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The next card in my Zen oracle deck is clarity.

We often struggle to find clarity. Mental gymnastics; focused thought; weighing up the arguments… But Zen takes a different approach. For the Zen practitioner, the answer always lies in letting go. Clarity is revealed not achieved.

Clarity and Zen are eternally intertwined. Indeed, clarity is the goal of Zen - the ability to see the world as it really is. But to reach clarity you have to remove all the obstructions and distractions - not an easy task in a hectic world fed by chaos.

Luckily the practice of Zen is very practical. If you make time to sit, you soon find yourself becoming clearer. Just 15 minutes a day makes a difference. Focusing on the breath. Simply sitting and enjoying the act of breathing in and out.

There is a Zen saying that clarity is like still water: when nothing is stirred, everything becomes visible.

In Zen, clarity is not a mental state or level of intellect. It is experiential, arising when the mind is free from attachments, projections and habitual thought patterns.

There are three key concepts pertaining to clarity in Zen: 1 Clear seeing without distortion (experiencing the present moment without the filters or ‘stories’ of desire, fear or judgment). 2 Experiencing emptiness directly (realising that all phenomena are co-arising (or of ‘dependent origination’) and devoid of fixed essence. 3 Non-duality (understanding that the concept of the ‘self’ and ‘other’ is a mental construct).

Faithful practice of zen meditation will take you to a place of clarity and an experiential understanding of these concepts. But it won’t happen overnight. You’ll need a bit of dedication and discipline to keep trying, and failing, and trying again. It is in the ‘trying again’ that true Zen practice happens. Because we are not perfect and Zen is all about accepting who we really are.

Reflections on clarity

• Clear seeing without distortion Bring to mind an argument or an event and consider the stories you have spun around it. What remains when the stories are taken away. Could others tell a different story? What is the truth?

• Experiencing emptiness directly Take a singing bowl and strike it. Listen to the sound as it diminishes. Where was the sound? Where did it go? Was it ever solid?

• Non-duality Notice your breath for a moment. Are you breathing the breath, or is the body simply breathing itself? Notice the division between “the breather” and “the breathing” starting to blur.

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For this oracle card, a monk stands in contemplation of the mist that creeps among the distant mountains. The mist is the breath of the mountains. Your breath is the key to the here and now.

In Zen, the breath is used to anchor us to the present moment. During meditation, practitioners are invited to focus on the breath: the drawing in that fills up the lungs and the exhalation that empties them. This simple practice can help the practitioner to avoid being distracted by thoughts, the internal chattering of the mind. If an intrusive thought comes in, or you find yourself lost in a worry or a dream, you can just pause and refocus on the breath.

The breath is a handy ‘object’ for meditation since it is always with us.

Breath is the bridge between mind and body, between thought and stillness. Breath is life itself. When the mind races or the heart feels heavy, return to this simple rhythm. Let it guide you back to calm, to clarity, and the quiet centre within.

Instead of reflections, I’m offering a breathing practice that is easy to do and very effective.

A simple breathing practice

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh has developed a simple practice that helps you to feel calm and at ease. When practised regularly, it will dispell anxiety and help you to feel more focused, relaxed and present.

Once you are settled in a comfortable seated or reclined position, you will speak a series of phrases internally in time with your natural breathing rhythm. Begin with the phrase:“When I breathe in, I know I am breathing in; when I breathe out, I know I am breathing out.” After that you can shorten it to ‘In’ as you breathe in and ‘Out’ as you breathe out. Remember to relax and keep to your normal breathing pattern. Just breathe naturally without forcing.

After a few minutes, recognise that your breath has naturally become deeper and slower. Change the internal thoughts to: “Breathing in, my in-breath has become deep. Breathing out, my out-breath has become slow”. Then shorten to ‘Deep’ on the in breath and ‘Slow’ as you exhale. This slowing and deepening has happened by itself with no effort. It is a sign that your body is relaxing.

After a few more minutes you may notice that you are feeling calmer and more at ease. You can say to yourself: “Breathing in, I calm my body and my mind. Breathing out, I am at ease.” Then shorten to ‘Calm...’ and ‘Ease’.

Finally Thich Nhat Hanh, in his loving, gentle way, reminds us to be joyful. The final phrase is “Breathing in, I smile. Breathing out, I release all my worries and anxieties.” Then Smile… Release… :)

Here is an immersive video of the practice, guided by Thich Nhat Hanh.

If you want to know more about Thich Nhat Hanh and his practices, visit the Plum Village website.

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To illustrate ‘Be slow’ I have used an image of some tea being poured into a cup.

All around us there are people telling us how to “save time” and “do things faster”… We have all these time-saving gadgets that our ancestors never had, from vacuum cleaners to washing machines and even electric coffee grinders. You would think that with all these gizmos we would have plenty of spare time - yet most of us feel time poor. It seems that we always find something else to do. There is always another urgent task or chore…

Maybe we should just s l o w d o w n…

Throw away the ‘To Do’ list.

