[From a talk given by Roshi Eve on November 9, 2021]

To study the way of enlightenment is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
-From Genjo Koan by  Eihei Dogen
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I have been thinking about studying the self and forgetting the self most recently since reading Lewis Hyde’s Treatise on Forgetting. Hyde wrote that it’s hard to forget what you don’t remember. We may think that not paying attention to something will cause us to forget it. It won’t, because the natural process of forgetting takes place when something is so intimate, so organic, so a part of us, that we don’t pay attention to it anymore. It’s become part of our body, a little like driving. We start off being clumsy and worrying about every little turn, when’s the right moment to turn back the wheel, when to brake and when not, how to drive on snow and ice. But over time, that slowly stops and we do all those things without thinking about them, without remembering them.

So studying the self is important. Dogen could have skipped that step and said: To study the way of enlightenment is to forget the self, but he didn’t. We investigate who we are from the day we’re born and maybe till the day we die. This pinched nerve I have right now is a reminder to investigate the self: How do I sit? How do I walk? What happens when I slow down? When does the pain get better or worse? What can I learn about this to help the body? Each of these is an opportunity to study the self with openness and curiosity.

A few of you may remember when Byron Katie taught at the Montague Farm. She wasn’t well at the time and reported that she’d gotten up in the middle of the night and vomited badly into the toilet. It wasn’t fun, she said, but then she started paying attention to the phenomenon of food coming up her esophagus rather than down, up and out of her throat and mouth rather than the other way around, and found it interesting.

Situations where you’re uncomfortable are excellent for studying the self. I get emails criticizing what I say or do, accusing me of not following through on things. I have voices in my head saying I’m not so hot or I don’t know what I’m doing. See these as opportunities for studying the self. Investigate thoroughly what is this thing that I call failing, a headache, pinched nerve, getting wet.

But studying the self is forgetting the self. How do you forget? By being intimate. Not keeping it on the outside. The closer I get, the more it’s claimed and owned, the more naturally it will be forgotten. I was asked recently what I do with things that bring up dislike and antipathy. I replied that some I can just slough off, but those that stick I choose to see as my voices having an interesting conversation or argument among themselves. Different viewpoints that are all me.

We have so many layers of self-consciousness, defensiveness, and disparate voices. How do we forget all these?

One way is the sudden way, when they drop in one heap. Sometimes we refer to that as an enlightenment experience. But there’s also the slow sloughing off of layer after layer of self-attachment, and maybe that’s the approach of Soto Zen, with the example of going through the mist and ending up wet at the end. Regardless, when we shed one thin layer after another, we feel a difference. We’re lighter on our feet in meeting life challenges, we don’t freak out as often, don’t feel the need to react, escape, manipulate, or control. Anyone practicing for a while experiences this.

Each approach has a danger. Bernie at times voiced disappointment in the sudden way, saying that people who had those experiences often didn’t work to actualize them in their day-to-day life. But there’s a danger in the slow kind too, and that is that we fall in love with the process of how we’re doing: Look at what I learned today, look at what I saw from this interaction, look at how my consciousness has expanded. This is especially relevant in the context of our self-centered culture and how it has co-opted Buddhist practices.

In 1987 I was in the ICU of a Yonkers hospital and my teacher visited me. The steroids injected into my body brought on hallucinations of great joy and clarity and I proudly babbled on and on about them. He smiled and said nothing. Now when people tell me their stories of what they understand and see, I also smile. I want to tell them that it’s not about improving and expanding their self, it’s about dropping it. We need to study the self, and we need to forget it. We have our tales of spiritual warriorship, and we have to let those go.
I wrote about my early experiences bearing witness at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and heard others talk of their experiences. After some five years of this I asked a fellow staff member why he kept coming back and he said: “I never had any experiences here. I just come to support the retreat.”
Much of the time we don’t want to forget the self; we don’t want to let go of a certain sense of accomplishment. I feel we’re called to live a transparent, simple life, responding so spontaneously and naturally to what arises that we’re not even aware of any state of enlightenment.
Living this way, we reflect the light of Buddha nature that is already here and now; we’re not creating anything. We don’t have to be the light, we don’t have to be anything at all. When we do what needs to get done without embellishment and self-consciousness, the functioning of the universe shines through. That’s non-doing. That’s non-action. We take care of things simply and naturally, subtly reflecting the light of Buddhadharma.

