FAQ's
Here are some of the questions the sangha has asked. if you'd like to ask a question that isn't covered here just get in touch.
Do you have to be a Buddhist to practice Zen? No, not at all. Zen is fundamentally a practice of sitting zazen, that is sitting meditation. The practice simply provides us with a physical, emotional, and psychic space where we can explore the fundamental questions of our life. These can be seemingly simple questions like: How come I do the work that I do? How has life led me to live here? Probing emotional questions like: How come I so often feel sad, or mad or bad? Profound existential questions like: What’s my life about?
Zen doesn’t set out to ask these questions but somehow, in the quiet of sitting, the questions that are pertinent to your life begin to surface, and the practice, your teacher and the sangha (the Zen community) hold a space in which those questions emerge and become known to you.
Does Zen provide answers? Well, the simple answer to that is no! Not at all. At best it provides a framework of practice and a space in which your own answers arise. Zen has a discipline that provides the frame of enquiry into yourself but at best is not prescriptive about the personal answers you arrive at. However, as practice deepens the heart opens and a profound connection to every aspect of life on earth emerges, and this will almost inevitably shape how you move through your life.
Is Zen a religion? Yes, most particularly so. Zen is Buddhist and Buddhism is a religion in any definition of the word. However, if you look below the religious answer you’ll also see a completely different answer to this question.
So what makes it a religion? I’d say it provides a framework of practice for the path through life. It eschews direct answers to fundamental questions such as “what’s life all about” and yet the practice opens up to a profound experience where answers to the deeper questions of life such as, “what are we doing here” begin to emerge in the very centre of your guts. And this is not experience in an ephemeral “look what’s happened to me” sort of way but an almost fragile but deep awareness of abiding in the the very womb of Buddhanature.
Zen also involves devotional practices, such as chanting sutras that honour the religious and philosophical doctrines of Buddhism, where Buddha-mind is embodied as we chant. Zen also has devotional prayers such as the Brahmavihara where we wish that all beings be free from suffering and the roots of suffering:
May all beings be free from suffering and the roots of suffering.
May all beings know happiness and the roots of happiness.
May all beings live in sympathetic joy, rejoicing in the happiness of others.
May all beings live in equanimity, free from greed, aggression and delusion.
We also have practices such as Tonglen, borrowed from our Tibetan Buddhist peers, where we bring to mind and visualise the suffering of others and breathe it in, and hold it and transform it, and breathe it out as love into the world.
Zen also has an ethical framework, the precepts, that underpin our deeper attitudes to life, which devoted practitioners can formally affirm in a ceremony known as Jukai,also called “taking the precepts”.
The Ten Grave Precepts are:
Affirm life: Do not kill
Be giving: Do not steal
Honour the body: Do not misuse sexuality
Manifest truth: Do not lie
Proceed clearly: Do not cloud the mind
See the perfection: Do not indulge in speaking the faults of others
Realise self and other as one: Do not elevate the self and blame others
Give generously: Do not be withholding
Actualize harmony: Do not indulge in anger
Experience the intimacy of things: Do not defile the Three Treasures.
They are underpinned by the Three Pure Precepts:
Not Creating Evil
Practising Good
Actualising Good For Others
But Is Zen really a religion, I’ve heard it described as a philosophy? Yes, Zen isn’t a religion for many practitioners. Some would say it provides a philosophical stance that allows us to sit more easily with the profound questions about the meaning of life. But Zen does this in a rather puckish way. It bats off seemingly straightforward questions and invites us to sit and contemplate our own minds, to penetrate the ebb and flow of thoughts, feelings, and sensations that pass through us, eventually to arrive in a place where questions and answers just vanish but one nevertheless has a profound sense of having arrived home.
Zen can also be described as a psychology of perception. This take on it emerges from the earliest roots of Buddhism that involved enquiry into how our “felt experience” of being in the world could be understood. In this framework, sitting in meditation, or Zazen as it is called in Zen, involves a process of watching the unfolding of our perception of phenomena that make up our sense of being in the world, where perception and “sense making” is broken down into the finest detail. This enquiry has continued through the centuries and flowered under a South Indian called Nagajuna who made use of the Buddha’s ideas of dependent arising, whereby we can see that all phenomena, all things, are profoundly interconnected and interdependent, such that nothing has an essential nature. Of critical import is that all things, all phenomena are empty, that merely means empty of self nature, and this also means you and me. In other words, we are conditioned, and our thoughts, feelings, perceptions are in a continual flux, but not only human perception but matter itself is empty of self nature and is in continual flux.
I hear that Zen has very strict protocols about how to behave in the Zendo, is that true? Yes, that is true but all of the rules are merely upheld in order to provide a safe container for the enquiry into exactly who you are, and to provide everyone else with the same space. Once that is understood the rules are quite simple really, they are there to deliver us into a place of quiet, profound, serene reflection.
