Benefits Of Zen Yoga
There are no doubts about the benefits of yoga. You can even be healed of disease through yoga, really Siddhis (special psychic powers) or even enlightenment.
A lot of people who practice yoga have recovered from diseases where medical practitioners and medicines couldn't cure them. In fact, Zen Yoga goes a step further and if yoga works only for a tiny number of people, I would not feel obliged to spend a life to propagating the teachings of Zen Yoga.
A reason why this practice is called Zen Yoga is that it was originally Yoga practiced by a Zen monk. That is yoga practiced with the mind of Zen, a practice minus expectation.
Practising Yoga with no mind, empty mind, constitutes a Zen mind. This becomes practice for the sake of itself. Zen Yoga doesn't use poses or breathing exercises for good health or flexibility. Nor does it practice mudras or bandhas to open up the chakras to raise Kundalini Shakti. Zen Yoga believes in doing poses just for the sake of doing them. Period.
In the same way, Zen Yoga practices breathing exercises, bandhas and mudras just for the sake of doing breathing exercises, bandhas and mudras. True, Zen Yoga is not done to attain Siddhis (Spiritual Powers).
When one forgets completely all such expectations and results, one automatically gets them all. The one, who detaches from benefits, soon attains to them. So, in Zen Yoga, bandha is practiced for bandha, nothing but bandha. There is no division or severance between the practitioner and bandha. In fact, the practitioner becomes the bandha. Since it is bandha, spiritual powers will come automatically. Zen Yoga isn't a way to reach enlightenment, either. The practitioner, it is here believed, is already enlightened! How can the enlightened attain enlightenment if he or she is already? Zen Yoga is a way of coming to know that one is, in fact, already enlightened.
