Why do you practice Zen?

[Guest]

A question I ask myself often, and yet I don't always have an answer. I am curious as to how others would answer this question. Why do you practice Zen?


Treena

[Daitetsu]

I don't know anymore.

Gassho,

Timo

[Seimyo]

Learning to live. Learning to die.

Gassho.
Seimyo

[Heishu]

Life is better because I practice and I guess that is why I continue to do so. Not always better for me but somewhat better for those that must be around me.

I practice to quiet the mind and yet I practice to hear as well. I practice to get a grip on how an insignificant creature such as myself is interconnected with everything in this vast universe. I practice to rest for a bit and yet also to strengthen my resolve to live with everything that exists. I practice because I don't much care for the person I was before I started to practice but of course I am still the same as I was before I started my practice.

Such a simple question but no right nor wrong an answer that I can give to explain to someone why I do now what I must do.

I am sorry that I failed to give you an answer to your question but I continue to practice.

Gassho,
Heishu

[Joyo]

Heishu, no need to apologize. Your answer is also a main reason as to why I practice. In fact, my answer is the same as everyone who has posted here so far. Sometimes others can just write it down better than perhaps I can.

Gassho,
Treena

[zdlee]

I started practice largely to escape suffering. That's not all or maybe even most of the reason I practice now, but I'm not sure what the reason is, really. In a way, I find that not knowing very freeing.

Gassho,

Zac

[Yugen]

I started practice largely to escape suffering. That's not all or maybe even most of the reason I practice now, but I'm not sure what the reason is, really. In a way, I find that not knowing very freeing.

Gassho,

Zac

Bravo - I feel much the same way. But I do know that nothing else I have ever done has been so effortless or natural. Effortless does not mean easy, however.

Deep bows
Yugen

[Yukontodd]

After avoiding practicing Zen for a couple years, after a while I thought I should get back to the practice; things seemed better somehow then, though I wasn't really sure why. It's not like I wasn't having fun being very un-Zen all this summer long! But I started lurking around on Treeleaf just the same, and started wondering if I'd ever take Jukai there or anywhere, and what difference it might actually make to me.

It was in that state of mind that I went away for a week with some family and friends, and like anytime you spend some time together, some things about my most loved ones started to annoy me. And of course they started to annoy each other and I was annoying them. Without getting into specifics on everybody's personal faults, I was thinking about just that (everyone's personal faults) around the same time I was thinking about getting back into practice, and how I'd need these people's help if I were to actually do Jukai this year and if I should bother to try, I just fell quiet and watched the people around me as they all tried to struggle through the suffering they were feeling. That's when I knew I had to do Jukai for them. Yes, for me, but for them. A less suffering me, a less caught-up me, a less chained me is much better suited to help them, and to remember that the annoyances that prick at my ego stem not from the people I love hating me, but rather the suffering in them is just doing what suffering does, reaching out to make more suffering.

Now many of my loved ones are helping me in small and large ways with all the logistics of Ango, and Jukai. And they'll see me do it. And that in itself is something, a small positive direction for us all. So, it's all very daunting for me still, but that's why I'm doing it. Not for them entirely! But because suffering gets suffering, and there just is really no other way to be once you get that. Though for some reason I still don't get, it all still scares the pants off of me.

Thanks for the excuse to write about this, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Good to let it out. I hope what I actually wrote makes some sort of sense.
-Todd

[Nengyo]

Words have trouble capturing why I practice, and every year I practice it gets harder. If pressed on the issue, I guess it's mostly because I like obscure Japanese rituals and a love for that one darker spot on my wall.

[Ishin]

I have looked for sometime for something that most closely matches with me. I went through a very rough time the last few years, and things still are not wonderful, but through reading about and studying Zen I found a way to process all that into the wonderful phase of my life that it was/is. Now that I am practicing regularly, I find that I like myself better, that it is helping me be the person I want to be and I really do feel it is helping me find me. Other people are beginning to notice too, though I don't go around proselytizing, people are responding to me differently. I feel more centered, grounded, real and whole than I have in a long time.

Ask me again in ten years.

Gassho
C

PS: Based on today's performance Zen does not help you golf better, but I accept my lack of skill more gracefully

[Bengalidan]

Zen slowly appeared in front of me after years of physical and metaphysical meanderings. I wasn't necessarily unhappy with things in my life and thinking, but through readings, experiences, and lessons from wonderful people, I plopped down in Zen. It has felt less like a choice than a natural evolution. And now I practice because I feel it is what I need to do in this moment.

[Taigu]

To live a life without whys and to let life live me.

Gassho

T.

[Mp]

To live a life without whys and to let life live me.

Gassho

T.

Beautifully said Taigu, thank you.

Gassho
Shingen

[Myozan Kodo]

Hi,
I did not choose Zen. It has nothing to do with me or my choices. Zen practices me. Really.

It's like when I'm driving the car. I don't think about each move. The car drives me. The road makes the decisions.

But there is room for improvement in my driving and I had to learn to drive before I got behind the wheel. Still am learning ... ;-)

Gassho
Myozan

[Myosha]

Why? Why-not?


Gassho,
Edward