Make yourself a cup of tea. And drink it. Slowly.

It may go against the grain of all you have been taught (or some say programmed) but the way to feeling better is not to cram in more adventures and ‘things to do’. Instead, take some time to sit, breathe and do nothing.

“Smile, breathe and go slowly” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh.

Being slow is a skill. Yes it is. It is an antidote to our 24/7 society. Believe it or not you don’t have to answer that email right away. You don’t have to answer the phone.

Your time is valuable, so why not spend at least some of it in a conscious way.

Tea ritual

One of the simplest ways to carve out some ‘slow time’ is to follow a little ritual each day when you make a pot of your favourite tea and drink it. Perhaps you use a special teapot and a beautiful china teacup. A good cup of tea takes time to brew. You could take it out into your garden; or shelter inside and watch the rain. But these few minutes belong to you. Don’t let anything or anyone interfere with this ritual. When you drink your tea, if you can focus just on doing that then you are practising mindfulness of drinking.

The slow movement

There are other ways of slowing down. The slow movement is a cultural initiative that aims to reduce the pace of modern life, encouraging people to embrace a more thoughtful and deliberate approach to their daily activities. It began in the 1980s with ‘slow food’, which was a direct protest to 'fast food’ chains such as MacDonalds. At the heart of slow food is the idea that local produce prepared in traditional ways is healthier for body and soul than mass-produced, industrialised food. The organisation began in Italy and has spread all over the globe.

The slow movement does not just relate to food - it is a philosophy. In Carl Honoré‘s 2004 book, In Praise of Slow, he describes the slow movement as:

“a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace. It’s about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. It’s about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting.”

Different paths to slow

The slow movement has broadened to touch on everything from ‘slow conversations’, where unhurried conversations enable everyone to have their say without being interrupted, to ‘slow fashion’, which opposes mass-produced fashion in favour of handmade, artisan and fair trade clothing.

There are slow crafts too - such as slow-stitching, where enjoying the process is the aim, more than the finished item. I have written an article about it on my sister substack (@Trytobekindnow) called Mended Hearts.

You can find much more inspiration for slowing down in this Wikipedia article. And you can always join the 6000 or so members of the International Institute of Not Doing Much. This online organisation takes a humorous approach to the serious topic of ‘time poverty’, incivility, and workaholism. Created in 2005, the website is a continually evolving work of art that challenges the status quo of our 24/7 society.

But there’s no rush - take your time…

Reflections

• Practice: One Breath at a Time. Today, let slowness begin with your breath. Pause and feel one full inhale. Then, one full exhale. Don’t rush to the next moment. On the next breath, as you breathe in say in your mind: ‘As I breathe in, I am breathing in”. And then, as you breath out: “As I breathe out, I am breathing out.” This is mindfulness of breathing.

• Slowness isn’t laziness - it’s presence. When you move slowly, you meet the world on its own terms. Take an unhurried stroll in your garden or a local park. What details do you notice when you’re no longer rushing past them?

• Choose one action to do slowly - making tea, walking, brushing your teeth. Let it remind you that life is not a race, but something to be tasted and experienced.

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Oh to find balance… I lurch from happiness to sadness to overwhelm. And all I crave is that sweet feeling of serenity when all is in balance. Do you relate?

The yin and yang symbol at the heart of Taoism illustrates the dynamic balance of the Universe. There is always a little yin in the yang and a little yang in the yin. You can’t have one without the other. Toaists believe that to lead a happy life you need one foot in chaos and the other in serenity.

The Buddha spoke of ‘The Middle Way’. This advises us to avoid both extreme indulgence and severe asceticism. The Buddha tried both for himself and discovered that neither brought happiness. He found that balance in practice is the path to liberation from suffering. And he set about teaching the world his middle way.

In Zen, the meaning of balance is to find your centre even in the middle of a chaotic world. It can be done with practice - and kindness.

Reflections

• “Balance is not stillness, but the harmony of motion. Even the wind finds rest between its gusts.” — Sit quietly and observe your breath. Inhale gently, exhale slowly. Between each breath, notice the natural pause. Rest your awareness in that still space, the calm between the motion.

• What does it mean to walk the middle path? Reflect on two opposing emotions or experiences you’ve had recently (e.g., trust and fear). Write them down - is there a connector? Is one ‘bad’ and the other ‘good’ - or do both serve a purpose?

• Try this somatic practice for feeling a sense of balance. In a seated position, let your upper body gently sway side to side, forward and back. Don’t control it — just feel the gentle shifts. As you move, become aware of your body’s natural way of returning to center. Your body knows how to balance.

