Whacked Over the Head With a Zen Stick
How to Avoid a Zen Whacking
2 min readJul 4, 2018
In Zen monasteries students are often instructed to perform their chores in a state of complete alertness and presence, meaning their minds were completely empty of all thoughts as they worked. To test their students, the Zen Masters would sneak up behind the students and whack them over the head with a stick.