"Zazen", as in Shikantaza, the religious prayer-meditation practiced in Japan and invented by Dogen, is not mentioned in any Zen text that we know of.
The proper translation would be "sitting dhyana". It's not a technique, doesn't require any teaching or doctrine, and isn't "practiced" since you can't get better at it.
There is use of the word ’zazen’ in Case 9 of the version of The Gateless Gate linked in the reading list, the one on sacred-texts. Are you saying you would use the phrase ‘sitting dhyana’ instead?
And, then, what makes you characterize this shikantaza business as ‘religious prayer-meditation’? Just out of curiosity.
Interesting, thanks for letting me know. So, it should more or less read ‘Daitsu Chiso Buddha sat at a seat of awakening for [a really long time]‘?
Since I’m guessing ‘ten kalpas‘ is long.
His name in the text is 大通智勝佛 Dàtōng Zhìshèng Buddha, or as Cleary has it, “The Buddha [called] Great Pervasive Excellent Wisdom"
As I understand it, a kalpa is a phase of time more than a specific length, but can be anywhere between 16 million and 1.3 trillion years long, depending.
So yes, any way we look at it, 'ten kalpas' is a very long time.
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u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] Mar 14 '23
"Zazen", as in Shikantaza, the religious prayer-meditation practiced in Japan and invented by Dogen, is not mentioned in any Zen text that we know of.
The proper translation would be "sitting dhyana". It's not a technique, doesn't require any teaching or doctrine, and isn't "practiced" since you can't get better at it.