The Goal of Zen Practice

We are all constantly collecting maps of the universe. These maps include simple things like our names or complex ones like our personal history. These maps have many uses; they help us navigate complexity or mark significant times in our lives. But maps have a downside. Maps prevent us from seeing the world the way it is.

In Zen, the goal* is to drop the maps. Let go of any constructed view of reality so that you can accept and see reality for just what it is. Zen teachers don't provide students with new maps, and many even say "stop reading and listening to content" as these add new maps, which you need to drop anyway. Stop adding to your maps. To see reality as it is you need to drop the maps, so the fewer you have, the easier this is.

The challenge is that you can't choose to drop the maps. They are so integrated into your view of reality you don't notice them much of the time. Someone explaining to you what it is like to have dropped the maps is useless too, it might be inspiring, but it won't get you any closer to actually dropping them. So what can you do? You can do what Zen practitioners have done for years and sit still and do Zazen. You sit still, nothing else to it. Over a long time, with regular sitting, your association with the maps start to change, and the maps start falling away on their own.

Eventually, you will have enough of the maps fall away, for the first time, you see a slither of reality without the maps. This is an initial moment of enlightenment or awakening, but it isn't enough. If you stop practising very quickly that crack gets covered up again. If you keep practising and even increase your amount of practice, you will be able to make that gap bigger and over time, other cracks appear.

The consequences of even being able to see through a tiny crack are profound and life-changing. It isn't a magic bullet that makes everything perfect, but it permanently changes things. You notice that you are truly ordinary in the best possible sense. You can be yourself in many more contexts and situations, the right thing to do just arises and the critical self-talk changes to not be such a problem anymore. There is a freedom that comes from being able to be just okay with how things are. You can still use and see all the maps anytime you need, but they don't obscure your vision. 

Sitting releases you from the maps that you carry around.

Go and sit.

*In Zen there actually is no goal. However for the sake of this piece I'm talking as if there is a goal, as it is helpful to demonstrate a core concept about sitting.