Zen 101

My upcoming novel, Zen Men Tell No Tales, is set in a Zen monastery. It might be helpful for some to have a quick intro to this religion so that the story won’t feel so foreign. I have been a student of Zen for over 40 years, and in that time, I have thoroughly figured out nothing about Zen. But that’s OK. Zen is not something to figure out. In my experience, Zen is the practice of meditation to understand what it means to exist. Eventually, many Buddhists arrive at the view that everything is impermanent and that anything, including the self, is a source of suffering if clung to. Everything else is negotiable. The goal is just to sit, become who you already are, and stop trying to be anybody else.

Here are some terms that might be helpful to know when exploring this simple yet complex philosophy. Not everyone believes in all of them. Zen is not a system of belief.

• Zen – A Japanese word for the Chinese word Chan, for the Indian word Dhyana, which means the practice of meditation.
• Buddha – An awakened one. When used with the definite article, i.e., the Buddha, it is commonly believed to refer to the Indian philosopher Siddhartha Gautama, who lived between the 6th and the 4th century BCE. There have been and will be many Buddhas. We are all Buddhas, we just don’t know it.
• Sangha – The community of those who follow the path.
• Dharma – The teaching of the Buddha, the law that sustains all beings, the perception of phenomena, or the experience of truth in general. A dharma-talk is a sermon given by a teacher or senior student on some aspect of life and practice.
• he Three Jewels – The Buddha, the Sangha, and the Dharma in which Buddhists take refuge.
• Nirvana – The ultimate goal of practicing meditation, which literally means “to breathe out,” sometimes interpreted as leaving the wheel of birth and death, i.e., no longer reincarnated.
• The Four Noble Truths

1. Life is unsatisfactory and involves suffering
2. Suffering is caused by clinging to things, even life itself
3. There is a way to end suffering
4. Suffering is ended by following the Eight-Fold Path

• The Eight-Fold Path – Eight aspects of life that, if done well, lead one on the path toward nirvana. These include worldview, resolve, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and meditation.
• Karma – Cause and Effect. Action and Consequences. A moral system in which you reap what you sow, maybe not now, but eventually. Linked to the idea of reincarnation, in which the life you get next depends on how well you lived this one.
• Reincarnation – The wheel of life and death. The goal of Zen is to get off the wheel and end all suffering. That would also mean an end to reincarnation, resulting in a final death.
• Boddhisatva – One who refuses nirvana until all sentient beings are saved.

Stay tuned for future blog posts that discuss how my detective practices Zen. I guarantee he is unconventional and has some misunderstandings of the world and himself. That’s why we practice: to look in the mirror, see where we’ve gone wrong, and find our own way forward. Somewhere along that path, a murder happens that will shake the foundations of his being.