Purpose of Zazen (non-separateness)
Zazen practitioners are taught not to aim for anything as they sit. They are advised not to aim to be calm, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be free from suffering, and so on; in sitting, one is taught not to aim for any goal at all. However, if one is free of a goal or purpose when actually sitting, can we say that the practice itself, sitting regularly for a certain period of time, has a purpose?
A very straightforward and clear explanation of the purpose of zazen can be found in a collection of talks by Kosho Uchiyama (d. 1998), a Japanese Soto Zen priest, called Opening the Hand of Thought. Uchiyama says that within all of us, there is, aside from the personal self or ego, “a universal self that is inclusive of the entire universe.”[1] He says that the purpose of zazen “is to wake up this self that is inclusive of everything.”[2]
The purpose of zazen is to develop the awareness that one is not separate from anything. This is a gradual process whose unfolding is inexhaustible. People, events, situations – none of this is separated from a person. I remember when I was in Sufism, the head sheikh of the Sufis in America was asked while giving a talk what it was like for him to lead a life of unity from day to day. The sheikh said that when he encountered any new thing – a person, an object, an event – he put it in his heart; he gesticulated with his hand, picking things out of the air and putting them in his heart. The memory of this simple act of the sheikh has stayed with me ever since. Everything is part of you, says Uchiyama, but of course you don’t know what everything is. So there is no end to the process of putting things in your heart.
To conceive not being separate from anything, Uchiyama’s words may be helpful, that “I bring my own world into existence, live it out, and take it with me when I die.” He continues, “Shakyamuni Buddha said it this way: ‘All worlds are my world and all sentient beings – people, things, and situations – are my children.’”[3] When we realize that the whole world is us, that we bring it in with us when we are born and it take it with us when we die, we realize non-separateness.
The purpose of the practice of zazen is to be one with the world. The world includes humanity as well as everything else. Uchiyama says that to treat our fellow human beings as literally ourselves is the hallmark of a truly advanced human race. He says, “When this becomes a world of . . . adults in which we watch over one another and care for and help each other, then humanity will have come of age and we may rightly say we have progressed.”[4]
For zazen practitioners, when we drop thought or ego to return to breathing, Uchiyama says, we “open our eyes to the clarity of the vital life of universal self.”[5]
In Uchiyama’s view, in continuing to sit zazen we are doing our part to move forward the ideal of a transformed world.
Footnotes
- Kosho Uchiyama, Opening the Hand of Thought, Boston, 2004, p. xxxi.
- Ibid. p. 15.
- Ibid., p. 15.
- Ibid., pp. 136-137.
- Ibid., p. 83.