Zen and Meditation
What’s the Difference?

I used to count numb ers in my mind in order to increase concentration while practicing Vipassana in Myanmar. Does it help us practice Zen?

It can be helpful at the stage where people practice with forms to concentrate on, in other words, at the stage where they have in mind such forms or ob jects as numb ers, parts of their b odies or the actions of their bodies to focus on to increase concentration in practicing. However, you can’t advance beyond a certain level in that way.
There is a saying that we can enjoy the pleasure of holy tranquility when birth and death cease to exist. This means that we can enjoy the pleasure of holy tranquility when all our discriminating minds, including the thought of birth and death, die out. That is a right saying. However, you can enjoy the pleasure of holy tranquility only when you practice with direct experience to support the saying and confidence that comes from the experience. You can’t reach the stage where you can enjoy the pleasure of holy tranquility if you just try to make birth and death die out in your mind.

Practicing meditation, I have a lot of thoughts in my mind like going shopping and meeting friends. How can I practice meditation without forms?

Zen is different from meditation. Zen is not meditation.

How do they differ from each other?

They are different in the ways of practicing. Meditation tries to calm down our carnal desires and delusions, but Zen has nothing to calm down because it roots out our carnal desires and delusions from the beginning. Let’s take a glass of dirty water, for example. Meditation is to clear the water by having the dirt sink to the bottom of the glass. The problem is that if the glass is shaken, the water will be dirty again. But Zen is to get rid of the dirt altogether and, one step further, to remove even the glass of water itself, and there is nothing left to be shaken.
In practicing meditation, they have objects to concentrate on, but we don’t in practicing Zen. Not everybody can practice Zen. Only after you attain enlightenment can you practice Zen. There are a lot of people who pretend to practice Zen, but few people actually practice true Zen. Zen is the end and meditation is the means. Meditation, I think, can seem to be more helpful to ordinary people because it is more common and easier to approach. Meditation is like one and onemakes two, and Zen is like one and one makes zero point five or two point five. The one not only makes sense but also is so rational that it looks natural. But the other, I think, doesn’t seem to make sense to you. You, however, should be able to understand both of them. The other means that, practicing Zen, you can understand things beyond common sense and knowledge that you couldn’t understand before. You can’t understand it until you attain enlightenment or open your eye of wisdom. But I mean not that you should not practice meditation but that you should not be attached to it and stay there.

Do you mean that we can practice Zen after practicing meditation?

I mean we can practice Zen only after we attain enlightenment.
Meditation can be one of the means that enable us to attain enlightenment, but it is not more than that. We should still be able to practice even after attaining enlightenment. So we need a means that can help us to keep practicing even after we attain enlightenment, which is Zen. As it is very difficult to explain in words, I will give an example.
(Moving his right hand) What do you think makes me move this hand like this? A dead person can’t move his hand though he has his hands. You should know what makes you move your bodies, speak, and see this at this moment. Only then can you actually practice Zen. But you can practice meditation only if not knowing the answer to my question, though you can imitate Zen.

(This is an extract from a talk that Soo Bool Sunim held with
foreigners in the Ahnkook Zen Center on September 15, 2007.)

 

Written by Master Subul Sunim of Ahnkook Zen Center
Translated by Boo Ahm (Song Soo-kyong)

Monthly Magazine SEOUL(November 2007)