Edited transcript of a public lecture by teacher Žarko Andričević, held on April 6, 2016, at the Buddhist Centre in Zagreb.

The Path to Awakening: Practice in Chan Buddhism

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Buddhist Centre. Tonight, we’ll talk about Chan Buddhism and its practice.

I’ll use the fact that it’s spring as a starting point—nature has greened, blossomed, awakened. Awakening is the central concept of Buddhism in its entirety. Everything we today call Buddhism arose from one spiritual experience: the experience of awakening. When we talk about the sources of Chan, we are referring precisely to that experience and to the Buddha, who, in the history known to us, was the first to realize it.

All the diverse traditions and lineages that developed afterwards carry within them, as it is beautifully said in Buddhism, the same taste of freedom. Awakening and liberation essentially are the same thing.

Three Key Characteristics of Chan

Chan is one of these lineages. It developed specifically within Chinese Buddhism and over time became perhaps the most influential school in the Far East. Many have heard of its Japanese “cousin”—Zen. However, Chan is older, and its formative period took place in China as early as the 6th century.

What makes Chan special? We can highlight three main features:

• Return to the original experience. Chan returns to the very root—that moment of awakening from which the whole of Buddhism grew.
• A living teaching. Chan does not remain with teachings as mere theory but strives to “breathe life” into them. And this is achieved only through practice.
• Chan is ordinary life. This is perhaps the most important message: spiritual practice is not something separate from our ordinary life. Practice is life, and life is practice. We’ll talk more about this later.

I would add two more essential characteristics of Chan: straightforwardness and simplicity. This is a logical consequence of returning to the essence. Chan always directs us toward what is the core, toward the very experience of awakening, away from complex theories.

One of the well-known definitions of Chan states: “Directly looking into the mind.” Meditation is the central practice in Chan.

Why Meditate at All? What is the “Natural State of the Mind”?

What do we actually do when we meditate, or “cultivate the mind”? The answer seems simple: we try to return the mind to its original, natural state.

And what is that state like? It is usually described as unobstructed, unconditioned, unlimited, and completely free. It is considered to be present in all of us, to be the very nature of our mind.

An immediate question arises: If that’s the case, why do we so often feel just the opposite? Why do we feel obstructed, limited, conditioned, and unfree?

The answer lies in the way our mind functions. Most of the time, we dwell in what is called the thinking mind, the discriminative mind, or the dualistic mind. This is a mind that constantly judges, compares, categorizes, returns to the past, or travels to the future.

Such a mind gives us a distorted image of both ourselves and the world around us. Because this image is narrow and distorted, we are not aware of the true, broad, and free nature of our own mind. Instead of an ocean of consciousness, we experience only the waves on its surface.

Practice as Returning Home

The goal of meditation practice is to return to that natural state. It is not about creating something new, but about recognizing and freeing what always was there.

When the mind is calm and clear, we begin to see things as they truly are, not as they appear to be. We free ourselves from the heavy and painful images we create. In that sense, meditation is liberating.

So why do we talk about awakening? Because the usual way we experience life is often like in a dream. While dreaming, everything seems real, solid, final to us. Once we wake up, we see it was just a dream. In a similar way, practice leads us toward “awakening” from the dream of our conditioned perceptions, toward a clear and direct experience of reality.

The Two Pillars of Practice: Stillness and Clarity

In Chan practice, we strive to develop two key qualities: stillness (stability, gatherdness) and clarity (awareness, presence).

It’s important to emphasize: stillness and clarity are not something we create. They are inherent to our mind, they are its original nature. Our task is simply to remove the vortex of thoughts and emotions that obscures them.

In the midst of stillness, there is clarity, and in the midst of clarity, there is stillness. Imagine a completely still surface of a lake. Only when the surface is still can it perfectly and clearly reflect the sky and the shore. Churning water creates a distorted image. The same is true with our mind.

When we succeed in establishing a balance of stillness and clarity in practice, we arrive at a state of inner harmony that is at the same time harmony with everything around us. This is the essence of what we call awakening.

From the Cushion to the Kitchen: Why is Every Moment Practice?

The best way to get acquainted with this state is formal practice—sitting meditation. The first step is to turn away from everyday life toward the quiet sitting on the cushion.

But—and this is of crucial importance in Chan—aftewards the direction of the practice must change. After we gain experience of collectedness and clarity on the cushion, we need to transfer that quality back into daily life.

