Saturday, July 19, 2014

Samadhi


We already know that shikan-taza means to just do zazen, but what does that mean, to "just do zazen"? Dogen Zenji describes the type of zazen we do as the "King of Samadhis." We can trace the word "zazen" back to the Sanskrit words dhyana and samadhi. Samadhi is sometimes called toji, to hold or see all things equally, and sometimes toji (written with different Chinese characters), or in Sanskrit, samapatti. Another definition of samadhi is that mind and environment are innately one. And finaly, samadhi has been defined in this way: "The buddhadharma should be grasped so that mind and object become one."

---Kosho Uchiyama Roshi's commentary on Dogen's Instructions for the Zen Cook---

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