— zen in Norwegian
Å våkne — to wake up — is a verb,
it is something that we do.
It's not something that happens just once,
to make us “awake” or “awakened” —
it is a way to train ourselves, a path to be practised.
It has to be done again and again, moment by moment, with our entire being, throughout the length and breadth of life.
This form of practice and training is what is called Zen. It is an approach and a method that has been passed from person to person, through a long chain across many cultures, for over two thousand years.
In every country and for every person, this path has to be rediscovered anew, as a living exploration, appreciation and gratitude for this one precious life. Å våkne — awakening — is that which has been cultivated and maintained through the millennia, adapted to Norway and Europe today.
Here
When we wake up in the morning, it is often an experience of coming here, to this reality, as it really is. In the same way that we wake up every day, waking up is like stepping out of a dream state. Our regular life often resembles a bad dream in the sense that much of it appears significant and real without actually having much substance, and in that we do not perceive much of what is really going on around us and within us.
Waking up, therefore, means coming alive and into presence in our own senses and our own mind, and seeing the world from a different or "bigger" perspective. This does not mean that dreams are not real or valuable or that it is wrong or unnatural for us to have fallen asleep. It simply says it is also possible not to lie tossing and turning in the clammy sheets of our fear and ingrained habits, with the closed eyes and blocked senses that are our greed, hatred, and delusions.
Vegar Svanemyr
Vegar left friends and family in his early 20s to study Zen in the United States. He is a certified teacher with 25 years of practice and study under two different teachers. He currently lives back in Oslo, where he works, among other things, to make this ancient and rich tradition accessible to a Norwegian audience.
A link to read more about Vegar and the Zen tradition is coming soon!
Why practice Zen?
Zen and awakening often mean going against the current. It's about not getting carried away by our own automated, mechanical ways of being, or by other people's ideas and perceptions of what we should be and how we should be. It's like turning around in our own lives, or taking a step back.
It is not a given that you should embark on this path (or any other spiritual direction or tradition, for that matter).
Zen is a method and practice that stems from a set of fundamental observations of reality. Some of these assumptions are listed below. You should check them against your own life and experiences.
Ultimately, only you are responsible for your own life. Therefore, it is important to base everything you do on your own sense and understanding of what is right or wrong for you, and not simply take these or other statements about reality for granted.
A link to read more about how to practice will be coming soon!
What you have is this
What you have to work with is what you can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, along with your thoughts that come and go. You can't start anywhere else, and there's no other place you can get to.
Zen practice always takes place here and now, in the only place that exists.
This world consists of the eye and what is seen, the ear and what is heard, the nose and what is smelled, the tongue and what is tasted, the body and what is felt, and the brain and what is thought. Many claim that reality contains more than this, such as other hypothetical spheres or dimensions. Some also claim that it contains less , in the sense that what we experience is not really real or genuine. But since such claims and theories can neither be proven nor disproven, Zen does not take a position on them, but relates primarily to our own direct experience.
When one becomes interested in a spiritual practice, it is often connected to a desire to find something more behind things than how they appear to us in the moment. Life can often feel incomplete and difficult, and we often desire an experience, a state or a truth that can make everyday life less intrusive and less tiring.
Zen says that this is not because reality itself is incomplete, but that we tend to end up in a foggy, distorted, or narrowed state that makes it appear unsatisfactory and lacking. The solution to this problem is therefore not to escape to another reality that is better than this one, but to practice a better way of being in this reality.
Zen is therefore not a journey to another place, to a heaven, a higher consciousness, or to some absolute that lies waiting behind the things in front of you. The work happens in what is already present here, in this sight, these sounds, this thought. Therefore, you need no extra equipment, no special initiation, and no belief in something that you cannot examine for yourself.
Stop for a moment and notice the room you are in, the sounds, the smells, and your body. To truly see and experience what is right in front of you is the same as waking up .