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A candle flame, a light in the darkness, illustrates awareness. But how to describe it in words? Awareness is a quality that Zen buddhists aspire to. Awareness is ‘clear seeing’ without judgement. I suppose it equates to being truly wise in your understanding of what is happening in the here and now.

"Awareness is like the Sun.

When it Shines on things,

they are Transformed."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

Zen masters such as Thich Nhat Hanh exhibit awareness. People like you and I, may exhibit it, or feel it, occasionally. It is closely aligned to ‘presence’, when someone is really awake and living ‘in the moment’. I have had fleeting experiences of it. Usually spontaneously and when not really expecting it.

But awareness can be cultivated through concentration and mindfulness practice.

The 5 Awarenesses

Thich Nhat Hanh says there are 5 awarenesses:

The First Awareness

We are aware that all generations of our ancestors and all future generations are present within us.

The Second Awareness

We are aware of the expectations that our ancestors, our children, and their children have of us.

The Third Awareness

We are aware that our joy, peace, freedom, and harmony are the joy, peace, freedom, and harmony of our ancestors, our children, and their children.

The Fourth Awareness

We are aware that understanding is the very foundation of love.

The Fifth Awareness

We are aware that blaming and arguing can never help us and only create a wider gap between us; that only understanding, trust, and love can help us change and grow.

As with all Buddhist teachings, the understanding is experiential. You will only be able to grasp the meaning when you begin to cultivate awareness through mindfulness practice - and reading works by Zen teachers. In my view, having awareness means that you have an understanding that your actions, words and even thoughts affect you and all those around you. So it is always best to be kind :)

Reflections

• Take a moment to sit quietly. Without judgment, notice exactly what you're experiencing right now — in your body, your mind, your surroundings.

• When sitting, quieten your mind by focusing on your breath. Observe your breathing for a while and then ask, ‘Who is observing the breathing?’ If this idea disturbs you, just drop it.

• Journal prompt: close your eyes and observe your thoughts for one minute, as if you were watching clouds pass through the sky. Then write about the experience in your journal. What kinds of thoughts came and went? Was there a part of you that was simply watching?

  
  
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In this card the faint patterns of the flower of life, a symbol for cosmic order and the interconnectedness of all things, is seen permeating an expanding nebula in deep space. When we consider time, it is worth thinking about the vastness of the Universe. We can get an idea of ‘deep time’. The light that we are seeing from distant stars is acually ancient. It has taken millions of years, travelling at the speed of light, to reach us in this moment.

The illusion of linear time

We are conditioned to think of time as a linear progression and this is understandable. We see the sun come up in the morning; by noon it is overhead and then eventually it sets in the west. We see the hands on our wristwatch move around. We are born, grow up, grow old and die.

The time, as in what time your wristwatch says, is entirely arbitrary. It is an agreed convention. This can be demonstrated easily: I can chat to my relatives in the UK, where it is 11am, but on my clock (in New Zealand) it says 11pm. So what time is it really? Am I talking to my relatives from the future? No. Neither time is true. The time is “now o’ clock”. The time difference allows us to make use of linear time. It enables us to have calendars, make appointments. It is pretty vital for the running of the planet.

But what if linear time, though useful, is an illusion? Revered physicist Abert Einstien once famously said:

“People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

It’s hard to comprehend, but maybe everything is happening all at once and it is our consciousness that creates the illusion of linear time. The concept was explored by Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five, a truly mind-expanding novel (that various groups have tried to ban) that is perhaps one of the most powerful anti-war books ever written. The central character, Billy Pilgrim, becomes “unstuck in time” and jumps randomly through his life’s timeline. The time travel is used to portray the PTSD and trauma experienced by war veterans.

The film Arrival also explores the idea that everything is happening all at once. As the main character starts to interpret and understand the unusual language of the heptapods, she starts to grasp the true nature of time. She jumps forward and back through her own timeline enabling her to avert a world crisis.

A more recent award-winning movie, Everything Everywhere All At Once, explores the theme further - taking in the idea of parallel universes.

A grounding in Zen

The idea that linear time is illusory and everything is happening now chimes in with the ancient Zen idea of time existing entirely in the present moment. In Zen, time is a constant, where past, present and future are all contained within each present instant. Experiencing this through mindfulness practice helps to liberate the mind and therefore suffering.

It seems that science is catching up with what the wise Zen practitioners have known for centuries: that all is now.

Reflections

• Take a moment to contemplate time and the passing of time. What is it you are waiting for? Notice how the mind projects fulfillment into the future. What is already here?

• Can you meet this moment without the need for it to be different? Pause. Feel the air on your skin, the weight of your body. This is it. This is now.

• Where does the now begin and end? Gently rest your attention in the present. Let it widen. Let it deepen.

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The first card in my zen oracle deck is aimlessness. A leaf is seen floating on the surface of flowing water. It is being carried by the stream. It does not know where it is heading but is happy to ‘go with the flow’.