[From a Talk by Roshi Eve Myonen Marko, March 9, 2021]


    We’re in the middle of our study of vows. We’ve done two workshops on the process of taking personal vows, but in these talks we are looking into the taking of Buddhist vows, among which are the Four Bodhisattva Vows. This evening we’ll look into the last vow, The enlightened way is unsurpassable; I vow to embody it.

    What is the enlightened way, or the Buddha way? Bernie constantly asked that question after his big stroke. I remember talking to him about this at the rehab hospital where I’d visit him day by day for 6 weeks, and he recounted to me that a long-time Zen practitioner had been with him that day. She had asked him a question, he’d given her answer, and her reply was: “What has this got to do with the Buddha way?”

    His response to her was: “Was is the Buddha way?”

    I remember the look in his eyes. He was so surprised that she could put it in this way, as if the Buddha way was clear to her and now she just needed to connect it with something else. “I had to ask her what she meant by Buddha way,” he told me. “And what did she say?” I asked. “She didn’t know,” he said.

    That was the first of a series of basic questions that he started asking once he got home. What is the Buddha way? What is Buddha? What is practice? What is Zen? In all the years I knew him, if there was one thing he disliked it was when people talked about things—including Zen—as if they knew, as if they had it all figured out. But after his stroke this questioning became more basic, almost as if someone had wiped out his memory of all he’d learned, practiced, and done, and he was starting from scratch.

    In our public schmoozes on Thursday nights, he’d ask these questions again and again. Now that things had gotten slower for him, he could learn them anew just like he learned to walk again (with a cane), lift his right hand just a little, eat on his own. Nothing was automatic anymore, everything was new and fresh, and this was the Buddha way for him. He genuinely wondered at those for whom it wasn’t new and fresh. He never answered his own questions, he just repeated them aloud almost every day, as if he was rediscovering this Buddha way today, and was going to rediscover it again the next day, and the next.

    I vow to embody it. Some sanghas say: I vow to attain it. Both have their own place and function.

    There’s the long arc of our life story. The chapter Life Span of the Thus Come One in the Lotus Sutra begins with the words: “Since I attained Buddhahood many eons have passed.”  Many Buddhists believe that Shakyamuni lived and practiced for many lifetimes before his enlightenment experience, and he says that eons passed between that experience and his expounding of the Lotus Sutra. China’s Sixth Patriarch, Ta-chien Hui-Neng, milled rice for eight months before his teacher, Ta-man Hung-jen, came to check him out and asked if the rice was white yet. Hui-Neng answered, “It’s white, but it hasn’t been sifted yet.”

    Practice as a function of time is implied here, including progress and attainment. We practice till awakening and we practice afterwards. The process of integration takes lifetimes.

    In the chapter in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha says that  his death is illusory, and when people are really suffering and they pray to him and ask for guidance, he is always back teaching in Vulture Peak with his monks. This passage had a deep impact on me even as I couldn’t make sense of it.

    It started making sense after Maezumi Roshi died, and certainly after Bernie died. The two may have shifted form, but the energy that was released with that passage was explosive. I continue to be astonished, in Bernie’s case, by how many people evoke him and his story who never knew him, never met him. I realize that when he lost his form as a living human being, he became an icon for dharma-based social action, radical inclusiveness, and deep compassion. And I think to myself that the Buddha was right, that right there in Vulture Peak—or in Yonkers, or in Montague—the Buddha is still giving teachings.

    What do we do when we’re in trouble, when we’re suffering? We reach for the Buddha. We reach out to a book, to a person, maybe to a teaching given on Zoom or a podcast, workshop or retreat. We look to people who’ve attained for guidance and inspiration. All of that is very important.

    Embody points to something else, to down-to-earth, daily life. It points to the fact that it doesn’t really matter where you are in the arc of attaining Buddhahood. Whether you’ve attained big or small kenshos, there will continue to be blind spots for all of us, places of confusion and deep attachment. But boundless reality is here and right now. Every moment invites me to come out of my head and embody life fully.

    Over the long haul we have a long view. We make up a story about whether we attained Buddhahood or not—how we didn’t or why. But moment by moment, we don’t have a clue about that; we can even surprise ourselves. Think of people who jumped on train tracks in the path of an  oncoming train to help a stranger who’d fallen. They didn’t plan to do this, they just did it. The moments of our life don’t have to fit a long narrative, they’re diamonds all by themselves.