Why is that so? An hour of formal practice makes up maybe 2% of our day. It is unrealistic to expect deep inner transformation based solely on that. If we don’t bring practice into daily life, it remains an isolated, almost sterile phenomenon.

That’s why in Chan it is said: “Ordinary life is practice.” Our relationship to work, to others, to ordinary tasks—all of this is an opportunity to cultivate the mind. Why is this so emphasized in Chan? There are historical reasons for it, as well.

The Historical Roots of “Working Chan”

When Buddhism passed from India to China, monks encountered a very different cultural milleu. In India, it was completely acceptable for monastics to live outside of society and to beg for food. In China, adults were expected to contribute to society and take care of themselves.

Therefore, Chinese monastics stopped begging for alsm and started to cultivate the land and to produce their food themselves. This meant strenuous physical labor. This necessity gave rise to a brilliant innovation: turning work into practice. Work in the fields became a new form of meditation, an opportunity to cultivate the mind in action. Hence, Chan does not make a distinction between “spiritual” and “worldly.” This division is yet another form of dualism that keeps us in the delusion that practice is something separate. Chan reminds us that we can cultivate the mind in every situation.

What Does This Look Like in Practice? Being Present

So how do we cultivate the mind in daily life? We start with formal practice – for example, following the breath. By bringing the mind to the present moment, our mind stops wandering into the past and future.

The fact is: whenever we are thinking, the mind is not in the present moment. Every commentary on an event is already in the past. This constant “wandering off” of the mind creates restlessness and confusion, causing the only moment we truly have – the present – to constantly slip away. And often, we don’t live our lives fully, but compensate with automatic responses.

In daily life, practice translates into complete dedication to what we are doing. A classic example is washing dishes. Usually, we do it automatically, partially innerly complaining or thinking about something else. Practice is to turn toward the dishes and the water completely, with our whole being. We do not only do the job better that way, we also cultivate our mind. We develop collectedness, presence, and freedom from unnecessary thoughts and emotions. It is precisely this ability of complete dedication that is responsible for all great human achievements.

Stopping Automatic Reactions and Finding Freedom

Our usual way of functioning is based on automated reactions. Drawing from past experiences, we categorize situations, people, and events. As soon as something seems familiar, our established response is activated: like or dislike, a desire to keep it or escape from it.

The problem is that these reactions always come from the past, while life is always new. Not one single situation is exactly the same. When we act based on an old pattern, we often miss the real moment and create conflicts. Practice teaches us to recognize these patterns when they arise, to be aware of them without submitting to them. This creates space for a free response, instead of an unconscious reaction. This is the key difference between a reaction (automatic, from the past) and a response (conscious, adapted to the present moment).

The Story of the Gift: The Power of a Stable Mind

A story from the Buddha’s life beautifully illustrates the power of a stable and clear mind.

The Buddha was once going for alms, accompanied by his disciple Ānanda. Along the way, he met an angry brahmin who insulted him. The Buddha listened to him calmly. When the man finished, the Buddha asked him: “Tell me, when friends visit you, do they bring you gifts?” “Of course,” the man said. Then the Buddha asked him: “And if you don’t accept those gifts, to whom do they belong?”

In other words: “What you said to me, I see as a gift. But I don’t have to accept that gift. If I don’t accept it, it remains yours.”

That is the strength of a mind that is not thrown off balance. It doesn’t take things personally but sees the bigger picture. This opens up space for wisdom instead of jet another cycle of conflict.

A Practical Start and Questions About Mental Health

When someone recognizes for the first time that Chan teaching makes sense, the first step to sit on the cushion. To meet with oneself and through meditation methods and to establish harmony.

Some of your questions relate to people with psychological difficulties. It is important to note: practice is not a universal cure. If someone is not in a state to understand the purpose of practice, perhaps due to deep depression or another condition, it makes no sense to force it.

In such cases, turning to the body often helps—physical activity, walking in nature. This can break the vicious cycle of thoughts and help the mind to calm down. Today, methods like mindfulness are used in therapies precisely because they help in returning to the present moment and into the body.

The key is to understand that Buddhist psychology says there is nothing fixed in our mind. Everything we experience as rigid and unchangeable is merely a consequence of our perspective.

Conclusion: Life as the Path

Chan invites us on a simple but profound path: to recognize our true nature and to live from that place of awareness in every moment. It is not a path of escape from the world, but of complete presence in it.

It is a path from the cushion to the kitchen, from formal sitting to complete dedication to an ordinary task. A path that leads us from automatic reactions to conscious responses, from the dream of life toward awakening into reality.