What’s it all about?
Zen meditation is more properly called zazen. In Japanese za means “sitting” and zen means “meditation.” So doing zazen means to ‘just sit’, but ‘sitting’ isn’t as easy as it may sound.
No matter what motivates us to try zazen – perhaps we’re looking for enlightenment, to find our present selves, or maybe we’re just feeling stressed – we will all leave our expectations at the door and discover that there is much more to sitting than we originally thought.
What will we cover?
We will start off with a brief overview of Buddhism and Zazen, but reading a menu can never tell us how the food tastes, so we will quickly get into the ‘doing’.
We’ll practice getting into the zazen posture and have a few short (2-5 min) practice sessions, with plenty of time for questions in between. We’ll learn that as long as we’re willing to “sit upright, sit still, be present”, we’re all capable of being Zen meditators. And we’ll discuss how to go about developing a daily meditation practice, in between the stresses and strains of ‘real life’.
Who will be teaching?
Lynn Howard is a Buddhist housewife, counsellor and dietitian, with 25 years experience in meditating daily. She runs the weekly Port Melbourne Silent Meditation Group (to be found on MeetUp.com), and her teacher is Seikan Cech from the Melbourne Zen Centre. She is not an expert, simply a (quiet) enthusiast.