Letter to the Editor (recommends zazen to the general public)

I moved to Hawaii in January of 2017, where I live now. Therefore I was in Hawaii for the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. In October of 2020, I sent a letter-to-the-editor of the local newspaper advising the use of zazen to relieve the stress of the pandemic. The newspaper generously gave the letter a featured position in the paper and entitled it “A Little Advice for Hard Times.” Slightly modified, here is that letter:

As everyone, I am in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Being older and therefore especially susceptible to the virus, I stay at home except for grocery shopping, and that makes for a dull and uncomfortable day. I live south of the center of Kailua-Kona, and as I travel up Alii Drive to the grocery, I am distressed by the closed businesses and the empty streets.  

I am fortunate to have the companionship of my wife to ease this period of time. I also have zazen. Within the religion of Buddhism, zazen is the main practice of the Zen Buddhist school. It is not necessary to know anything at all about Zen Buddhism in order to do the practice. Zazen means “sitting meditation” in Japanese. It is a very simple practice of sitting with a straight back and focusing on breathing. You watch your breath come in and go out, returning to this focus whenever you notice that you have been distracted from it. Zazen can be done sitting on a cushion or a meditation bench or a chair.  

Zazen is a process of inward discovery. It is a launch into an internal sea that has unknown islands and inlets. When pursued regularly, in time it introduces you to a different and richer world than the day-to-day one. The phenomena in this world are interconnected, and the whole moves as one thing. You feel yourself to be a comfortably intimate part of this unified world, interconnected with it as everything else. Phenomena in this world are all of ultimate worth, being uniformly valuable, intriguing, interesting. You may feel a streaming sense of love in this world, in which you yourself are serene, peaceful, and loving. 

Zazen is not a casual process but it need not be burdensome. In the beginning, it is best to practice it for short periods, say fifteen minutes, at times of day convenient for you, twice a day being sufficient. You can gradually expand the period of meditation to thirty or forty minutes, which are standard for zazen. You will want to be patient as you wait for the richer world to unfold. As you meditate, it is best not to think of aiming for this world, or of achieving any goal, but just to concentrate on your breathing, maybe treating the act of focusing as a skill that you are developing. Try not to be grasping after anything, but just focusing. 

Manuals of meditation treat these points at length. However, you needn’t read a lot about meditation to get started. Just begin doing zazen. You will soon see if it is right for you, and then you can follow your own star.