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become almost synonymous with eternal life. Adam and Eve could not eat the fruit of the eternal life, they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. They had only eaten the fruit of knowledge. But Zen gives you the other tree, the tree of eternal life.
So in this series we will be discussing Zen, as equivalent to eternal life.
God is no where.
Life is now here.
And Zen is the master key to open the doors of the mystery of life.
The sutra:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
SEKITO SAID:
MY TEACHING, WHICH HAS COME DOWN FROM THE ANCIENT BUDDHAS, IS NOT DEPENDENT ON MEDITATION OR ON DILIGENT APPLICATION OF ANY KIND.
The word `meditation' here may give you a feeling of misunderstanding, of confusion, because in English there are three words: concentration, contemplation, meditation. None of these three words is capable of translating the Sanskrit word dhyana, which became in Buddha's language -- he used Pali, a different language from Sanskrit -- zhana. And when Bodhidharma took the message to China, from zhana it became ch'ana. And when Rinzai took the message from China to Japan, from ch'an or ch'ana, it became zen. It came closer to Buddha's zhan or zhana.
But there is no equivalent word in English, because even the word `meditation' gives the idea that you are meditating upon something. Concentrating upon something, contemplating about something, meditating upon something -- but dhyan, or zen, are without any object.
Zen means neither are you contemplating nor are you concentrating, nor are you meditating, because there is no object. You simply are -- silent, no thought, no mind.
It is because of this, Sekito includes meditation also: "One does not need meditation or a diligent application of any kind to become the enlightened one."
But for your understanding and clarity, when I use the word `meditation' -- it is a poor word, it does not have the same quality as `dhyan' or `zen' -- I use it because there is no other word in the English language.
And there is a reason why there is no other word -- the West never came to the point of dhyana. It never came to the point where one simply
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