Sunday 25 June 2017

125. ZEN REMARKS

125. The development of samadhi, as Zen Master AMA Samy assures us, 'is essential in the way of Zen'. The practice and development of concentration or samadhi however, is not something that we achieve once and for all. Rather it is a practice that we must keep working at. Again in the words of AMA Samy, it is 'the practice of again and again re-collecting oneself, coming steadily, repeatedly, constantly, patiently, gently, to the centre and to centering in the one thing necessary'. But this samadhi practice, necessary though it is, is not enough on its own if we are to walk the way of Zen. It does not equate with Zen awakening or satori. In the language of Anglo-American analytic philosophy, we might say that samadhi is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the happening of satori.

No comments:

Post a Comment