What are the rules? Take off your shoes before you enter the Zendo and leave them tidily in place; enter the Zendo and bow to the altar, bow to your mat, and make one single bow as if to everyone present; take your seat on the Zafu; follow the chants that are announced, you will find a sutra sheet under your mat, chant with your hands together in gassho, bow reverently at the end of the chanting and replace the sutra sheet back under your mat; take up your position for meditation; the bell rings three times to denote the meditation period begins; the bell rings twice to denote the meditation period has ended.
We usually sit for 25 minutes; at the end of mediation unwind your legs and wait for the senior person in the Zendo to rise; stand, clean your mat, bow to your mat, stand in front of your mat, and when the clappers sound make one single bow to the room as if to everyone present. Line up behind the kinhin leader in a single file, keep within touching distance of the person in the file in front of you. When the clappers sound bow in unison and begin walking in kinhin - hold your right hand to your chest in a fist and cup your left hand over it, keeping your arms parallel to the floor. Walk at the same pace as everyone else keeping a small distance between you and the person in front, you should almost be able to breathe down their neck, move as if one. When the clappers sound bow, move your hands into gassho and file back to your place as quickly as you can, bow to your mat, stand in front of your mat, bow to everyone, as if to the room, when the clappers sound again take your seat for zazen.
The bell will sound three times to signal the next period of meditation, at the end the bell will sound twice if another mediation period is to follow, or the bell will sound once if that is the end of that period of sitting. Usually there will be chanting at the end announced by a single strike on the bell and a katz, when the bell is silenced with the striker. After the chants allow the senior person to rise first then stand yourself, clean your mat and bow to the mat, bow to the room, as if to everyone present, bow to the altar, allow the senior persons to exit and follow, exiting the Zendo in silence. Retrieve your shoes.
We meet in Woodchester, near Nailsworth in the Cotswolds, and near Stroud, Stonehouse, Cirencester, Avening, Minchinhampton, and are in reach of Gloucester, Cheltenham, Bath, Bristol, Gloucestershire, South Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. Zen meditation, Buddhist Meditation. Zen Stroud, Zen Nailsworth, Zen Gloucester, Zen Cheltenham, Zen Gloucestershire, Zen Bath, Zen Bristol, Zen Cotswolds, Buddhism Nailsworth, Buddhism Stroud, Buddhism Stonehouse, Buddhism Gloucester, Buddhism Cheltenham, Buddhism Bath, Buddhism Bristol, Buddhism Cotswolds.
Do you have to be a Buddhist to practice Zen? No, not at all. Zen is fundamentally a practice of sitting zazen, that is sitting meditation. The practice simply provides us with a physical, emotional, and psychic space where we can explore the fundamental questions of our life. These can be seemingly simple questions like: How come I do the work that I do? How has life led me to live here? Probing emotional questions like: How come I so often feel sad, or mad or bad? Profound existential questions like: What’s my life about?
Zen doesn’t set out to ask these questions but somehow, in the quiet of sitting, the questions that are pertinent to your life begin to surface, and the practice, your teacher and the sangha (the Zen community) hold a space in which those questions emerge and become known to you.
Does Zen provide answers? Well, the simple answer to that is no! Not at all. At best it provides a framework of practice and a space in which your own answers arise. Zen has a discipline that provides the frame of enquiry into yourself but at best is not prescriptive about the personal answers you arrive at. However, as practice deepens the heart opens and a profound connection to every aspect of life on earth emerges, and this will almost inevitably shape how you move through your life.
Is Zen a religion? Yes, most particularly so. Zen is Buddhist and Buddhism is a religion in any definition of the word. However, if you look below the religious answer you’ll also see a completely different answer to this question.
So what makes it a religion? I’d say it provides a framework of practice for the path through life. It eschews direct answers to fundamental questions such as “what’s life all about” and yet the practice opens up to a profound experience where answers to the deeper questions of life such as, “what are we doing here” begin to emerge in the very centre of your guts. And this is not experience in an ephemeral “look what’s happened to me” sort of way but an almost fragile but deep awareness of abiding in the the very womb of Buddhanature.
Zen also involves devotional practices, such as chanting sutras that honour the religious and philosophical doctrines of Buddhism, where Buddha-mind is embodied as we chant. Zen also has devotional prayers such as the Brahmavihara where we wish that all beings be free from suffering and the roots of suffering:
May all beings be free from suffering and the roots of suffering.
May all beings know happiness and the roots of happiness.
May all beings live in sympathetic joy, rejoicing in the happiness of others.
May all beings live in equanimity, free from greed, aggression and delusion.
We also have practices such as Tonglen, borrowed from our Tibetan Buddhist peers, where we bring to mind and visualise the suffering of others and breathe it in, and hold it and transform it, and breathe it out as love into the world.
