How To Practice ZenAbout Us
Walk In Zen Centers
Walk In Zen Centers will be a 501 (c)(3) non-profit charitable organization. It has not yet applied for tax exempt status as we are awaiting the new online application that will have a reduced filing fee, originally scheduled by the IRS for 2010 and now delayed until 2011. This is the mission statement:
Walk In Zen Centers is an informal, non-franchised collection of Zen practice centers. Each WIZC promotes the Buddhadharma (teachings of the Buddha) by distributing a ten step, easy-to-follow program for beginners that encourages people to start a Zen practice. Each Walk In Zen Center also works with established Zen and Ch'an centers to increase their membership. Walk In Zen Centers are started in areas not already served and each WIZC is encouraged to become affiliates of the larger centers. Each WIZC also promotes the Buddhadharma by working in the same way with centers that practice Tibetan Buddhism and Theravada Buddhism.
In this website, we use the expression "Zen practice" to include not just zazen (sitting meditation) but all of the other aspects of Zen practice as well. Chanting, prostrations, sutra study, and the like, all are a part of a full Zen practice.
The biggest challenge of Zen practice is to incorporate it into every day life. If our practice does not manifest itself in our daily life, in our relationships with family, friends, co-workers, and strangers, then it is not an authentic Zen practice. It is easy to practice Zen on a cushion in a zendo with fellow practitioners. It is a little harder once we leave the zendo; we must learn to walk in Zen throughout the day.
To learn more about Walk In Zen Centers, including information on how to start one, please visit our Meetup page.
This letter was written by the founder of Walk In Zen Centers:
I began formal meditation practice at the University of Florida on January 20, 1971, thanks to the Transcendental Meditation organization. I was looking for a meditation group, and TM and Hare Krishna were the only groups that advertised on the bulletin boards around campus in those days. After attending a few free Hare Krishna vegetarian picnics, I learned that chanting was their primary practice so I looked up the TM group since I was more interested in sitting meditation. They charged $35.00 for a mantra; it costs a lot more these days. The TM organization taught me how to sit in full lotus and to meditate twice a day. I lost contact with them after graduation but continued daily meditation. I found a Zen group in 1985. It was meeting at the Bodhi Tree Dhamma Center, the first Theravadan center in Florida.
I spoke with several people over the years who told me they were aware of our local Zen center (The Clear Water Zen Center in Clearwater, Florida) but were intimidated by the thought of going there. I heard comments like: "I've heard Zen is really tough. I also figured you guys had a pretty tight-knit community and didn't want to be bothered by outsiders." The fact that we had a nice website (www.clearwaterzen.org) welcoming new members and put announcements in the local paper every week inviting people to attend seemed to have little effect on those perceptions.
I am a Zen student, not a Zen master. I began writing How To Practice Zen as an instruction booklet to give to the public in the hope of attracting people to the Clear Water Zen Center. Thanks to the depth of Zen practice, the booklet soon grew too lengthy. Eventually, I whittled it down to a trifold brochure that omits a lot but which beginners may find useful. Since putting up this website in 2009, I have received and have fulfilled requests for the brochure from all fifty U.S. states and several foreign countries.
Sitting at my computer in Florida, for some reason I was not expecting the first brochure request to come from Montana, the second from Idaho, and the third from Italy. The Internet is indeed a powerful tool and it is important that it not be used to mis-lead people.
For that reason, I frequently re-write this website to correct errors, although no one, not even a fully enlightended master, could say everything exactly correctly. Language is inherently open to interpretation and that is why even the enlightened masters say that their words merely point to the moon and are not the moon itself.
Anything that I say in this site that is stupid or that falls short of the True Dharma will hopefully be corrected as people embark on an authentic day-to-day Zen practice, and learn the True Dharma for themselves.
Even the Buddha said not to take his words as absolute truth, but to test them and to reject whatever teachings were found to be false. And to embrace and practice the teachings found to be true.
By presenting an entry level of Zen practice that is welcoming instead of frightening, our hope is that we can help a lot of people get started in a Zen practice. I say "we" and "our" because this website has had input from a lot of Zen practitioners, many of them more experienced than me and all of them more qualified than me.
