Everyday Zen: Embracing the Illusion

The challenge of everyday life has been one of the leading questions of philosophers and religious advocates. It is always the goal to find the path through the maze of dangers, pitfalls, and obstacles to live a complete and full life of peace, love, and contentment. Zen offers a unique view, and one that is quite different than expected. The world is fleeting, in that nothing is permanent. What rises, falls, what comes, goes. This is a fact of existence that comes from natural law, being a set of universal truths, principles, and rules that properly and naturally govern moral human conduct. In this, one of the core philosophies of Zen is the illusionary aspect of existence, and that the mind of the observer paints meaning and function to objects of existence in which the object is devoid of such origination. Zen calls this philosophical aspect emptiness, and implores the Zen student to see that emptiness in all things. Old Chinese Zen masters developed koans or logic puzzles to specifically trap the disciple in an inescapable outcome to see for themselves the very nature of the mind and realization of emptiness. Such word puzzles are not solved by calculating thought, but rather by intuitive knowing, an innate and subtle reflective satisfaction, and deep understanding of the nature of mind and the illusions that if improperly understood only bring suffering to ourselves and others. The Zen disciple takes on a transcendent quality and infuses this transcendent aspect in daily life. Thus, liberated from the struggles of suffering, the Zen disciple embraces a more direct, experiential understanding of reality. It would be impossible and absurd for me to tell you what this looks like. For each Zen disciple is unique and different from the next, and thus, as old Zen masters say, the paths are like the sands of the beaches on all of the oceans, uncountable.