Adyashanti – A Talk About Nothing

His Zen teacher was Arvis Joen Justi. The Zen Center of Los Angeles has a student named Justi. Gray studied under Jakusho Kwong Roshi of the Sonoma Mountain Zen Center. He began to experience spiritual awakenings at the age of 25.

He was invited to teach by Arvis Joen Justi in 1996. Adyashanti is not an official heir to any particular Zen tradition because Justi never underwent the traditional Zen ceremony of Dharma transmission. Theory implies an overall conceptual structure, yet Adyashanti has said it isn’t his intention to produce a theory. As a teacher, Adyashanti presents strategies to awaken.

He has said that humans tend to identify with a sense of self that is not real. The idea was called anatta by the Buddha. The belief in a separate self that seems to be different from the world is said to cause suffering. They would be awakened to the true nature of their being, oneness, if they realized that they, as an individually isolated self, were not real. It is necessary to realize that there is only one person. One being, one universe, one everything.

Adyashanti says, There is only life living itself, life seeing itself, life hearing itself, life meeting itself as each moment. 27). It is possible that suffering does not end here. After an awakening it is suggested that there is a long process of embodiment where the old beliefs of the body and mind, sometimes called sanskaras, gradually yield to the new understanding of one’s true nature. Satsangs are public events where he gives a talk and then engages the audience with questions and answers. Sometimes these Satsangs are given in an all day format and are simply called intensives.

His Zen influence can be seen in the fact that he offers silent retreats several times a year. Participants on these retreats practice several hours of silent sitting and refrain from speaking for several days, except during the Q&A in Satsangs.

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