Instructions for Tao-zen meditation

Go straight to‘The Inner Smile’:

Breath- and energy-exercise

Explanation

“To be empty of everything that is behind you, even the previous second, calls for an intentness that you normally don't possess. When you sit quietly, your mind will be filled with many different thoughts and impressions. Like thousands of others before you, you will find that you cannot shut them out.

Meditation is a continuous experience that leaves no room for thoughts. What is important is to continue to experience. Special exercises have been developed in both West and East to serve as an aid. 
In the East, these exercises date from the time of the Vedas, 6000 years ago. The core of these exercises is largely the same. In Tao-zen meditation, the Za-zen (sitting) and Kin Hin (walking) of Zen meditation are supplemented with the energy and circulation exercises from Taoist practice.”
Maarten Houtman, ‘Instructions for Tao-zen meditation’, Part II, Introduction.

‘Instructions for Tao-zen meditation (1th printing 2001) highlights the nature and background of the meditation practice as developed by Maarten Houtman in the course of his long practice as a teacher. 
Because this exercise includes elements from both the Taoist approach to energy and from the Zen practice of sitting motionless, the instructions in the booklet and the accompanying CD were divided into these two emphases:  
– Instructions on the breath and energy exercises deals with the question of how to get in touch with the energy and breath moving through your body and the organs and functions that play a role therein.
– Instructions for sitting examines the structure and functioning of sitting motionless as exercise, and how this exercise can be fitted into your daily life.
The booklet has been issued in two distinct parts, the first handling the instructions for the breathing and energy exercises, the second the instructions for sitting.
In addition you’ll find the oral instruction of Maarten Houtman on the training CD, which while practicing will bring you in touch with the essence of both exercises.

Ordering Information

Maarten Houtman
Instructions for Tao-zen meditation, 2001, with instruction-Cd (or as downloads). Ed. ‘Zen als leefwijze’.
Price: € 25,- (including shipping costs).
NB For shipping outside the Netherlands we charge a surcharge of € 2.50.

“Though it has been pointed out in the text time and again, experience still teaches us that it is difficult to accept the concept that you must learn from your body and not the other way around!
However strange it may sound, our body is far less denatured than our consciousness, which actually still has to become acquainted with its true nature. Put simply, our body is at the end of its evolution, whereas our consciousness (mind) is in its beginning stages. By having contact with the Origin, it can become more aware of its temporary state and the potential it has to come into balance with the Origin that flows through all that is living.

This is also the aim in Buddhism, though you obligate yourself here to live from an experience of life that is not yet yours. The exercises that are given here will let this experience of life grow within you gradually, totally in agreement with your potential and trust. You will start to experience the world naturally from a wider perspective that takes account automatically (without doctrine or dogma) of all living things.”
Maarten Houtman, ‘Instructions for Tao-zen meditation’, Part I, Epilogue.

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