The Future of Zazen Experiences Expanding Online: Zen-Yu Tosei Shinabe × Gns [Part 2]

IT and Zazen.
At first glance, these two fields seem to have nothing in common, but their meeting led to the creation of the Zazen community service 'Zen-Yu' to share Zazen with many people.

Zazen instructor Tosei Shinabe says, 'I want to make the physical technique of Zazen something that many people can use as their own tool.' We asked him about the future that Zazen is aiming for. We also report on the changes experienced by the IT company Gns through Zazen.

Click here for Part 1.

Online Zazen has begun. Realizing 'sitting with someone'

──The Zazen community 'Zen-Yu' started when Zazen and IT met,but how has it been since you actually started?

Shinabe:First of all, what I realized after actually starting Zen-Yu is that 'online Zazen has a wonderful quality that offline does not. And it has effects beyond my expectations.'

Even people who are physically separated can sit together in Zazen precisely because it is online. I feel that because it is Zen-Yu, we are able to cherish 'sitting with someone'. At Zen-Yu, we hold Zazen sessions online, of course, but also offline several times a month. This is for the sake of the peace of mind and trust in our online Zazen sessions. Because it is a community using digital tools, we strive to ensure that people can participate online with peace of mind.

At first, I was a bit anxious about whether it would really be useful to the people sitting on the other side of the screen. But thankfully, more people than I imagined have realized the changes through Zazen, and they have left their words on Discord.
From my perspective, I can also feel that everyone is changing more and more. I am glad I started it.

Watanabe:As a system, it is not yet in its final form, and it is constantly changing to be even slightly easier to use. We will continue to make updates so that Zen-Yu becomes a form that is easy for many people to use.

──Did you reach this point without any particular problems up to here?

Watanabe:We tried various things. At first, we even used Zoom. We also ran into the problem of the sound of the 'orin' (singing bowl) not being heard when starting Zazen.

Watanabe:Instead of ringing the orin in real-time, we recorded it on Discord and devised a way to ring it at the start of Zazen. We were particular about the sound of the orin in order to provide the same Zazen experience online as one feels offline.

In addition, there was the problem that the entry and exit sounds of online calls when using Discord disturbed the concentration of Zazen. We solved this by creating a system where you cannot enter or leave midway through once 5 minutes have passed since the start of Zazen, and we established rules, informed the management members, and it has become standard practice.

To address the issue of high cancellation rates during events, which is unique to online communities, we clarified that it is a 'community to sit together' with the goal of continuity, and we are handling this with a reservation system and email reminders.

We achieved time savings on the hassle of hearing user information and managing reservations by creating Excel formulas to visualize user information and reservation status.

These are just a few examples, but by solving problems and challenges through the means of IT, we have created an environment where Shinabe can focus on teaching Zazen, which is how the current Zazen community 'Zen-Yu' exists.

──It seems that Gns is not just introducing a system, but creating the service together.

Changes Gns Experienced Through Zazen

──I understand that the members of Gns experienced Zazen before starting Zenyu. Have you felt any changes since you actually began practicing Zazen consistently?

Shinabe:Since I usually call Mr. Watanabe 'Taka-san,' I will continue to do so. Taka-san has been sitting for a year, and recently, there was an event where I felt he moved to the next step.

Watanabe:That's right.
When practicing Zazen, your legs can sometimes go numb and become painful.
Shinabe-san says that 'pain is also an object of observation,' but I wasn't used to the numbness in my legs, so I would try to endure it by distracting myself from the pain, and eventually, when I reached my limit, I would uncross my legs.

When I told Shinabe-san about this, he advised me to observe the pain again while practicing Zazen, saying that I could go beyond the pain.

In the next Zazen session, when the pain in my legs came, I specifically observed which part of my legs was experiencing the abnormality and what exactly I was describing as 'pain.' I think I objectively grasped the heaviness within the pain and the feeling that blood wasn't circulating, and that these sensations were coming in waves periodically. When I repeated this, the pain suddenly disappeared. I lost the sense of my legs' existence; the sensation in my legs vanished. At the same time, I became afraid that my legs might never move again, but I thought of that fear as an object of observation as well and continued to observe it.

While continuing to observe, I realized that the fear I was feeling was due to an unfamiliar sensation. I didn't know what would happen to my legs after that. I was able to calmly grasp that it was an emotion directed toward that. Furthermore,'I must have taken on challenges involving the unknown many times before'I viewed my lack of experience and myself from a bird's-eye perspective, the fear vanished instantly, and I finished the 45-minute Zazen session while savoring that feeling.

I was able to calmly observe how to face the fear beyond the pain, and it was the most focused Zazen session I have ever had.

Shinabe:With this event, I felt that Taka-san had largely moved past a period of stagnation.

When you start Zazen, you change little by little as a result of sitting. It's like a gentle upward-sloping graph. However, everyone hits a plateau at some point, and we repeat the cycle of gentle growth and stagnation many times.

Pain is a sensation that disturbs your concentration, but through Zazen, the way you deal with pain changes.

Watanabe:I never thought that leg pain would lead me to re-examine my fundamental emotion of fear.

Shinabe: Zazen is a technique where the person sitting uses various things as triggers to observe themselves.

When you observe your own emotions, your perspective becomes one step more detached. Then, you can observe other emotions and events in the same way. As you repeat this, Zazen becomes increasingly interesting and enjoyable.

What is the next stage for the Zazen community 'Zenyu'?

──What would you like to do through Zenyu from here on?

Watanabe:I want to polish Zenyu itself even more. Specifically,

• To enliven the environment where Zenyu participants share what they felt through Zazen.

• To expand the scope of our approach as a place where Zazen can be mastered, while improving the tools to be easier to use and making the support content easier to understand.

• To deliver experiences similar to what Mr. Shinabe went through at the training monastery, even to those who do not choose the path of ascetic training.

By putting these three things into practice, we will make Zazen a more familiar presence in the world through Zenyu.

Shinabe:Through Zenyu, I want to spread the techniques of Zazen to the younger generation even more. As I sit with students on school trips—from upper elementary schoolers to middle and high schoolers—I feel that they are the ones who should especially be introduced to Zazen.

During their youth, everyone struggles with questions like 'What is society?', 'Who am I?', or 'Why are adults so strange?'. At such times, while it is important to look for answers outside and take in information, I believe that having the technique to think for oneself can be a salvation.I want the younger generation, in particular, to acquire the techniques of Zazen.

Even now, children who came on school trips access Zenyu, but it hasn't led to continued practice, so I want to find ways to improve that.

Watanabe:Indeed. I also hope to share Zazen as a tool for business people like us to solidify or delve deeper into our own thinking. I believe that by practicing Zazen and 'facing oneself,' it becomes easier to overcome the various obstacles encountered during the startup phase.

By using online tools, we have become able to deliver Zazen to people who previously could not access it. I want to deliver it to the hands of those who need it.

──The range of people you can reach through online Zazen has expanded dramatically. We will be keeping a close eye on Zenyu from here on out.

Thank you for your time today.

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<Interview> Masashi Nakada (SOU Co., Ltd.)
<Photography> Kota Kuroki
<Cooperation> Piece Hostel Sanjo
<Writing> Chiaki Kanzaki