It reminds me of a poem by Edward Monkton (the pen name of UK artist Giles Andreae:

Zen Dog

He knows not where he’s going,

for the coean will decide.

It’s not the destination,

but the glory of the ride.

In Zen philosophy, the concept of aimlessness (known as ‘apranihita’) is about living your life without striving to attain or achieve anything. It is about living in the moment and realising that happiness, freedom and enlightment are already present. It is one of those Zen concepts that seem to be contradictory: when you stop searching for it is when you will find it.

Aimlessness is one of the three doors of liberation, the other two being emptiness (or no self) and signlessness (or formlessness). These three concepts were given by the Buddha as the keys to understanding the true nature of reality and therefore freeing yourself from fear and suffering.

How do we practice aimlessness?

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh taught that the practice of aimlessness is in fact very simple. You don’t have to do anything special, rather you live your life normally. But the difference is in your mindfulness and letting go of striving. He puts it this way:

“Happiness is possible when you are capable of doing the things and being the things that you want to do and to be. When we walk for the sake of walking, when we sit for the sake of sitting, when we drink tea for the sake of drinking tea, we don’t do it for something or someone else. These things can be very enjoyable. That is the practice of aimlessness. While you do that, you heal yourself and you help heal the world. Awakening means to see that truth—that you want to know how to enjoy, how to live deeply, in a very simple way. You don’t want to waste your time anymore. Cherish the time that you are given.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh.

There is an old Zen koan: “Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.”

In other words, enlightenment is an ‘ordinary’ thing. It’s right there. The practice before and after is the same. When you chop wood, you are chopping wood and when you carry water, you are carrying water. You are doing what you are doing and not thinking about what you are not doing.

It sounds simple, but the nature of the mind is that it wants to wander and so it takes practice to reach that mindful state of being. It takes patient, kind practice to be able to let go and live aimlessly.

It’s a journey - like a leaf floating on water. We may not appreciate it at first, but we are always where we are meant to be.

Reflections

• Where in your life are you striving? Is it possible to let go a little? Through reflection you will begin to see the things that are pulling you away from being in the present. Remember always to be kind to yourself. You are a work in progress :)

• Instead of a ‘To Do’ list, write yourself a ‘To Be’ list - schedule periods of aimlessness, such as a walk in the park with no particular destination, or sitting in the garden with a cup of tea. Just 10 minutes each day of breathing with no agenda will make a difference.

• At Plum Village, the monastary founded by Thich Nhat Hanh, they have ‘lazy days’. On these days there are no formal classes or meditation sessions. Instead the retreatants have an open schedule where they are encouraged to rest and ‘do nothing’. They might spend time in nature, sleep in a little longer or read a favourite book. It is a practice and for some it is not as easy as it sounds. Give yourself a lazy day, or even just an hour or two. By cultivating laziness you can let go of the habit of always doing.

In the video below, Sister Dang Nghiem from Plum Village explains Lazy Days and the art of doing nothing.

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I’m very excited to introduce my Zen Oracle deck! I made this deck so that the cards could be a source of reflection or an inspiration for meditation. Each card has a zen-inspired image and a word that relates to a zen concept or practice.

My process when making a new deck is to think of a list of words that I think reflect the subject - in this case zen buddhism - and then start to create in photoshop. I decide on the format and create a template so that each card is the same size (either landscape or portrait) and so that I use the same font in the same size for every card. I wanted the deck to be small and easy to hold, so the cards are 3in x 2in.

As I start creating I think of extra words and concepts to add. Zen philosophy is quite a difficult subject to depict so I needed to use metaphors and stick to an aesthetic that was zen. I chose a colour palette of natural earth tones, faded teal, sand, stone and charcoal. There are occasional highlights of colour, such as a magenta lotus flower.

Once I had the images at 300dpi (this was set up in the template), I created an A4 sheet in photoshop and added as many as I could to a sheet. These became the sheets I printed out onto cardstock. I made sure there were no gaps between images (from experience this saves masses on cutting time later!)

Put some thought into a card back that you like - perhaps a small, repeating image. You will want to print this onto your cards on one side before you print the images on the other side.

The printed A4 cards can then be laminated. Next I used a steel ruler and craft knife to cut the cards. You could use a guillotine or paper trimmer if you wanted. For a nice finish I used a corner clipper to round the corners. I recommend the SunstarKadomaro Pro as it is robust and stays sharp, giving clean cuts.

It takes a little time to make a deck, but is so satisfying. The first deck I made took a lot of reprinting and laminating when I messed up the cutting. But it’s all part of the learning and all part of the fun! I will show you later how I make bespoke boxes for the decks (and these can be adapted for any size).

Meanwhile, I will be chatting about the individual cards over the next few weeks.

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