Norman Fischer, poet, priest, teacher, and former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, provides the most jargon-free explanation I know of. Among his many activities, Norman teaches in the Metta Institute’s year-long End-of-life Care Practitioner Program (which I completed in 2006) and regularly holds Zen retreats (sesshin, zazenkai) in the Bay Area, Washington State, Mexico, and with the Mountain Rain Zen Community in Vancouver, BC.
“Meditation practice is a powerful way of getting deeply in touch with your life at its most essential level. As you become more in touch with your life at this level, you naturally become more attentive, awake, and attuned to your thoughts, emotions, and inner currents.
“Meditation practice is a spiritual process that unfolds with your life. It requires no doctrine or belief system, and it can be adapted to many purposes and systems of thought. In its broadest sense, meditation practice is an approach to life that promotes self-awareness, self-kindness, and self-forgiveness and brings us the clarity to see what we need to do in our lives and the forbearance to stay the course.
“Meditation practice fosters the calmness and balance that enable us to be honest with our emotions and needs without being limited or trapped by them. Meditation practice makes it more possible for us to act out of our deepest, calmest, most accurate selves.”
p.s. For basic meditation instruction, kindly click on March Archives, then find ”how to meditate” on the 7th.
source: Norman Fischer. (2003). Taking our places: the buddhist path to truly growing up. HarperSanFrancisco, p. 108-109.
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