    So what is the enlightened way, Bernie used to ask again and again. What is it? Is it a story of the greatness of a few people, or does it point to something more mundane, something all of us can embody all the time? It’s unsurpassable. It can’t be exceeded or transcended, it has nothing to do with life and death. It causes ripples and ripples and ripples with no end.

    These vows are infinite. Human beings, our delusions and our embodiment of everyday life—all are infinite. Made of stars, we have elements in us that go back to the Big Bang. We are infinity itself; that is why we take  these vows.

[From a talk given by Roshi Eve Myonen Marko on December 5, 2020]

Good morning, everyone. At this time of year we usually do an enlightenment retreat for several days. I was told by my teacher that during a Rohatsu retreat we copy Shakyamuni Buddha as much as possible, which means no talks, no face-to-face or liturgy, just zazen. But here I am, talking anyway. Tuesday is the 8th, and it’s customary to sit the entire night of the 7th. I never did that, because I’m such a sleepy-head, but I recently talked to another teacher who did this often and told me he’d done some thirty Rohatsu retreats over a lifetime.

This year we’re doing just one day, with a talk on the 8th by Sensei. But even this one day on Zoom is a great privilege. It often implies that you don’t have small children around or that you have a supportive partner who takes care of them if you do, that you have some leisure time, and that you have a big enough house that you can close off a room for an entire day. Which in turn means that you’re probably older and a little prosperous, not squeezed in with lots of folks in a small and noisy apartment.

There are two somewhat countervailing energies here: There’s a wish for practice to be realized smack in the middle of our lives, present and conscious every moment. But there’s also the need, every once in a while, to step away from that hustle and bustle and re-member the essence of the practice, which isn’t just seated zazen but also reconnecting every aspect of life, every aspect of me, bringing it together into 30 minutes of evenness, of an equanimous attitude that no matter what--Oh, it’s snowing! Oh, the birds are out! Oh, the dishwasher is leaking again! Oh, there wasn’t hot water for a shower this morning!--we sit with everything. The most direct way of maintaining such evenness is through zazen. 

In honor of the Buddha’s enlightenment I’ve chosen to talk on a koan from the Denkoroku, The Record of Transmitting the Light, koans related to transmission:

“The third patriarch was Sanavasa. He asked Ananda, ‘What kind of thing is the original unborn nature of all things?’ Ananda pointed to a corner of Sanavasa’s robe. Again, he asked, ‘What kind of thing is the original nature of the Buddhas’ awakening?’ Ananda then grasped a corner of Sanavasa’s robe and pulled it. At that time, Sanavasa was greatly awakened. “

Zen Master Keizan relates some of Sanavasa’s circumstances: “The master was a man of Mathura. In India, he was called Sanaka [-vasa], which here [In Japan] means ‘natural clothing.’ Sanavasa was born wearing clothes and, later, the clothes became cool in summer and warm in winter … When he was a merchant long ago [in previous lifetimes] he presented 100 lengths of woolen cloth to 100 Buddhas. Since then, [as a result of his acts,] he wore this natural clothing over many lifetimes.”

What is your natural clothing? Is it just Buddhist clothing? Next spring Myokan, Eika, and Soko will change their lay clothing for priest clothing. Many of us lay people wear rakusus. There are some Buddhists even here in the US who wear their Buddhist clothing wherever they go, not just in zendos or Zen centers. By the same token, there are some who never wear them at all.

Each of us has a sense of what is natural to us. For me in New England during winter, it’s jeans and a sweater. A friend in California always wears a jalabiya. When I go to Jerusalem I find myself too casually dressed for that city and when people look at me askance, I have to explain that this is my natural clothing.

Sanavasa was born with his natural clothing; all of us are. But we forget how to feel comfortable in our individual skin. We get pushed and pulled, told what’s fashionable and what’s not, we try on lots of things, read magazines, see what others wear, look at shop windows and buy things, some of which we keep and some of which we don’t. We lose the sense of our natural clothing.

A long time ago I got it into my head that I should always wear Ferragamo shoes. I don’t remember how or why, only that if I wanted to be well-dressed I should always wear Italian shoes and they should be Ferragamos. Of course, since I didn’t make a lot of money I had to look out for Ferragamo shoes on sale, so that became a project by itself.

