I had an uncle, Uncle Fred. At one point in his life he decided that he wanted to be a guitar player. He didn’t want to simply be a good guitar player, he wanted to be an exceptional guitar player. His idol was Django Reinhardt and Fred was determined to emulate his idol. He was going to master the guitar and he was going to master jazz improvisation. He was going to live, breathe, and embody music.

At the time he made this decision he was 20 years old, and from the time he made the decision he put everything else in his life aside. This goal to become a musician and a guitar player became his only concern. He devoted himself to it entirely. In fact, he spent the next 15 years of his life intensely studying everything he could find about the guitar - music theory, the psychology of performing, luthiery, music history, musical genres, etc.

He also decided that he would not pick up and play a guitar until he completely understood everything that could be learned about the discipline of music and about the musical process. He would put off even owning a guitar until he was ‘knowledgeably’ worthy of the instrument.

During this 15 years of study he saved every penny he earned. His intention was that by the time he was finally worthy of holding a guitar, he would have saved enough to buy a superior instrument. So, for 15 years he saved and saved. At the end of his ‘learning phase’, he had saved more than $15,000 dollars – certainly enough to purchase a perfectly designed, perfectly built, superior instrument.

Let me digress . . .

He spent as much time researching what guitar to buy as he did studying music. In the end, he purchased a D'Aquisto New Yorker Delux Electric Guitar. Not just any D’Aquisto but one that the maker assured him was one of two or three ‘perfect’ instruments that the factory had produced. The tone woods were the best procured. The build was that ‘one in a million’ beautiful accident that rarely happens and that could never be planned or duplicated. The guitar was not simply good or even perfect. It was a ‘one of a kind’ irreplaceable masterpiece of form and function. It was an instrument worthy of Fred’s devoted, single-minded journey of study and learning.

Eventually, satisfied that he knew almost everything he could learn, and convinced that he owned a ‘perfect’ instrument, he picked up the guitar and sat down to play. He decided that he would play a simple I IV V cadence in the key of ‘C’ (the chords C, F, and G). He had memorized how to finger the chords, how to hold the pick, and how to execute a perfect down/up strumming pattern.

Closing his eyes, he fingered the ‘C’ chord and drew the pick across the strings. The sound was horrible! When he tried to change to the ‘F’ chord it was worse. There were dead strings, strings pulled out of tune, and even the pick stroke was uneven and harsh. Nothing worked! On top of that, after only a few minutes of playing his fingers were so sore that he could not continue.

What had happened?

Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen said, “5 minutes of meditation is worth more than all the books in all the libraries in the world.” (I am paraphrasing here)

Meditation is not a magical, esoteric cure-all. It is an effective, practical system for turning your attention inward and beginning to explore the nature of who and what you are, why you suffer dissatisfaction in your life, and what you need to do to free yourself to live in a satisfying, compassionate, fulfilling way.

However, just like Fred’s mistake of spending all his time on academic study and on theory, many of us tend to do the same with Buddhism. There are hundreds of books, pod casts, video lectures, and sites like this one – some claim to have ‘the answer’ to effective practice, some discuss the philosophy of awakening, some explain brain physiology and mind, and some offer secret ‘low cost’ short cuts to ‘enlightenment’.

The fact is, if Fred had purchased a $20 guitar and begun seriously practicing playing the guitar rather than reading about playing the guitar, he would have been infinitely better off.

The process of 'awakening' is not different. Simply sitting in meditation every day is more useful and effective than studying religion and 'enlightenment'.

To find a Buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a Buddha. If you don’t see your nature, invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless. Bodhidharma - 'The Bloodstream Sermon'

For most of us, the process of reconnecting with ‘life’ and developing a compassionate, skillful means of living can be a long and difficult process. The key to achieving this goal is regular, serious meditation practice. Zen appears to be the current spiritual 'flavor of the month’, but almost any meditation system, practiced regularly, will suffice.

There is an oft repeated linguistic experiment – if you take 10 people all who speak two languages and order them so that the English/French speaker is next the French/German speaker, who is next to the German/Russian speaker, etc. and tell the first person in line a simple joke which he then translates for the individual next to him, by the time the joke gets to the last person in line, it will be completely unintelligible.

How much more opportunity for confusion and error when communicating complex religious/philosophical/psychological ideas across continents, across hundreds, even thousands, of years, and across a variety of civilizations. This issue is one of the main reasons that Zen relies on ‘transmission outside the scriptures’- on direct personal experience of ‘reality’. If Zen has any advantage over alternative systems, it is this emphasis on ‘doing the work’ rather than, as Fred did, putting too much trust outside of yourself, outside your own meditation practice, and outside of your own growing, organically maturing understanding.