Welcome

Most of us seek out meditation or mindfulness practice as a means to relieve anxiety or for self improvement. We want to be happy, less anxious, reduce stress in our life or perhaps tame the tyranny of our constant mind chatter. 

Few people consider however that the desire to improve ourselves is the cause of our anxiety or dissatisfaction itself. To most of us, our desires are endless and our likes and dislikes seem to be the main influencers in our life.

We constantly set preferences like wanting to be healthy instead of sick or rich instead of poor. In fact, we constantly seek to gravitate towards one or the other side of this equation.  The more "likes" we have in our life, the more successful or happy we judge our life to be.

Reality does however not care about our likes and dislikes, which is why, when reality  does not align with our preferences, we suffer.

Meditation and mindfulness practice, in its original Buddhist context, was never practiced as a way to simply gravitate towards one side of this dualistic equation at all, as this only gratifies temporarely. Instead, meditation was and continues to be practiced as a way to experience ourselves outside our constant dualistic referencing, which once achieved, alleviates suffering altogether.

To break this dualistic barrier is the goal of Zen. It requires a profound shift of awareness, which dislodges the hold our ordinary dualistic way of thinking has on us. Zazen or meditation is the foundational practice for this shift to occur. Once this realisation or kensho has taken place, a new perspective opens from which to function in our life.

The goal of Pathway-Zen is to guide anyone that is drawn towards obtaining this awareness for themselves. This is facilitated through a structured program that is grounded in aspects of both Sotô and Rinzai Zen-Buddhism.

Pathway Zen is guided by Arno Hess, an authorised Zen teacher, both in Australia and through the Sanbô-Zen lineage in Japan.