About Zen — Continuous Practice
Zen is Always and in All Ways Continuous Practice
Zen Master Dogen talked about continuous practice. He wrote, “In the Great Way of the Buddha ancestors, surely there is supreme continuous practice that continues endlessly.” Our continuous practice comes out of the continuous practice of all the practitioners that went before us, as their practice comes out of ours, as will that of all those practitioners that follow us. Continuous practice, Dogen said, brings great virtue.
The description and discussion of continuous practice was a concept that Dogen used to instruct about, and to encourage us in, Zen practice. In our practice, of course, continuous practice is neither an idea nor an ideal. It is something we do. It is not separate from us’; it is not something we think about or objectify. We are continuous practice, in every living moment.
A prominent American Zen teacher of the present generation elaborating on Dogen’s teaching of continuous practice says that life is practice. At first, we naturally think we’re trying to get it all right; but after a while, most of us do come to feel that life is the practice. At first sitting on a cushion in zazen might seem different from the activity of daily life; but after a while, we don’t really see it that way. Basically, we see that zazen is the same as our everyday activity. That’s what we do every day in all our activity, and that’s also what we focus on in zazen.
The way of Buddha, his four great truths and eight steps, are built on continuous practice, a practice that can be called circular because it goes nowhere and arrives nowhere. It goes on and on.
As the American Zen teacher points out, we cannot go looking for continuous practice, or hope to develop it. We are it. We live it. But we don’t always realize it. Some need to practice to realize that we are continuous practice. That is the way it is.
One way or another, and all ways, Zen practice is continuous practice.
