What Is Zen?

That is really the essential nature of the whole meditation process: the suspension of talking to yourself, either in words or in any other conceptual image.

This is why Zen does not really involve any beliefs in any theory or doctrine. In this sense, it is not religion — if by religion you mean something that involves a system of beliefs. It is purely experimental and empirical in its approach, and it allows us to get rid of belief— to get rid of all dependence upon words and ideas.

If you expect something to come in a certain way, you position yourself to get ready for it. If it comes another way, by the time you reposition your energy, it is too late. So stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.

If you make exact plans to deal with the future and things don’t happen at all as you expected, you are apt to become thoroughly disappointed and disoriented. But if your plans are flexible and adaptable, and if you’re here when things happen, you always stay balanced.

See that.
That is the foundation experience.
After you see that, and on the basis of seeing that, you can, of course, go back to concepts and construct this idea of the world, that idea, and the other idea.
This is why Zen does not really involve any beliefs in any theory or doctrine. In this sense, it is not religion — if by religion you mean something that involves a system of beliefs. It is purely experimental

I just said that the origin of the world is now — and there is this odd sensation that now comprises everything: the most distant past, the most remote future, the vastness of space, all states of experi- ence, all joy, all sorrow, all heights, all depths. Everything is now. There isn’t anywhere else to be — there never was, and never will be!
That is why you never were born, and therefore cannot die. You never came, so you won’t go. You were always here. It’s a very curious feeling, so different from what we ordinarily think. In entering into the now, we find the eternal now. We find infinity in the split second.