Just discovered your blog. I practice solo for now – No Zendo anywhere near me. I do know that my practice is somewhat lacking due to having no sangha. I’ll hopefully be moving to a location with a few sanghas in the next year.

Dan @ ZenPresence.com

In Zen, practice is defined as zazen. Zazen means sitting quietly. My practice is counting my breaths; it gives my mind something to do while I sit. When you sit and breathe, you become still and quiet, and connect with the indwelling presence.

The challenge with “connection” is that if you try to use your mind to understand, you will get wrapped up in ideas. Respect, recognition, consideration — it’s possible to get wrapped up in the words and thus miss the actuality. When she answered my question today, I felt her compassion, I felt her light, her love, I felt a kind of portal open and a little flash of insight about how we are ALL connected to each other and to everything that is. This connection isn’t reached by thought. I experienced it.

In Buddhism, the intellect is an obstacle to enlightenment. So park the thinking mind at the door with your shoes, sit down, and breathe.

For me this needs much thought ….. how do you define “practice”? And is not “connection” ones own personality and how it uses factors of respect, recognition, consideration, and on and on and on in the interchange with our fellow beings?

How is it so different from Christian thoughts and actions? And how does it satisfy the search for emotional/spiritual identity more fully than a Christian approach?

Perhaps because it does not identify a specific personal belief in a spiritual being?
I’d really like to know ….. I’ve appreciated some aspects of Buddhism in the past myself. But I’m not nearly the *intellectual* spiritualist that I think you are.