I came across Enomiya-Lassalle’s book on the Practice of Zen Meditation* in the library. It is very good. The question of passivity suddenly struck me. Meditation is passive concentration. It is not prayer in the sense that the will is not actively involved in willing. It is a very great mystery, prayer. On the one hand there is the impulse to pray and the conviction that prayer is effective, on the other hand there is no evidence, or indeed any real knowledge as to what or how prayer works or is effective. Is one to understand it in terms of the use of natural energy or in terms of relationships, or neither, or both?
Zen meditation on the other hand is passive and I can see the merits of that. It is first of all a journey and if the will is actively involved with expectations and wishes then one will not get anywhere because one is only looking for what one knows, or hopes and expects. But the one thing certain is that one does not know – neither one’s real self, nor God nor enlightenment. So to establish the parameters from the outset means that one will only get, at best, somewhere that is already within one’s grasp. One has first to put away all expectations and concentrate simply on being aware – first of the body, then the thoughts and feelings which arise. Once one has got past these one enters new territory where there is no road, no ground, no sky, nothing. This is the frightening, terrifying part of the journey, when one begins to question one’s sanity, the validity and usefulness of what one is doing. There come moments of enlightenment but these are not the goal.
*The Aquarian Press, Wellingbourogh, 1990