From The Maze Where Realities Converge - the psychedelic encyclopedia of reality from The Ultimate Comment

The first thing to understand about Zen is that it is not any sort of doctrine, belief system, prescription, cosmology or philosophy. Zen has nothing to do with truth and falsity, nothing to do with finding the right answer, that one belief that corresponds to external reality. (The same is true of Zen's little brother, Discordianism and its big brother, Taoism.) Because of this, it is perhaps best not to regard Zen as a sect of Buddhism.
Zen is simply seeing reality just as it is, just as it reveals itself to consciousness at every instant:

A monk asked his master, "How can I realize the truth?"
The master said, "Do you hear the stream that is running by?"
"Yes."
"Enter there."

(There's an interesting convergence here with phenomenology, which Heidegger defined as "letting that which shows itself be seen".)

Zen is about getting behind or beneath or beyond (or whatever spatial metaphor you choose, all are equally false) all beliefs, thoughts, concepts and psychological hang-ups so that Being itself is seen. Strip away every concept and there is just the basic is-ness of reality. This is necessary because we are so damnably clever that we spend all our time manipulating concepts and symbols and words, so that we come to live entirely in the symbolic world and never in the real world. We eat menus instead of meals and then wonder why we're not satisfied by it.

Look around you. See the colours, but don't name them. See the shapes, but don't descry things in them. Hear the sounds, but don't worry about what they are. Stop conceptualizing and thinking. Just let the world go on worlding. Do this and you have entered a state of consciousness called meditation, the direct perception of non-conceptual reality.

Here and now, in reality, do you hear such a thing as a "self" listening to those sounds? Can you really say that there is an internal "self" perceiving an external world? Or is there just one Happening, that is neither external nor internal? Can perceived objects exist without a perceiver? Can a perceiver exist without objects of perception? What would a mirror look like if there was nothing for it to reflect? Are you seperable from your environment?

It's surprising - isn't it? - what doesn't exist in non-conceptual reality. The self does not exist, no things exist, no divisions exist, no events exist, the past and the future do not exist. There is just primordial is-ness, a single undifferentiated Happening which cannot be contained in any name, because it is not a concept. It is always here and never there, always now and never later, always this and never that. Different words have been tried: God, Tao, Brahman, Kia etc. but all these words are false, because all words refer to concepts and again, reality isn't a concept. This is why Lao-Tzu said "If you can talk about it, it ain't Tao. If it has a name, it's just another thing" (Ron Hogan's translation). It is sometimes called the void, emptiness (in Sanskrit: sunyata) the Qabbalistic zero or Nothingness, not because it is absent, but because nothing can be said of it, it has no attributes and is entirely and majestically inconceivable.

Please ignore this paragraph and make up its contents for yourself.

An anarchist and a conservative can read the same newspaper, but they'll take completely different messages from it, you dig? This is because we interpose all kinds of beliefs, preconceptions and habits of thought between ourselves and the world (again, paralleling Heidegger). In Timothy Leary's terminology, we are constructing reality-tunnels for ourselves. So long as we are doing this we will never be in relation with reality itself. Zen means experiencing reality directly, without intellectual twisting. Zen art (especially haiku) aims to show things as they are, in their original simplicity and perfection. William Blake wrote, "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite." Zen is nothing other than cleansing perception of hang-ups, concepts and beliefs so we can see the infinite Tao, or what is called in Qabbalah "the boundless light".

True Will, Wu-wei and the Zen mind

So the Zen mind is a mind without fixed beliefs, without attachments, a mind like water - flowing from moment to moment without becoming entangled in anything. It is a mind without hang-ups (in Sanskrit: klesha, in Japanese: bonno).

Chuang Tzu said:
The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror
It grasps nothing. It rejects nothing.
It receives but does not keep.

So in Zen we never try to get anything, never try to become anything, never try to go anywhere.
This is firstly because Zen consists in realizing that you already have it, you're already it and you're already there. So wishing and waiting for some point down the line when things will be perfect is merely a distraxion from reality, a distraxion from Now. The nature of reality is to always be now. There is no past nor future; they are only concepts. This much is obvious. As Thomas The Walking Head tells us, "The World is Expecting Too Much". Or, as Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai puts it, "Everyone lets the present moment slips by and then looks for it as though it were somewhere else."
Secondly, there is no "self" which can put forth effort onto an external world; there's only the one Happening. Any attempt to change your environment by putting forth effort perpetuates the illusion that you are seperate from your environment. You see, a sword cuts, but it does not cut itself, right? Likewise, the Zen mind deals with things without getting tangled up in thoughts about the self.

All effort, all willpower, all exertion perpetuates these two delusions: lust for result and ego.

