"Practice is really a lifelong thing. Not because it is hard work, but because it is beautiful and we love it...seeing, experiencing and feeling what it's really like to be human, what the world and our connection to it is really like...it's a beautiful thing." - John Tarrant
Zen is a path we can walk, not something to believe. It helps us to be at home in the world. Our own personal practice is like a work of art that develops as we do. The result is our own life, made by hand — not an off the shelf solution.
There is a lot of discipline in Zen. It's helpful to sit every day. And when you sit you have to pay attention. Then you realize that paying attention is something you have to do even when you are not sitting. This is very hard work until you understand that paying attention isn't work; you do it by not doing the other things that the mind does. You do less and less. —As Linji said, "I'm a person with nothing to do."— At some point you realize that the work is in the service of joy. You can stop looking at yourself through the eyes of others. You can risk errors. You can find out what you love. There is an honesty in this that frees everyone.
Awakening is understanding this. It is just treating things as they are. Exactly how people are is good. Exactly how the trees are and the furniture is — that's good.
People know that the mind can make errors, but we are on the track of something bigger — the idea that the mind can make one error so large that, when corrected, a million smaller ones all correct themselves at the same time.
There are many ways to practice Zen. We invite you to explore what calls to you. Here are a few links to get you started.