Essay
Insights from Zen Meditation
How Might the Zen Experience of Emptiness Transform Our Understanding of Being?
The primary form of meditation practice in Japanese Zen Buddhism is “Zazen.”
Zazen can be thought of in terms of the Chinese word “Zhi-Guan,” where “Zhi” is etymologically conjoined with the Sanskrit “Samatha” (calming) and “Guan” with “Vipassana” (discernment). (Dasheng qixin lun (2019), pp. 127–135)
The etymological conjunction here is important because “Zazen” in Japanese Zen has always been practiced in Mahayana Buddhism under different names. Indeed, Japan is one of the lattermost places where Mahayana Buddhism took hold under the name “Zen.”
That is because calming and discernment are available to all sentient beings, no matter their context or milieu—calming and discernment are nothing but features of experience that can be encouraged across contexts by certain practices.
That not all –indeed, that few — actualize this availability with any degree of reliability (let alone scalability –i.e., with some developmental trajectory) says nothing about its attainability, other than that some have attained it –that alone is heartening.