Everything is temporary
Take anything: a thought, the weather, an object or a person. Everything that arises must also cease. This is not a theory, but something you can observe for yourself. It is something that hurts, because it means that we ourselves and everyone we love must one day die. To compensate for this, we all search for predictability and security. But because what we search for is also always ephemeral, this search can never end.
Most of us go through the same journey: We get more money, a better job, a nicer place to live, a new girlfriend, and each time life gets better for a while. Then what was new becomes normal, and we start looking for the next thing. We always think that the solution is waiting around the next corner, when the project is finished, when the vacation starts, or when the kids move out.
This is not wrong in itself, because it is a fundamental characteristic of being human. Therefore, we do not need to belittle ourselves or others as stupid or greedy. It is enough to notice what is actually happening: that something that is always changing is looking for lasting security in something else that is also always changing, and that the search must therefore constantly begin anew.
There is another way to live. When you understand and acknowledge that both you and everything you hold dear will one day be gone, it becomes possible to stop wishing and demanding that things be something they cannot be. From there, it also becomes possible to practice what is not dragged into this eternal dance.
Then the question becomes: What is it that is not perishable? Here we begin to approach the heart of the matter.
It is not a place that exists outside of life, but rather something more like a way of being .
The Self
Who gave you your name? Most likely, you didn't choose it yourself. And what about your language? Even if you are one of the very few who are able to think a completely original thought, you would still have to formulate it in words you have borrowed from parents, teachers, friends, books, movies, and from hundreds or thousands of years of people you have never met. So who are you really?
Your body is made of food, and before you ate it, it was soil, rain, and sunlight. The breath you draw was once part of a forest and passed through the lungs of thousands of other people and animals before it reached you. The water in your blood was recently part of a cloud, a river, and an ocean. Where exactly are the boundaries between you and the rest of the world?
See if you can find your self. You feel like there is an owner or boss somewhere in there, but where is it? Is it in your head or in your chest? If you had lost a finger or an arm, would you be less yourself? Can you choose not to have a sore knee, to grow old, or to experience grief? If you truly own your body, your thoughts, or your feelings, shouldn't you be able to control them? If you are not the one in charge, does it really belong to you?
A river exists. You can see it, swim in it, and drive a boat on it. But what is it really? Its water is constantly being replaced. The riverbanks shift and change over time. And where is the exact boundary between the river and the ocean it flows into? This is how each of us exists. You exist in the same way as a river — as a living stream of memories, habits, and relationships.
This does not mean that you are not real, only that you are not independent and separate from the rest of the world. You are real in the same way as a wave in an ocean. A wave exists because it can lift a boat, hit land, or be surfed, but at the same time it can never be separate from the ocean. To truly see that the self is not eternal and unchanging is not to lose yourself, but to find yourself everywhere. Waves arise from the ocean, and nothing is lost when they settle, even if they disappear.
Emptiness
"Emptiness" is one of the most central and widely misunderstood concepts in Eastern spiritual traditions. Looking past the immediate contemporary Western implications of the word, many tend to believe that it involves erasing the self or ascending to some kind of higher state.
But a room can be empty of furniture without being lost to the person in it. A glass can be empty of water and still be present. The mind can be empty of thoughts without being unconscious. Emptiness is always emptiness of something .
Unfortunately, almost all the implications of the English word “emptiness” pull in the wrong direction when we talk about Zen. It usually describes feelings that arise after the guests have left and the party is over, when we've lost someone we love, or when nothing matters to us anymore. So when you hear about emptiness in Zen or Buddhism in general, it is easy to think that disappearing is a goal in itself. This has existed as one of several common misconceptions for over two thousand years, but the good news is that it has nothing to do with Zen.
There are at least four ways to misunderstand “emptiness,” and it is worth discussing them briefly: The first is that emptiness is the same as “nothing” or “nothingness,” like a dark hole one slips into after abandoning oneself, and that the practice is a longing to cease to exist. This was a common objection to Buddhism when it first came to Europe in the 19th century.
