Our minds are in a permanent state of action, always racing around erratically, constantly begging you to stimulate it, to think something, to do something, despite all our attempts to truly center ourselves, to meditate and to be content with zero activity.

Zazen, a form of seated meditation is at the very heart of Zen practice. To be enlightened by the ten thousand things is to recognize the unity of the self and all things. The Buddha sat in meditation to realize his enlightenment, for 2,500 years this meditation tradition has continued, passed down to us from generation to generation. The essential aspects of zazen are fairly easy to communicate

Hara character is common to Chinese and Japanese. Abdomen should not be translated as "stomach" to avoid confusing it with the organ. In the Japanese medical tradition and in Japanese martial arts traditions, the word Hara is used as a technical term for a specific area or energy field of the body.