This means that you cannot achieve illumination by any effort you make, by anything you try to do. Zen means realizing that there is no need to do anything to acheive enlightenment. Enlightenment can only be found here and now and without a self. One of the many hypocrisies of New Agers is that they are forever congratulating themselves on their progress towards enlightenment. Enlightenment means ego-death anyone who shows self-congratulation, effort, pride or pretention has understood nothing about it.

So the perfected man is the man who does nothing. The Tao Te Ching makes this point very emphatically. "Doing nothing" (in Chinese: Wu-wei) does not mean lying under your bedsheets with the lights off; it means never putting forth effort. It means effortless, spontaneous, unselfconscious action that is not directed towards a goal. For example, when we dance, we aren't trying to get anywhere, we are just moving for the sake of moving. In meditation, done properly, we aren't trying to acheive anything, we are just sitting (not sitting and thinking - just sitting). In Western magick, this would be called acting without lust of result. "For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is in every way perfect." Po-Chang was once asked for the meaning of Zen and he replied, "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep." History does not record whether he then said, "When horny, screw". The teaching of doing without putting forth effort can also be found in Hinduism, for example, in the Bhagavad Gita 3:5. And of course Buddhism is all about abstaining from desire. And Jesus puts it beautifully in Matthew 6:25-34:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes? See the birds of the sky, that they don't sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you of much more value than they?
Which of you, by worrying, can add one cubit to the measure of his life?
Why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don't toil, neither do they spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won't he much more clothe you, you of little faith?
Therefore don't worry, saying, 'What will we eat?', 'What will we drink?' or, 'With what will we be clothed?'
For the Gentiles seek after all these things, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
But seek first God's Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.
Therefore don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. ”

As lilies grow their own clothes without putting forth effort, so humans, once they free themselves from lust for result and ego and "live being true to the single purpose of the moment", acheive their True Will without putting forth effort. As Lao-Tzu said, "The master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone." (See also: Do Easy) It should go without saying that in Zen, as much as in Thelema, there are no moral rules or codes of conduct. Moral rules restrict and stultify the mind; Zen frees it.

This doctrine of wu-wei is essential to the martial arts. It is impossible to react to an attack by thinking about it, because by then it is too late. The only way to deal with the immediacy of the fight is to give up effort and just flow with the demands of the moment, you dig? Because you are the moment and its demands, you dig?

In this doctrine of doing nothing there is no need for the darkness of Indian Buddhism and Hinduism. Indian religion shrinks away from every desire, moaning that all desire leads to suffering. Chinese religion, on the other hand, affirms that everything is already perfect, so there is no need for desire. Isn't that much more pleasant?

Flesh and bones

So Zen sounds pretty easy, right? Eat your cornflakes, cycle your bicycle, hug your mother and don't worry 'bout nothing. But whatever you're doing, be fully present as you do it. However, most people are incapable of such simplicity. The Chinese say that the mind is like a mad monkey, darting around from one thing to another and never resting. To overcome worry and the monkey mind, we need some sort of path, some sort of method.

There are hundreds of different methods of disciplining the body and mind into simplicity and it would be entirely against the spirit of Zen for me to prescribe one or another. There are paths of meditation such as zazen, there are the martial arts, Qabalah, magick, alchemy, metacommentology, The Way of the Samurai and innumerable other disciplines.

"Disciplines‽" I hear you protest. "Disciplines‽ I thought we didn't have to make effort‽ Now you're saying we have to discipline ourselves and practise kung fu for seven hours a day‽"

Well, yes and no. The flow of the universe is, as Taoists would say, a dance of hardness and softness, of Yin and Yang. To be natural, to flow from action to action without lust of result, means we flow sometimes into Yang, that is to say, into discipline, into hardness, into Geburah. Discipline can come naturally as long as you don't get hung-up on being disciplined.

Zen is about relaxing, being passive and taking things as they come. This is softness, Yin, Zen flesh. Zen is equally about discipline, Will and self-mastery. This is hardness, Yang, Zen bones. These are not two different things; they are both aspects of naturally grooving on the moment. Grooving on the moment means that somethimes you cut things loose and sometimes you rein things in. Nietzsche called these forces Dionysus and Apollo.
Aleister Crowley makes this point in his cryptic work on sex magick, Liber A'Ash verse 16, "Be obstinate, and be not obstinate. Understand that the yielding of the Yoni [being passive] is one with the lengthening of the Lingam [being active]. Thou art both these."

One of the few criticisms that can be made of the marvellous Discordian movement is that it tends to lack bones. Discordians get the flesh of Zen, its philosophy of Nothing Is True, its celebration of the sanctity of everything, its transcendence of all concepts and dualities. But they miss out on the bones of Zen. True, there are some Discordians who meditate, who practise chaos magick and who strive to increase their understanding and power, but there are many who think that the concepts of Discordianism give them carte blanche for indolence, for an tiresome, effete levity and a lazy, dogmatic skepticism.

(In this article there is absolutely nothing true.)

See also: Koans, Discordianism, The Way of the Samurai