Zen and the Workplace: A look inside tranquility and how it helps

"When you've done the technical part, you're then into the joy, the zen, into being.Technology no longer exists for you. You're then into the mystery of the thing you're doing"

- William Shatner

In this modern age of reckless pace and cut-throat attitudes, it gets very easy to lose yourself in the surrounding influence of the combustible environment that is around you, which can get to your inner peace and add to the inconsequential turmoil and excess that erodes your potential, not just of living a full life outside the workplace, but also decreases your productivity inside it.

It is therefore, most important, to create a zone within and around oneself to decrease outward influence to enhance a more channelized approach towards our job which can help us redefine the very guidelines that define how we work. In simple words, ‘Zoning out. And that, precisely, is the guideline of the philosophy of Zen.

Zen meditation or Zazen (seated meditation in Chinese) is a meditative discipline under Zen Buddhism that seeks to let it’s practitioners embrace insight into the very nature of existence and thus, gain enlightenment.

The dominating idea of Zazen states that it is important to realize that true enlightenment lies not in seeking out but in ‘seeking in’, because every act of the human potential and life is one that connects the dots, i.e. is part of the natural system of existence and the greater fragment of life.

In other words, tranquility lies within you and it is yours to get. Only when you’re truly away from everything that’s inconsequential can you fully develop what’s of consequence and that’s the core belief that lies at the heart of Zen meditation and philosophy. Zen meditation seeks to develop within us awareness about nature and enlightenment.

Practicing Zazen is simple. All you need to do is sit down and not involve yourself with the many, endless objects of distraction that are around you and just let ideas, thoughts, images, words flow through your head without directly involving yourself with any of them.

On a more generic level, there are three forms of Zazen that can be practiced anywhere you are –

•  Concentration
•  Koan
•  Shikantaza

Concentration asks of you to pay attention to the most vital component of your existence and life – your breath, the one connecting factor that bridges your mind to your soul and to your inner, infinite universe. By focusing on your breath, you devolve yourself completely into your own zone. This is the most basic form of Zen practice.

Koan practice occurs once you have mastered awareness of yourself in the moment and it asks of you to simply focus on the one object that needs to be focused on most at hand, as a priority, till nothing but that object is all that’s left in your mind

Shikantaza is the art of not thinking. You remain as much as possible in the present moment.

This is the main driving philosophy behind Zen meditation and is practiced more or less by anybody the world over who seeks to create a mark in whatever they set their mind on.