zen

zen is literally absorption or meditation. It refers to the grounding practice of returning to reality as it is, recognizing and letting go of dualistic, discursive and conceptual thought, and opening to the fundamental buddha wisdom of practice-realization-experience.

The Zen school emerged from Bodhidharma who travelled from India to China in the ~6th century CE and, beyond his practical buddha widom and selflessness was known for his cryptic demeanor, long periods of meditation, and focus on personal experience of transcendent wisdom. He became in involved in Shaolin Temple in the 520s, approx. 30 years after its founding, and what we know today as Zen Buddhism was born there. In the 12th century, Dogen received this teaching from a Chinese master and introduced it to Japan.

When the profound questioning penetrates to the very bottom, and that bottom is broken open, not the slightest doubt will remain that your own mind is itself Buddha, the Void-universe ... Upon such realization question yourself even more intensely in this wise: "My body is like a phantom, like bubbles on a stream. My mind, looking into itself, is as formless as empty-space, yet somewhere within sounds are perceived. Who is hearing?" Should you question yourself in this wise with profound absorption, never slackening the intensity of your effort, your rational mind eventually will exhaust itself and only questioning at the deepest level will reamin. Finally [...] your long held conceptions and notions will perish, after absolute questioning, in the way that every drop of water vanishes from a tub broken open at the bottom [...] but even now repeatedly cast off what has been realized, turning back to the subject that realizes [...] and resolutely go on.

Bassui

I have always been; time cannot leave me. When time is not regarded as a phenomenon which ebbs and flows, the time I climbed the mountain is the present moment of being-time. When time is not thought of as coming and going, this moment is absolute time for me. At the time I climbed the mountain and crossed the river, did I not experience the time I am in this building? Three heads and eight elbows is yesterday's time, a height of sixteen or eighteen feet is today's; but "yesterday" and "today" means the time when one goes straight into the mountains and sees ten thousand peaks. It has never passed. Three heads and eight elbows is my being-time. It seems to be passing, but it is now. Thus the pine is time, as is the bamboo.

Do not regard time as merely flying away; do not think of flying away as its sole function. For time to fly away there would have to be separation. Because you imagine that time only passes, you do not learn the truth of being-time. In a word, every being in the entire world is its own time in one continuum. And since being is time, I am my being-time. Time has the quality of passing, so-to-speak, from today to tomorrow, from today to yesterday, from yesterday to today, from today to today, and from tomorrow to tomorrow. Because this passing is characteristic of time, present time and past time do not overlap or impinge on one another. But the master Seigen is time, Obasu is time, Sobei is time, Sekito is time. And since you and I are time, practice-enlightenment is time.

Still, when dragons and fish see water as a palace, they are probably like people looking at a palace, utterly unable to recognize that it is flowing away. If an onlooker were to explain to them 'Your palace is flowing water,' the dragons and fish would likely be as startled as we were now to hear the assertion that mountains are flowing. Further, it may also be possible to maintain and to rely upon the assertion that there is such preaching in every railing, stair, and outdoor pillar of a palace or mansion. Quietly, we should have been considering this reasoning and we should go on considering it.

Dogen