Zazen (group)

Zazen was a five-day Pune One non-residential meditation group led by Pradeepa and Gopal. The Community to Provoke God brochure had this to say as a brief description:

Zazen is a traditional zen meditation which, like Vipassana, involves long hours of silent sitting and slow walking. As the mind slows down and becomes quieter and quieter, each thought can be watched with awareness and the gaps between the thoughts become longer and longer.

Both the sitting and walking segments were shorter than in Vipassana, and the sitting involved open eyes, staring at a blank wall, your motionless neighbour offering no distraction from the process. At the end, a Japanese tea ceremony, complete with a group chant.

In the context of a darshan visit by the Vipassana group, Maneesha writes about Zazen's appearance on the horizon in the Darshan Diary The Cypress in the Courtyard (Jun 7 1976):

[Osho:] Pradeepa, anything to say?

PRADEEPA [the staff-wielder]: Only that we did the first sitting of Zazen today. There were about twenty-three people and we did it for an hour.

[Osho:] That's very good. Soon we will develop a group for Zazen.

The Zazen group that is meeting for an hour every day for six days, is somewhat different from Vipassana in that there is no tranquillising effect. One simply sits and watches as alertly as possible, gazing at a wall as an unmoving point of reference.

When thoughts or external distractions arise -- unlike Vipassana, in which one registers whatever is happening and pursues it until it is finished with -- in the Zazen that is being practised here, one simply is aware of what is happening but does not explore it. The aim is to be absolutely alert and not let anything pass you without being aware of it.

While Zazen actually means "sitting silently doing nothing", initially some effort is usually needed. "If you relaxed from the beginning, nothing could bring you back to yourself, so in the beginning there is an effort.

"Zazen is very pure. You are just sitting. There is no interest in enlightenment, no interest in change".

Maneesha does not indicate the source of the quoted material in the last two paragraphs, but it does not seem to be Osho.

According to the groups timeline chart in The Sound of Running Water, Zazen was offered from Sep 1977 to Mar 1978, TSORW's cut-off date. It is known to have persisted past that date though, so it may even have lasted till Osho left for the States, in Jun 1981.

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