Zen for Dummies

Have you ever heard of Zen? You've probably heard of it, but don't really know what it is. I know I never did. I was always pretty sure that it involved moving furniture around to create a more positive atmosphere in a room. I was also pretty sure that the Laker's coach, Phil Jackson, practiced Zen. Beyond that, I didn't know anything. However, in a desperate attempt to be motivated to write something of value in this online journal that we call a "blog," I began searching articles of wikipedia... hoping to stumble across something that might inspire me.

What I found my way to was this complicated, hard to understand philosophy called Zen. To my understanding, Zen is a branch of Buddhism, and the key aspect of the philosophy is that it stresses understanding through direct experience, rather than from the teachings of a bible or other holy text. I guess they must have figured that a first-hand experience teaches us more than reading or hearing anything else could. It's true. In fact, even in our own society, we believe the same thing. Haven't you ever heard someone say, "learn from your mistakes?" Or, how about the way that we think that the oldest people are usually the wisest? They're the wisest because they've been around longer, done more, and therefore learned more.

By this concept, we learn from our mistakes. Life would be incredibly boring if we were ever able to retain all of the guidelines to living that our elders have ever told us in an attempt to make us more successful in life. Think about that-if nobody ever made a mistake. True, we might always do the right thing, but would we even be able to recognize that if there was never a failure to compare it to? If nobody had ever cheated on a test, or stolen anything, or cheated on a girl he loved... how would we learn?

I simply think that it would be better to make mistakes now, while I'm 16, rather than 20 years from now. According to Zen, I need to make mistakes now and learn from them in order to be enlightened later on. If we only learn our wrong-doings by external sources, the solution won't last. We need to search within ourselves for our answers. In order to attain the intuitive, direct perception of virtue and wisdom, we need to, "turn the eye inward."

Some people may wonder, "what makes these Zen people think that I can find the answer within myself?" The reassurance to their doubts comes right from the origin of the philosophy. You see, once, Gautama Buddha gathered his disciples for a talk about Dharma. Once the meeting had begun, Buddha said nothing. His followers began to wonder if he had become ill or too tired to speak. When he held up a flower, silently, some disciples haggled and bickered over what the sign could be interpreted to mean. Instead of partaking in the debate, one of the men thought to himself silently, and with a sudden epiphany, had realized what the flower symbolized. He had understood the meaning, and attained that knowledge from nowhere but within himself. Buddha knew immediately of his disciple's awakening, and gave him a slight smile. Wisdom had been passed from student to teacher without so much as a breath being taken. Zen had been born.

The main point of Zen is that true understanding will only come from ourselves. Only by searching deep within ourselves and meditating on the mistakes we make will we learn the correct perspective on life that we need in order to live the enlightened life. In other words, Learn from your mistakes, or else suffer the same fate time and again.