Some long-time practitioners of Zen may find it offensive to characterize Zen practice as "easy." However, it's our thinking that makes things hard or easy. One thing we learn when practicing Zen is to see things just as they are without putting labels on them. Following the ten steps of this program at the beginning Zen level is easy because it involves just a little memorization, short daily sittings in meditation, and a few other very short (non-time-consuming) daily practices. The only hard part of the program is to do it every day and to stick with it over time.
Is it silly to rattle off three memorized verses every morning before sitting? No, we don't rattle them off; we recite them slowly and mindfully as if we will never again have the opportunity to recite them. Regardless of our age, we never know when we are experiencing our last day of life in the human dharma realm.
Is it silly to recite The Four Vows and perform a few prostrations and Buddha Name Recitations after sitting? No, by doing so we are forming a habit that will lead to stronger sittings, more mindful prostrations, and more effective Buddha Name Recitations. The same applies to our chanting, our sutra study, our night sittings, and our working to spread the Buddhadharma. We start easily so that our practice can grow naturally upon a stable foundation.
As a child, I used to climb a hill near my West Virginia home and sit on a flat rock, about half-way up the hill. I called it my meditation rock. I must have gone there dozens of times over the years because I remember it well and I know I could find it again. I was about forty years old when it finally occurred to me that it was remarkable that as a ten year old I had sat in my own special place, cross-legged, at least trying to meditate. I don't recall having any insights as a result of my efforts. Sitting there just seemed the obvious thing to do and I thought nothing of it at the time. I had never received a lesson in meditation and that word was never spoken in my home or school or by any of my friends. How did I know that word so that I could call that rock my meditation rock?
My local Zen meditation group was sitting in the zendo (meditation hall) during a Sunday morning round of meditation sometime in 2007. The founder of the group, a senior student of Roshi Philip Kapleau, gave a short encouragement talk shortly after the ringing of the third bell. "There are two and a half million people in the Tampa Bay area," he began, "and this Sunday twelve of them have gathered in this zendo at 8:00 in the morning to sit in silence, unmoving, facing a wall for two hours. Why? Week after week, year after year, decade after decade, lifetime after lifetime. Why are we doing this?"
"We do this because we have done it before."
My only qualifications for putting up this website are my childhood practice of meditation and my thirty nine years and counting (2010) of practicing meditation as an adult (in this particular lifetime?). Having spent more than a decade on mantra meditative practices, my formal zazen practice didn't begin until 1985. That was only twenty five years ago so I am not an authority on the vast subject of Zen practice.
Some people think twenty five years is a long time. I am reminded of the encounter between Henry Kissinger and Chou En-Lai in the 1970s when Dr. K asked: "What, in your opinion, were the effects of the French Revolution?" referring to the unpleasantries of the early 1790s. Mr. Chou replied: "It's too soon to tell."
If you incorporate the ten easy steps of beginning Zen into your daily life, drop us a line at Contact Us and let us know. If there are no established Zen centers or sitting groups in your area, please visit our Meetup page and learn how to start a Walk In Zen discussion group.
This website is more Chinese Ch'an influenced than it is Japanese Zen influenced. For example, Buddha Name Recitation is not practiced in American Zen centers that are in a Japanese lineage, as far as I know. In Japan, Buddha Name Recitation practice is the most popular form of Buddhist practice, but it is considered a separate school (The Pure Land) from the Zen school.
Almost all American Zen centers that are in a Chinese lineage practice Buddha Name Recitation. Chinese Ch'an centers routinely include Buddha Name Recitation as a part of Zen practice. It does not conflict with Ch'an/Zen practice if performed with the understanding that Amitabha Buddha is not an other; it is our own Buddha nature. We recite our own name to help us remember who we are. Thus, it is the Buddha who recites the Buddha's name.
Speak one sentence less of chatter,
Recite once more the Buddha's name.
Recite until your false thoughts die,
And your Dharma body will come to life.
With gassho, metta, and deep bows,
Walk In Zen Centers
Dunedin, Florida
Please visit meetup.com to learn more about Walk In Zen Centers. Just type in Zen as the topic and Dunedin, Florida as the location and then click on "read more about this group."
Please ignore the second Facebook logo; I put it outside a Dreamweaver editable area and I think I have to re-do the template to get rid of it.
Beginning Zen