{"id":3468,"date":"2013-06-06T16:25:27","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T21:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3468"},"modified":"2013-06-08T15:07:27","modified_gmt":"2013-06-08T20:07:27","slug":"zen-meditators-flowers-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=3468","title":{"rendered":"Zen and Real Life: Flowers In The Dark?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Here is the Buddha altar in my local zendo on a typical day. It could be 9 am or 9 pm, a bright sunny morning or a dark stary evening outside. At a Zen altar, the darkness always prevails. We bring flowers to honor the Buddha and his teachings, and to follow his teachings we sit for many hours with eyes closed in the silent darkness before this altar. <\/p>\n

We call it “zazen”, which is a form of group meditation practice. In many ways it is a beautiful experience, one which I try to participate in at least once every week. Our “teachers” continually extol the virtues of zazen to us. And most of what they say makes sense to me. <\/p>\n

But still . . . at some point, their focus on zazen makes Zen sound a bit like a one-trick pony. That one trick is to sit in the darkness in silence. Once again, I myself find much benefit in sitting in the silent darkness. But this is not where life is lived. A teaching that focuses the meaning of life around zazen makes just as much sense as placing these flowers in an always-darkened room. Flowers are no strangers to darkness; some flowers only open when the night comes. But they would never grow and have blossomed without the light of day. <\/p>\n

Flowers in the dark, like zazen meditation, can be quite beautiful. And yet, they are both just a small part of the cycle of life for flora and fauna. Zen has to be seen in the larger context of everyday life, if it is to grow beyond its present status of a somewhat chic but mostly esoteric and exotic form of spiritual expression. Most of our zendo members are just now-and-then participants. Very few show up even half the time. Our Zen Center is clearly a side-show in the lives of most of our members. It speaks to some portion or component of their daily lives, perhaps a significant and important part of it; but far from all of it. <\/p>\n

As with monastic communities within the Christian and other religious traditions, Zen is inherently a “specialist” institution focusing on silence. But Christian monasticism flourished when it was most relevant and accessible to common people in their daily lives (back in the Middle Ages), and has declined as the world changed (and it did not). The Zen movement may well outlive or eclipse the Trappists and Benedictines, but it must not shrug off the lessons of their decline as “not relevant to what we are about”. <\/p>\n

The Zen tradition in America is very good at cutting flowers and admiring them in their final hours. It is not attuned to the long, earthy work of growing flowers. Zazen is a wonderful way to still the mind; but for the most part, life is not lived with stilled minds. Unless our tradition finds ways to speak and strongly relate to the entire circle of life, including childhood, schooling, career, falling in love, raising families, sickness, aging and dying, then our focus on zazen and our esoteric wisdom on “the present moment” will mean little more to most people than a fresh flower that soon withers and shrivels in the dark on a Buddha altar. I.e., a moment of beauty, but nothing that lasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is the Buddha altar in my local zendo on a typical day. It could be 9 am or 9 pm, a bright sunny morning or a dark stary evening outside. At a Zen altar, the darkness always prevails. We bring flowers to honor the Buddha and his teachings, and to follow his teachings we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3468"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3471,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468\/revisions\/3471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}