting, is different with each sitting - imperceptibly perhaps, but over time it changes and we neither cause the changes neither can we stop the changes from happening It is just sitting contacting life as it is in the here-now. Being with whatever is so. Life is alive and forever moving on – forever evolving. Zazen is part of that happening.
Don't have aims in zazen, be zazen itself, totally in the here-now, not seeking, not-doing, not following another's instructions, even these written here! There is no wrong or right way to meditate in this way. It is an occurrence – a happening. And there are no goals in meditation, and if it is seen clearly that meditation is absolute being(ness), that there are no goals, then this in itself leads to enlightenment – or perhaps it is enlightenment... most Zen masters and enlightened beings tell all of us that we are already enlightened!
It has been recorded by others so who have trodden the path to enlightenment that enlightenment can and often does happen when no formal meditation is happening. Indeed, enlightenment also happens during meditation. It is unpredictable and it is unknown and cannot be known, explained or predicted by the mind, but it is
realised when it is so.
However, the moment we say, "I think I became enlightened". That is not so. It has nothing to do with thinking, and thinking is a happening within the mind. Enlightenment is a happening within the here-now, a place that the mind cannot enter, but it will remember that something happened perhaps, but it’s not happening here-now in the mind, it's
remembered!
This all may sound so contradictory and paradoxical. Life is that way. North meets South, but where? No north, no south for each is the other, but appear as separate. What is north of north? And what happens to the first north? Has it really become south? South of what?
Duality does not really make for peace, it troubles the mind when the mind cannot know. Such is the way of Zen.