We usually sit for 30 minutes in the classical posture: legs crossed, back straight, eyes half open, hands in mudra and breathing naturally. In the Kwan Um school, meditation is not dependent on posture, but rather on the way you hold your mind. Therefore, you can stand up or use a chair if your body hurts while sitting.
During meditation, we ask ourselves a big question like ‘What am I?’ without interruption. When this question is taken seriously, thinking stops and ‘Don’t know’ appears. ‘Don’t know’ is the name of the mind before thinking. You can call this point spirit, Buddha, God, nature, the absolute, holiness, energy or consciousness, but originally this point has neither name nor form. When you stop all thinking and return to the ‘don’t know’ mind, you return to your true nature. Our true nature is like a mirror: you become one with your situation. There is no ‘I’, ‘mine’ or ‘me’, no inside, no outside and no wall around you. Everything is exactly the same.
walking meditation
Walking meditation is used between sitting meditations to relax the legs, knees and body while maintaining the mental practice of the big question, the ‘don’t know’ mind and ‘just because’. Whether we walk slowly or faster, we stay 100% in the moment, acting together and maintaining our right situation, function and relationship with each other.
Singing
Singing meditation is about keeping the mind calm and listening to the sound of your own voice.
Regular chanting makes our centre stronger and stronger. With a strong centre, we can control our feelings. When we are no longer a slave to our feelings and thoughts, we become free and independent.
For some people, chanting meditation is not easy: there can be many confused thoughts, likes and dislikes. Likes and dislikes cause many problems in our world. Any kind of conflict arises from this state of mind. However, when you practise chanting meditation in earnest and perceive the sound of your own voice and the sound of other chanting people’s voices, your mind becomes clear. In a clear mind, there are no likes or dislikes, only sound. Then you and the sound are never separate. You connect with everything.
PROSTRATIONS
Most practitioners of the Kwan Um school start their day with 108 bows. This exercise gives you a lot of energy, a strong centre and purifies your mind. Your ‘Small Self’ prostrates to your ‘True Self’ until only the True Self remains. When we bow, we only bow. Then all things bow together with us.
KONG-AN EXERCISE
Kong-Ans are questions and answers in the context of a one-to-one conversation/interview with a Zen master or Dharma master. During a retreat, all participants can conduct a personal interview with the teacher. ‘What am I?’ is considered the original Kong-an. But the Kwan Um school of Zen uses many other Kong-ans from the Indian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese traditions. These questions can help you gain a deeper insight that is usually difficult to achieve without this technique.
FORMAL MEALS
During intensive retreats, meals are shared in a traditional style derived from the formal meals of Korean Zen monks and nuns. The forms of these meals are complex, but serve to relax us into the activity of eating and help us to focus carefully on what we are doing. They are another form of communal meditation and, over the years of practice, help us to maintain the spirit of ‘Just like this’ in every situation in our lives, however difficult or complex it may be.
WORKING ZEN
Each day of a retreat spent with a Zen group includes a time of working Zen, cleaning and maintaining the house, Dharma room and gardens together, preparing food or building something. During retreats this usually only takes a short time of about an hour, whereas outside of retreats, in monasteries, it can take up a large part of the day. These periods of time are used to practise Zen in any situation and any kind of relationship, whatever we are doing.
Introduction to the formal practice of the Kwan Um Zen School
‘In our Zen centres, we live and practice together, and we all adhere to the temple rules. People come to us with many strong likes and dislikes and gradually put them aside. Everyone bows together 108 times at half past five in the morning, everyone sits together, everyone eats together, everyone works together. Sometimes you don’t feel like bowing, but it’s a temple rule, so you bow. Sometimes you don’t feel like singing, but you sing.’
— Zen-Master Seung Sahn
‘Whatever we do in our practice, we learn from it. If we keep a mind that is a little open, we can learn from everything we do. Whether it’s a big mistake or a small mistake, whether it’s right or wrong, we can learn something about ourselves and other people.’
— Zen-Master Su Bong
‘In Zen, we say that meditation means that when you do something, just do it. When you drive a car, just drive. That’s meditation while driving. When you play tennis, just play tennis. Don’t think: ‘How do I look?’ When you eat, just eat. When you talk, just talk. When you wash dishes, just wash dishes. When you do something, just do it 100 per cent. Then your mind, your body and the situation become one. That’s called meditation. It’s an immovable mind. Your mind and the situation become completely one. That is meditation.’
— Zen-Master Dae Bong
‘When we bow together, sing together and eat together, our thoughts become one. It’s like the sea. When the wind comes, there are many waves. When the wind dies down, the waves become smaller. When the wind stops, the water becomes a mirror in which everything is reflected – mountains, trees, clouds. Our spirit is the same. When we have many desires and many opinions, there are many big waves. But after we sit Zen for a while and act together, our opinions and desires disappear. The waves become smaller and smaller. Then our mind is like a clear mirror and everything we see or hear or smell or taste or touch or think is the truth.’
— Zen-Master Seung Sahn
‘Keeping a ‘don’t know’ mind means switching off all thinking. Switching off all discursive thoughts leads us to the source of our true nature and brings us into the present moment. What are you doing right now? Paying attention to this moment is what Zen practice is all about. … Any kind of formal practice is a simple situation in which it is easier to switch off thinking. When we do formal practice, it will begin to affect our everyday life. Every moment in our lives can be understood as a kong-an. When we are able to penetrate the simple situations of Kong-ans without being confused by our discursive mind, our intuition begins to grow.’
— Zen-Master Wu Bong
The temple rules of Zen Master Seung Sahn in the back of the sutra book:
