Zazen can be a con job
In Westernized Soto Zen there is the clever idea which, incidentally, is not found in the Buddhist canon, which zazen (lit. lay down Zen) is not instrumental. Instead, when anyone sits upon the zafu doing zazen they have been the Buddha!
I would call this the shortcut to Buddhahood which is really the criminal job because the adept is done to believe, he or she doesnt actually have to cross the waters of samsara to get to the alternative shore. Instead, the single never leaves this shore. One is led to hold which this seaside of samsara is the alternative seaside of nirvana! To reiterate, this is the criminal job.
There is the huge distance between zazen as well as entirely grown Buddhahood. One is not the Buddha even if they lay for hours upon the zafu with synthetics stuffings or organic! In the Tathagata-garbha training of Buddhism, Tathagata-garbha, meaning the bud or virus of attained tathat or suchness, the lot has to happen prior to this bud is innate as the baby Bodhisattva; in the future to lay during the base of the Bodhi-tree, defeating Mara, as well as win enlightenment. Zazen, in itself, is inadequateit is usually the single apparatus between others.
The Tathagata-garbha is always potential by defilements (klesas) which means you cant bond with it. Doing zazen or shikantaza for hours is not going to mislay the defilements revealing the garbha. There have been 9 examples which paint the condition of the garbha being mucky so which it is dark from us. They have been as follows: 1) the Buddha in an nauseous lotus flower; 2) sugar concealed by the swarm of bees; 3) the kernel of ripened offspring in the bark; 4) bullion buried in impurities; 5) the treasure in the ground; 6) the thrive in the tiny seed; 7) the image of the Lord lonesome by the tattered garment; 8) the Universal Monarch in the womb of the miserable woman; 9) the changed statue lonesome by dust. I should mention which any evil has the very pointed explanation. The lotus flower, for example, in the future with! ers turn ing foul. It represents the defilement of dormant enterprise (ragamushayalakasana-klesa) found in typical people (prithagjana). It can usually be removed by supermundane gnosis, which is, lokottara-jna.
Being potential by layers of defilements it is not easy to mislay them. It is somewhat similar to soaking off sand using mud. More than often the efforts infer counterproductive because the ties with the material world, from where these defilements arise, have been so strong.
Taking for postulated which the Tathagata-garbha, according to the Sri-Mala Sutra, is the Dharmakaya (i.e., the true physique of the Buddha) under conditions of defilement, no amount of passivity, or usually sitting (J., shikantaza) is going to assistance us perceptible this causal hint which lies within any of us. We have to spy it directly which is to say, even though you have been intrinsically it, you need to know it in the many profound way usually similar to Zen master Hakuin did when he was celebration of the mass the Lotus Sutra as well as heard the churrs of the cricket in the foundation stones of the temple. This requires of us the lot of seeking. I can't stress usually how critical looking is.