Zen also has an ethical framework, the precepts, that underpin our deeper attitudes to life, which devoted practitioners can formally affirm in a ceremony known as Jukai,also called “taking the precepts”.
The Ten Grave Precepts are:
Affirm life: Do not kill
Be giving: Do not steal
Honour the body: Do not misuse sexuality
Manifest truth: Do not lie
Proceed clearly: Do not cloud the mind
See the perfection: Do not indulge in speaking the faults of others
Realise self and other as one: Do not elevate the self and blame others
Give generously: Do not be withholding
Actualize harmony: Do not indulge in anger
Experience the intimacy of things: Do not defile the Three Treasures.
They are underpinned by the Three Pure Precepts:
Not Creating Evil
Practising Good
Actualising Good For Others
But Is Zen really a religion, I’ve heard it described as a philosophy? Yes, Zen isn’t a religion for many practitioners. Some would say it provides a philosophical stance that allows us to sit more easily with the profound questions about the meaning of life. But Zen does this in a rather puckish way. It bats off seemingly straightforward questions and invites us to sit and contemplate our own minds, to penetrate the ebb and flow of thoughts, feelings, and sensations that pass through us, eventually to arrive in a place where questions and answers just vanish but one nevertheless has a profound sense of having arrived home.
Zen can also be described as a psychology of perception. This take on it emerges from the earliest roots of Buddhism that involved enquiry into how our “felt experience” of being in the world could be understood. In this framework, sitting in meditation, or Zazen as it is called in Zen, involves a process of watching the unfolding of our perception of phenomena that make up our sense of being in the world, where perception and “sense making” is broken down into the finest detail. This enquiry has continued through the centuries and flowered under a South Indian called Nagajuna who made use of the Buddha’s ideas of dependent arising, whereby we can see that all phenomena, all things, are profoundly interconnected and interdependent, such that nothing has an essential nature. Of critical import is that all things, all phenomena are empty, that merely means empty of self nature, and this also means you and me. In other words, we are conditioned, and our thoughts, feelings, perceptions are in a continual flux, but not only human perception but matter itself is empty of self nature and is in continual flux.
I hear that Zen has very strict protocols about how to behave in the Zendo, is that true? Yes, that is true but all of the rules are merely upheld in order to provide a safe container for the enquiry into exactly who you are, and to provide everyone else with the same space. Once that is understood the rules are quite simple really, they are there to deliver us into a place of quiet, profound, serene reflection.
What are the rules? Take off your shoes before you enter the Zendo and leave them tidily in place; enter the Zendo and bow to the altar, bow to your mat, and make one single bow as if to everyone present; take your seat on the Zafu; follow the chants that are announced, you will find a sutra sheet under your mat, chant with your hands together in gassho, bow reverently at the end of the chanting and replace the sutra sheet back under your mat; take up your position for meditation; the bell rings three times to denote the meditation period begins; the bell rings twice to denote the meditation period has ended.
We usually sit for 25 minutes; at the end of mediation unwind your legs and wait for the senior person in the Zendo to rise; stand, clean your mat, bow to your mat, stand in front of your mat, and when the clappers sound make one single bow to the room as if to everyone present. Line up behind the kinhin leader in a single file, keep within touching distance of the person in the file in front of you. When the clappers sound bow in unison and begin walking in kinhin - hold your right hand to your chest in a fist and cup your left hand over it, keeping your arms parallel to the floor. Walk at the same pace as everyone else keeping a small distance between you and the person in front, you should almost be able to breathe down their neck, move as if one. When the clappers sound bow, move your hands into gassho and file back to your place as quickly as you can, bow to your mat, stand in front of your mat, bow to everyone, as if to the room, when the clappers sound again take your seat for zazen.
The bell will sound three times to signal the next period of meditation, at the end the bell will sound twice if another mediation period is to follow, or the bell will sound once if that is the end of that period of sitting. Usually there will be chanting at the end announced by a single strike on the bell and a katz, when the bell is silenced with the striker. After the chants allow the senior person to rise first then stand yourself, clean your mat and bow to the mat, bow to the room, as if to everyone present, bow to the altar, allow the senior persons to exit and follow, exiting the Zendo in silence. Retrieve your shoes.
We meet in Woodchester, near Nailsworth in the Cotswolds, and near Stroud, Stonehouse, Cirencester, Avening, Minchinhampton, and are in reach of Gloucester, Cheltenham, Bath, Bristol, Gloucestershire, South Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. Zen meditation, Buddhist Meditation. Zen Stroud, Zen Nailsworth, Zen Gloucester, Zen Cheltenham, Zen Gloucestershire, Zen Bath, Zen Bristol, Zen Cotswolds, Buddhism Nailsworth, Buddhism Stroud, Buddhism Stonehouse, Buddhism Gloucester, Buddhism Cheltenham, Buddhism Bath, Buddhism Bristol, Buddhism Cotswolds.
