The Flavor of Zen
"Zen doesn't really have a definition in the usual sense. Zen is a method, an action... Trying to explain satori is like trying to explain a flavor- you can explain the flavor as 'tasting like this or that,' but a person can never understand the taste until she tries it for herself. And when she does, she may describe the taste differently from you. If Zen (the Eightfold Path, meditation, the sutra scriptures, etc.) is explaining the 'flavor' of enlightenment, satori is tasting it."
Describing Zen is restating this truth: spiritual experience, as opposed to historical fact, or statements of dogma, far transcends our ability to explain.
However, we cannot resist the effort to try. Below is as clear an explanation as could be hoped, written by Eido Tai Shimano Roshi.Locally, his followers comprise the Silver Mountain Sangha. He is abbot of the Zen Studies Society, http://www.zenstudies.org/. About Eido Roshi:
"With his dedicated energy, and the help of many Dharma friends and supporters, two centers for Zen practice came into being: New York Zendo Shobo-Ji, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; and Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-Ji, deep in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York.
In 1972, Eido Shimano Roshi received Dharma transmission from Soen Nakagawa Roshi, and today serves as the abbot and spiritual teacher of these two zendos in the Japanese Rinzai Zen tradition.
What is Zen?
a brief explanation
by Eido Tai Shimano Roshi
"The special transmission of Zen is the realization of the Buddha's enlightenment itself, in one's own life, in one's own time. This experience has been realized by Zen students and confirmed by their teachers for over 2500 years.Central and indispensable to Zen is daily Zazen practice. It is this practice that is the 'direct pointing to the mind of man.' Zazen melts away the mind-forged distances that separate man from himself; leads one beyond himself as knower, to himself as known. In Zazen, there is no reality outside what exists here and now. Each moment, each act is inherently Buddha-nature. While sorrow and joy,anxiety and imperturbability cannot be avoided, by not clinging to them we find ourselves free of them, no longer pulled this way and that. With this self-mastery comes composure and tranquility of mind, but these are by-products of Zazen rather than its goals.
It's like teaching the art of writing: over and over we tell our students "Don't tell. Show."
The Zen tradition is justly recognized as the source of
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