Zen was born in India out of the teachings and practices of many great masters. Buddha, Mahavira, Kabir to mention some were striving to achieve a state of detachment, a way to completely cut themselves of the outer world and its relationships. Not in a selfish way, I understand, but in the mind of reaching a mental state of complete clarity free of mundane clutter. If you are attached you can not move, you become stagnant, murky. If you are free and moving everything flows, renewing energy takes the place of the old and everything becomes clear. This type of path called Dhyan " is the whole effort of Indian consciousness, it means to be so alone, so into your own being, that not even a single thought exists" (OSHO)Dhyan reached China where it had more soil to grow and its name became ch'an and later Japan where it rapidly flourished and became Zen.
Letting Go
It seems to me that the way of Zen starts with letting go. If you want to be happy you must let go of control, of all judgment of all pretentiousness. Often we create misery by attaching values to what we achieve or not. We don't pay enough attention to the road, our eyes are fixed in the destination. If we don't get there, we feel like a failure unaware that with each step we took we had already arrived.
