ABSTRACT
Zen is primarily a practice-oriented discipline. The contemporary Soto Zen priest–scholar, Shohaku Okumura, describes the identity of practice and action in Soto Zen. Kim further amplifies the connection between the radical experiential nature of Zen and total exertion as an active process. The path to studying both Zen and psychoanalysis with the former's emphasis on practice is to study the experience of self. The Zen scholar, Francis Cook, clarifies this distinction. He notes that: In the first sense gujin refers to the ability of an individual to totally penetrate the nature of an experience or entity, this ability being the hallmark of authentic selfhood. Zen practice thus becomes a full expression and affirmation of life manifesting as it is, which is the fundamental message of "Genjo-koan". Practice engenders a radically realistic solution to suffering. Rather than becoming removed from the seemingly mundane, ordinary, everyday world and its problems, the Zen practitioner experiences a shift in perception.
