The essence of the Existence of the Soto Zen sect can be sum up as comprises of two main aspects. The first is the direct transmission of the True Law from teacher to disciple in continues unbreakable process from Buddha until our present days. When Buddha reached Enlightenment 2500 years ago, he have made it possible for all human beings to reach similar enlightenment and fulfil to the fullest the real potential of the human beings. Danny Waxman calls Buddha’s enlightenment “the Big Bang“, the event that changed the history of humanity and opened the scope of Satori – complete Enlightenment for everyone. The second aspect is that when Buddha was reaching full Enlightenment he was sitting in Zazen. When we sit Zazen today, we sit the post enlightenment Zazen of Buddha. With his big bang enlightenment then, he helped us in our efforts to penetrate today to our true self and reach enlightenment too. The Soto Zen teachers in all generations taught that Zazen is the direct way, the ultimate and unlimited way to reach Satori, the meditation that Buddha set after his enlightenment.
Dogen write about this in Bendowa: “Because this is training enfolding enlightenment, the training even at the outset is all of original enlightenment. So the Zen master, when giving advice to his disciples, tells them not to seek enlightenment without training because training itself points directly to original enlightenment. Because it is already enlightenment of training, there is no end to enlightenment. Because it is training of enlightenment, there is no beginning to training. Sakyamuni Tathagata and Mahakasyapa, therefore, were both used by training based on enlightenment. Training, based on enlightenment similarly moved both Bodhidharma and Hui-neng. This is typical of all traces of transmission in Buddhism. Already there is training that is inseparable from enlightenment. Because training even at the outset transmits a part of superior training, we fortunately gain a part of original enlightenment in this natural way”, these words represent important part of the essence of Soto-Zen. (…)
Sobre Soto Zen
