Zen, a practice without thinking??
 

This come from a post by a man calling himself Riverstone
I hope you enjoy it.

Is Zen, a practice without thinking??


The awareness before and after thinking, this is the practice. If your mind is chaotic with thought,
your awareness of this .. is the practice. A great effort to make your mind stop thinking is unnatural.
The practice facilitates the moments when thinking is practically not there, but it is organic, natural.
When you focus on an object so strongly, that you are no longer thinking this is called concentration practice.
The whole idea of concentration practice is to remain aware, but aware without the rejection of the flowing of the present moment.
Should that moment contain, irritation, chaotic thoughts, or pleasant feelings, it is your awareness which is the practice.
Attachment to discomfort or pleasure will cause you to spiral in many directions,
but acknowledgement and honoring what arises and falls away as you release it, this is the practice.
When your awareness is strong enough you will begin to see your karmic impulses and instead of running with them, you let them go.
When there is no awareness, you are controlled by your notions and will do much to protect the truth of your beliefs.


Awareness does not reject anything, it sees the arising thought, reflects the thought,
And it stops reflecting it when the thought is gone. Awareness is the mirror, undiscriminating in what it reflects.
You know when awareness is gone, that is when you remember to watch your breathing again,
And then, you are aware again. Breathing is incidental but it is a good lifeline when your mirror becomes clouded.
The mirror will reflect, emotion, thoughts, dreams, and everything else that comes and goes.
Eventually there is a slip that happens where thinking suddenly ceases. You can feel it, it feels like everything has gone quiet,
Even as it has not. This can not be made to happen, but there is something in the embrace of every thought,
Every fluttering and distracting imagining, and then letting it go as it arises, as you embrace it.
Eventually the well of your pent up mental animations, runs dry, and you are pure here, pure now, pure being.
And then you start thinking again. You can wash dishes being the pure act of washing dishes. You can walk to the bus stop,
Being the pure experience of walking to the bus stop, and what thoughts arise, arise and fall away as part of the experience.


Sitting in the midst of the ocean the illusion would be that all the world is one vast ocean and one vast sky.
Illusion though it may be, it seems very real and in that space and time, it is real.
This is all that you can perceive with your senses, it is literally all that there is.
So while it is true that you are an illusion it is also true, that you are.
When you strike the surface of a pool of water, all sorts of forms take shape in the splash.
If you slowed that splash down you could watch drops change in form along their linear path and destination.
For a moment they are divided from the whole, seemingly independent, with its own momentum, trajectory and form.
Eventually it will re-merge with the body of water. So that it had its own singular existence for a time,
but all along it had been and always will be a part of the whole.

Good clear teaching.

"...aware without the rejection of the flowing of the present moment.
Should that moment contain irritation, chaotic thoughts or pleasant feelings,
it is your awareness which is the practice.

"Eventually there is a slip that happens where thinking suddenly ceases.
You can feel it, it feels like everything has gone quiet...
This can not be made to happen
but there is something in the embrace of every thought"


~ ~

I liked it up to the last paragraph. We can share the practice but when we start to tell what we see on the other end of the practice, then the pureness of it all slips away for me.
Aside from that this is how I live. Great post.
James

If you don't stop talking all the time then you will miss the very thing you sought for so long. Much like the person who wanted to learn Zen, your tea cup is full and no more tea will go in. Your mind is too full and no more knowledge can get in. Too full of your own opinion to learn anything. Please go away.

It's a funny thing, James, but for me the descriptions of what I and other people share about what we experience through the practice are inspiring and open me further. In fact, listening and expressing in this way is part of my practice.

Folks are different. No rules, eh?


Xan

I fully understand that I am always searching , learning , never attached to any of my understanding , never stop challenging my own understanding , never stop investigate new understanding to progress .......so dear avisitor base on what you claim my cup is full ?
A few years ago , a monk also said the same thing to me but I I asked him why he written books about Buddhism ? So is his cup full or mine ?
After that question he missing in action .
Dear Sir , sorry in advance sometime we could learn alot from our own writing ..........Dear Avisitor why cant you debate with me in Buddhism ? Just for my learning lesson .......
Thks
CSEe

You never stop talking long enough to listen to other people.
I gave you conditions if you want to discuss Buddhism. You failed.
End of story. Now, please go away.

Yes, in Zen it is called Zen stink or the stink of Zen.
I too have been more than guilty of such bad odors ... haha

Lately, I can tell if a person is full of his own pride or really wants to learn.
If they are like me then we talk on an intellectual level. But, when they are like CSEe then better to stay away from such people. They think they know more and they think they are better. However they will never admit it ... even to themselves ... hahaha