Finding Zen in My Life

                          Recently I've been studying the philosophy of Zen. From my readings, seminars, and looking at things differently, I have found fundamental ideas and ways of thinking about life. Zen enriches no one. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the "nothing," the "no-body" that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. Zen is not a religion or some other belief system; sometimes it's a defined philosophy; sometimes it's a new kind of spirituality.
                      In almost every case, however, I appear to be seeking sustenance from something that has form and structure -- something that can be easily understood, measured, defined, and labeled by the analytical machinery of my conditioned mind. And whatever that something is, my ego expects to be enriched by it, to gain something from it. The practice of Zen seeks to find the nothing in nothingness, the silence in stillness, formlessness in form.
                Zen is a practice that helps me to penetrate to a true self and to vitalize this self in daily life. I find it the opposite of form and structure which dominates my way of thinking.
              According to Zen, existence is found in the silence of the mind (no-mind), beyond the chatter of our internal dialog. Existence, from the Zen perspective is something that is only happening spontaneously, and it is not just our thoughts. All of life that we perceive is constantly in a state of change. Every atom in the universe is somewhere different every millionth of a second.

          What then is existence? Zen says that it is instantaneous. Since the earth is constantly moving and our thoughts and bodies are constantly in a process fluctuation then what we really are can be experienced in each moment.
         The Zen way of thinking and living will be a long  journey to understand and try to live. So I leave today with this thought. " The special contribution of zen thought is its recognition of the mundane as of equal importance with the spiritual. It holds that in the great relation of things there is no distinction of small and great."