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KidZen articles are meant especially for young adults, but anyone can gain insight from reading them.

Things get fun when we start exploring Zen. We encounter some pretty interesting thoughts, and those thoughts start us on a very interesting journey. At the end of that journey is a place where we see all the magic of the world – just as easily as we now see trees and buildings and the wide, blue sky.

The magic happens when we start asking questions. But this is a special sort of question-asking. It’s not about asking adults what they think. It’s about asking yourself what you think.

Here are some questions to get you started.

If you are standing on one side of a field and see a rainbow, you might see it ending near a big oak tree. But if your friend is on the other side of the field, they’ll see the rainbow ending in the pine forest. In other words, everyone who is standing in a different position sees the rainbow in a different place. So the question is –

Where is the rainbow, really?

If someone asks you who you are, what do you say? First you might answer with your name. Then, perhaps, you might write down your interests and beliefs. But think about this – if you would have written down your interests when you were two years old, they would probably have been quite different than your interests now. And it is possible that if you write down your interests and beliefs forty years from now, they might be different than the ones you write down now.

So, if all we describe ourselves as are our interests, beliefs, and name, what happens when our interests and beliefs change? Are we something besides our name, our interests, and beliefs?

What are you, really?

Have your friends sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil. Give them sixty seconds to draw a tree. Look at what most people draw. Is some part of the tree missing? (I’ll give you a hint. Most people forget to draw the roots.) But even if someone draws the roots, doesn’t a tree need soil to survive? And rain? And sunlight? Is a tree a tree without these things? (If you say yes, you can bet that it won’t be for long, because it will soon be a dead tree.)

And if the tree needs the sun, and the sun needs the Milky Way Galaxy (or it would just fly off into empty space, because the galaxy keeps the sun moving in a nice, safe path), then is the Milky Way galaxy a part of the tree? What is a complete tree?

How would you draw a tree in sixty seconds?

Get a bunch of rubber bands, and gather together your friends. Ask them if they know what their ‘wrist’ is. They’ll probably say ‘yes’. Now, tell them to each take two rubber bands and slide them over one hand. Tell them to position the first rubber band exactly where their wrist starts. Then tell them to position the second rubber band exactly whre their wrist ends. Now, take a look and see if everyone has got it right.

Probably, everyone will have a slightly different idea of where the wrist ends and the forearm begins. Some people will say their wrist is very small, while others think their wrist goes quite a ways up their arm. This is pretty strange since we each live with our wrists all the time, and if we think we know what they are, we should probably be able to all know what is ‘wrist’ and what isn’t.

If everyone says they know what a wrist is, but no one can actually agree, then what does this tell us about what a wrist really is?

Can you think of other questions like this? And what do all these questions tell us about the world? If we all think we know what rainbows, people, trees, and wrists are, but then we can’t really describe what we mean when we say those words, then what does that say about our relationship to the world? You’ve probably figured out that you can play this same game with any ‘thing’ in the world. What if you try to define ‘success’, or ‘life’, or ‘time’, or ‘important’?

Do we really know what we’re talking about when we say anything?

Perhaps the most important skill we can develop is the ability to ask these questions, and to find our own, personal answers. What are your answers?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Zen for Young Adults. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.