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Hi everyone; I have been practising qigong and taoism for about 7 odd years, pleased to join your forum. I am a MC fan and have studied UHT for about 4 years.
Lately I have been drawn to the practise of Zen, mostly inspired by the books of Seung Sahn. I guess one of my problems with practise has been emptying the mind and Zen has been very helpful with that. I have joined a local temple in australia yunyang temple:
and have started there as a beginner and am really enjoying it, the temple is beautiful and the nun who teaches meditation is lovely, haven’t met the master there yet. The lineage is taiwanese. I find its great to meditate in a temple setting as opposed to alone at home (no taoist community around here) or in the wilderness; there is very good energy at the temple; after my last visit I came home and wanted to meditate some more and found myself pulsating with sexual energy and joy at the heart center and felt deeply grateful for being alive. My taoist roots are firm and I find I am combining the different practices.
If anyone has any thoughts or experiences on the zen path I would like to hear about it, thxs!
Hello and welcome to the forum!
Zen is good stuff and completely supports the
Healing Tao path. In fact, as I’ve argued myself
on this forum many times, you get more by following
both paths than by following just one.Zen isn’t so much about “emptying the mind”.
The mind can not be emptied; it is the nature of mind
to have thoughts. This is akin to the sky having
clouds. You can wish for the sky to be clear of clouds,
but with each day . . . some more, some less . . .
clouds there will always be. So it is with the
nature of mind. Mind will always have thoughts.
This is normal and natural.What you are really trying to achieve is a stronger
ability to notice thoughts arise and dissolve, from
“behind” them as a neutral observer . . . and to
exhibit more choice in the thoughts you wish to entertain,
rather than to be carried away from the present moment
into daydream, fantasy, or paranoid worry.You don’t want to stop flying the plane, just switch
it more from automatic pilot to manual control . . . so
that you have more freedom in what you want to do, and
so you can enjoy the present more fully.At any rate, I digress 🙂
When you incorporate Zen into your practices, it allows
you get much more mileage in Healing Tao training.
When you are more conscious, the Healing Tao practices
work better. When they work better, the response in
health and emotional well-being progresses faster.
Zen provides a nice yin-time to let alchemy and
transformative processes digest.Zen, by itself, lacks the qigong, the tai chi, the
energy work, the alchemy, the vibrance that one
gets from Healing Tao in my view . . . so for me,
I will always consider myself a Healing Tao practitioner first.However, adding Zen on top of it, is kind of like adding
ice cream on top of pie. Yes, you could do without it;
but having it is a clear bonus. 😉Have fun,
StevenHello Zentao:
I am very familiar with Seung Sahn. He was very clear, a wonderful teacher. From my experience Chan/Zen is about our direct experience, what we know at this current moment. What we feel, smell, taste and hear, this is life, this is the tao. When we understand the things that take us away from this experience we polarize. Strip all the religious or cultural things from “zen” and the dreams and fantasies of “taoist immortality”, the two are the same INMHO.
Your path is zentao path, live it and nobody else’s and you are the living expression of the tao/ buddha nature.
Qi,
david
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