The writer and philosopher Alan Watts (1915 - 1973) is quoted as saying:
"We could say that meditation doesn’t have a reason or doesn’t have a purpose. In this respect it’s unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment".
Meditation is the discovery that the very point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.... this "Present moment", the "Here and now", and the same is true of Tai Chi. When we practice Tai Chi we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place or achieve a particular goal, we practice Tai Chi in order to practice Tai Chi, the "Supreme Ultimate".
When we bring meditation and Tai Chi into our lives in this way the benefits of the practice then become a gift, a bonus not a means to an end. We learn to enjoy the practice, the practice of just sitting, just walking, just practicing Tai Chi.
Dogin Zenji taught that zazen, (sitting in meditation), is to just become present in the process of zazen itself; this is shikantaza. It is not something you acquire after you have done zazen. It is not the concept of the process; it is to focus on the process its self. (John Daido Loori (2004) The Art of Just Sitting page101).
