Zen is a sect of Buddhism.
The core of Zen is a meditative practice called zazen, which when done earnestly, can open us to our true nature.
Zazen is at once a method used to attain an ever-deepening realization of our true self, and is at every moment the natural unfolding of this true self.
Zazen is both something one "does" and something one "is".
It is through consistent and dedicated practice that one directly and personally experiences this True Self, Original Nature, Buddha Nature, True Mind, Mind, or Original Home - to use but a few of the labels historically put on this ever-unfolding, dynamic, and ultimately indescribable truth. This Truth cannot be apprehended by our thinking mind. We must reach beyond discursive thought and description if we wish to know our True Nature first hand, and finally come to live our life rooted in this knowing. Coming to see our True Nature, realizing for ourselves the oneness and "emptiness" of all things - this experience is called Awakening or Enlightenment. This experience, along with subsequent deeper Awakenings and life changes that flow from these Awakenings, is the flowering of Zen Practice.
Zazen is transformative in other ways also. It roots us experientially in that Original Self that has been overlaid with the clothing of personality. We accept as ourselves this personality - a severely limited "I" that we assume is both intellectually and emotionally our most final identity, an identity that is somehow "fixed" as "me" - and that stands opposed to "other." We stand alone in life as a small creature separate from but immersed in a hostile universe that lies totally outside us.
But this is not the complete truth. We are at least dimly aware that this limited viewpoint cannot be the final truth. It is this very awareness that brings us to spiritual practice, and Zen practice reorients us in the direction of the truth so that we can immerse ourselves in self discovery -- True Self discovery. There is no truth that resides outside ourselves, nothing to "gain" or to achieve to arrive at the truth. Zazen helps to reorient us inward, so that we may discover that we are already whole and complete. However, in this discovery we are forever changed, because it is not an intellectual realization, but something far deeper.
As well as reorienting us, daily zazen brings focus to our life, revealing a more concentrated mind, one rooted in reality - the here and now. This mind is not so clouded with thoughts of the past and future, evaluations of others or ourselves, nor filled with fantasies. Daily zazen stills the "great commentator" in us so that we are free to experience each moment. This commentator is the unreal controller with whom we constantly dialogue. When we talk to ourselves, we are speaking to the commentator; when we think, we think in words, and these are directed toward or proceed from this great commentator. All thinking and talking, all action born of the small self, the ego-I, is the province of the great commentator. But the commentator is unreal, and only serves to mediate our experience. It is as though we live our life as in a movie, all the while suspecting that somehow true life and deep understanding are slipping past us just beyond the projection we are watching. Zazen practice allows us, moment by moment, to unveil reality itself, and finally to see clearly the operation of the commentator.
Zen does this work without dependence on words, description, authority, scripture. It is aimed at the personalization of the Buddha's experience, for ourselves, within this lifetime, and then the development of this realization to give it arms and legs in the everyday world. From dedicated zazen practice our innate and limitless compassion can spring forth, unencumbered by notions of self and other, reward or recognition, good and bad. Keeping the moral precepts becomes the natural expression of one's realization. Daily practice leads to living zen, an awareness that is totally open, moment by moment.
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