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Zen Philosophy: Living in the Moment
by
Jacky Sach
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- The beauty of Zen is that it’s not complicated
- Zen is the end of suffering & time
- Zen can free you in a way you never dreamed
Zen probably sounds a little complicated. But the beauty of Zen is that it is not complicated at all. Zen is right now. It is entering the present moment fully and completely and letting go of all else. It is dropping ego, dropping self, dropping past and present. Zen doesn’t discriminate: We can all can wake up if we practice hard enough.
Zen calls to people. If you are reading this book, you may have the feeling that you have been looking for something you haven’t been able to find. You may have felt compelled to turn to Zen.
Zen is also the end of suffering and the end of time as you know it. Using an analogy that might be more familiar to anyone who runs or participates in any energetic or creative activity, you could say that Zen is hitting “the zone.” It lies in those moments when you are completely unaware of yourself and your life, when you are completely in the right now.
If you have ever driven somewhere and arrived without any recollection of how you got there, you have probably realized that there are parts of your brain you use without ever being aware of them. You dropped your self, your worries, your fears, and your thoughts, but you still continued to function. You hit a zone. You were simply driving, in the here and now. This experience is a Zen experience—the dropping of self.
And as you practice Zen in your life, you will see that living in the present moment is like living heaven on earth. Even though we can all deal with this one moment right in front of us, we rarely live in this one moment right in front of us. We don’t know how. We have been conditioned since our early childhoods to live in the future or the past.
Through Zen practice, we learn to live in the here and now. This simple lesson will relieve you of the suffering you feel when your mind is allowed to constantly run and jump from moment to moment. You will be free in a way you never dreamed you could be freed.
…from The Everything Zen Book. For similar books, please visit Adams Media Bookstore.
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