The second misconception is the opposite of the first and is more common among those who are already practising. Here emptiness becomes an aspect of reality, a ground that holds everything, an all-encompassing mind or a self that never dies, and it is given names like the absolute, Buddha nature or God. It is not entirely wrong to say that an eternal mind exists, but it is a way of speaking that primarily serves to reassure those who worry about disappearing. Problems arise when you take such ideas literally, because then you are simply replacing what you normally cling to with something larger, finer and more abstract, and it is precisely this clinging we want to get rid of.
The third misconception is that emptiness is a doctrine to be believed, a claim about reality that can be proven and defended. Emptiness is like a medicine for a disease, but if you get too caught up in it, it can also cause harm. It is said that emptiness itself is empty. This may sound like a riddle, but what it essentially means is not to make the word something new to believe in.
The fourth misconception is that emptiness is a state in which one can rest. When we sit down and our thoughts become still, the peace that comes can become a goal unto itself. The ancient Zen teachers warned against this strongly, calling it, among other things, “moving into a ghost cave in a dark mountain” or “watching cold ashes.” Even the deepest silence and stillness arise as a consequence of the choices we make, and everything that arises must also end. So this is not a place to stay.
All these misunderstandings share one thing: they lack a small word. Emptiness is always emptiness of something. This is easier to understand practically than intellectually. An empty cup can be filled, and an empty hand can be used freely. When all that is not needed is put aside, what is here is gloriously present. Emptiness and the mundane are two sides of the same coin. In the Heart Sutra it is said that “form is emptiness and emptiness is form, emptiness is nothing but form, and form is nothing but emptiness”. We cannot hide in one side to escape the other; they are like two sides of the same coin.
Truly seeing and acknowledging that which the word emptiness points to is central to Zen. A direct experience of it is therefore the first real step in the practice.
Suffering, peace and freedom
You know the irritation that arises in encounters with certain other people, or how there is always something more you want to buy or get, or how you repeat the same mistakes even though you should know better. You have also experienced the exhalation and peace that comes when you put down a heavy bag or when you finish something you have dreaded and put off for a long time. These are two fundamental aspects of the human condition, and you do not need to have studied for many years or have a special faith to know which is which.
Samsara and nirvana are two of the most well-known concepts in Buddhism. Zen does not see samsara as a literal, metaphysical cycle of rebirth, but as a collective term for the repetitive, habitual, and reactive way we tend to live. Similarly, nirvana is not a transcendence of physical reality or a permanent state of salvation, but ongoing, engaged, active participation in the world and freedom from reactivity. Zen can be said to be about understanding samsara and practising nirvana.
Notice whether something is pulling at you or bothering you. Do you want something, want to get rid of something, or wish something were different? In Zen, this isn't about moral issues of sin or purity, but about cause and effect. The unrest you feel in life comes from greed, anger, and ignorance. When these are released, we call it peace or freedom.
What keeps us restless and dissatisfied is usually fear. Fear is not always easy to recognize, because it is often disguised as busyness, irritation, or a need to be right. The practice gives us the opportunity to see it for what it is. This doesn't necessarily mean you get rid of it, but when you see your fear clearly and distinctly, you're no longer completely trapped by it.
Reflect on moments of calm or peacefulness in your life. An annoying person might have just left the room, you managed to say what you were afraid to say, or you finally had time to do what you wanted. In these moments, the calm and peace were not something that was added. Nothing new came into your life, but something quieted, gave way, or was met. Peace was what remained. The peace and freedom you long for are not found elsewhere, after death, in another life, or in the past or future.
Nor is peace passive. A carpenter working with precision, an athlete in the middle of a good race, or a person absorbed in a book are all fully active, but without friction. Peace is therefore not about the absence of life, but about not striving—like the difference between a clenched and an open hand.
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