What is Zen?

I have nothing against sports, they train the body and develop
stamina and endurance. But the spirit of competition and power
that presides over them is not good, it reflects a distorted vision
of life. The root of the martial arts is not there....
In the spirit of Zen and Budo everyday life becomes the contest.
There must be awareness at every moment: getting up in the morning, working, eating, going to bed.
That is the place for the mastery of self.
"How many years do I have to practice zazen?"
"Until you die."
Master Deshimaru tells us of three stages that are common to Zen and the martial arts. The first, shojin, is the period of training in which the will and conscious effort are involved, and which generally takes some three to five years of diligent practice. In Zen, this first period culminates with the shiho ("transmission"):
The second stage is the period of concentration without consciousness, after the shiho. The disciple is at peace. He can truly become an assistant to the master, and later he can become a master himself and teach others in his turn.
In the third stage, the spirit achieves true freedom.
"To a free spirit, a free world. "...

...zazen does not mean ecstasy or the arousal of emotion or any particular condition of body and mind. It means returning, completely, to the pure, normal human condition. That condition is not something reserved for great masters and saints, there is nothing mysterious about it, it is within everyone's reach.
Zazen means becoming intimate with oneself, finding the exact taste of inner unity, and harmonizing with universal life.

To practice Zen or the martial arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserves, as if you might die in the next instant.
Better yet for the samurai was the fact that Zen offered a specific daily practice: through zazen, an unadorned form of sitting meditation, the samurai could effectively still the restless mind, perceive the ultimate harmony beneath seeming discord, and achieve the oneness of intuition and action so necessary for kenjutsu (swordfighting).
Modern martial arts such as kendo, karate, judo, and aikido go back directly to the marriage of Zen and Bushido, the medieval chivalry code of the samurai.

--this is my path, the way of samurai

everytime i start posting..everyones just reading it seems like in this deception the real me is ^

ah, I may see where pureevil760 is coming from now. do you by chance practice the philosophy of "dark zen"?