What is zazen?

Zazen (often shortened to zen) is a Japanese term that literally means “sitting meditation”. It can also be translated as “sitting with awareness” and sometimes it is also very beautifully translated as “sitting wholeheartedly.”

So Zazen is simply sitting in the here and now. Just trying to be completely present where you are, and endeavouring to be at one with the situation as is. By practising this in meditation, we become more free in our daily lives to act (or not act) as the arising situation requires.

If we manage to sit and look inside ourselves with as little judging and commenting as possible, and if we maintain our practice faithfully, we gradually become more aware of all our thoughts, feelings and convictions, our certainties and patterns that hold us confined to the self we think we know, and that hinder us in becoming one with life itself. We begin to see that all our certainties are just as fluid and unsubstantial and impermanent as clouds and mist.

Zazen is a meditation practice that originated in buddhism. A tradition that has been teaching for centuries, that to awaken is nothing other than lovingly becoming one with your life, with all life, here and now. We sit to liberate ourselves from suffering. We sit to liberate all beings from suffering. And the realisation that you and I are truly, completely and totally one being, while we look at each other eye to eye and heart to heart, that is liberation.