Why did I need to do that? Who was I trying to impress? Why did I need to add things to what I already had?

He asks his teacher: “What kind of thing is the original unborn nature of all things?” Like our natural clothing, we are born with that nature, too; we are that nature. So Ananda pointed to Sanavasa’s robe, which is of the same color as mountains and rivers, the color of water and air, the color of everything.

Sanavasa’s next question was: “What kind of thing is the original nature of the Buddhas’ awakening?” If we all have our natural clothing, who needs a robe? In fact, why do we need Buddhas? Why do we need to awaken? We say that something is here that everyone already has or is, so why start a new religion? Why start an order or a lineage, with texts and koans and liturgy and rules? Why bother sewing a robe?

“Ananda then grasped a corner of Sanavasa’s robe and pulled it.” He tugged it. We are being tugged right now, that’s why we’re here: Come on! Come on!

The last koan in the Book of Equanimity reads: “Attention! A monk asked Kaku Osho of Roya, ‘If the original state is clean and pure, then why suddenly do rivers, mountains, and the great earth arise?’”

We’re being tugged, we feel the beckoning. There are many who feel no such thing, or feel beckoned to other things. They don’t put aside a day or days for sitting. They don’t make vows. They’re fine; they’re in their natural clothing. They may or may not feel comfortable in their skin, that’s an entirely different question.
Some of us are pulled to sit, to find our original home, the unborn nature of all things, the person of no rank. We have our karma. In some cases it may be past generational suffering that pulls at us, or else just a stubborn streak. Events work on us, as if someone pulls on our clothes and says: Come on. And we come. We want to fully realize and embody what is already here.

The circumstances are different from Sanavasa’s and Ananda’s, the pull may be different, but in a basic sense we are no different from them. “Do not get blocked by feelings about past and present, and do not get attached to sounds and forms. Do not spend your days and nights in vain.”

Different karmas cause this tugging, but what we’re realizing is no different from what Indian sages living long ago realized and embodied. In the middle of a time that seems unrecognizable from the time of the Buddha, in the time of covid, in the time of havoc and loss, we do what they did and ask the same questions: What is the nature of this? And since it’s this, what is the nature of this awakening?

[From a talk  given by Roshi Eve Myonen Marko on March 28, 2020]
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Zen is known for its practice of giving no fear. The Heart Sutra, which we recite often, says:
        “No gain -- thus Bodhisattvas live this Prajna Paramita
         With no hindrance of mind.
         No hindrance, therefore no fear.
         Far beyond all such delusion, Nirvana is already here.”

I also like the translation that Roshi Joan Halifax uses:
        “Being free of attainment,
        those who help all to awaken
        abide in the realization of wisdom beyond wisdom
        and live with an unhindered mind.
        Without hindrance, the mind has no fear.
        Free from confusion,
        those who lead all to emancipation
        embody complete serenity.”

An unhindered mind, or no hindrance of mind. What hindrance is that?

There’s a koan in our Book of Householder Koans entitled “Jimmie: Breakfast:
        A homeless man asks his friend, ‘Do you think we will ever work our way out of this? 
        His friend replies, ‘Breakfast’s at First Church today.’”

The Reflection asks: “How do we cut through abstraction”? Zen is known for being very practical. Instead of getting into your head about whether things will change, how, and why, do something: Get breakfast at First Church today. Bernie especially loved to spring into action. His response to the koan of being human was usually to take action. If you realize the One Body, you’ll take care of that One Body as you take care of your own, you’ll do something.

Some years ago we visited with Robert Aitken Roshi in Big Island, Hawaii. Aitken Roshi talked about some disagreements he had with certain teachers concerning koan practice. At some point he said: “Here’s a koan: Say you’re sitting on the train and next to you is a young woman and a man is threatening her. What’s the answer?” He and Bernie continued talking and finally we left.

In the car Bernie asked me: “So what’s the answer to that koan? What’s the first thing that comes up?” “Her terror and fear,” I said. “I’d feel that right away.” He said: “I’d get up and bust him.”

He was my teacher, so I was sure his answer was right and mine was wrong. But years later I see things a little differently.

At a recent meeting of old-time members of the Zen Peacemaker Order, one teacher, Roshi Ken Byalin, reminded us of the importance of face-to-face teaching and transmission. What is this thing called face-to-face? Following Roshi Egyoku Nakao’s example, I call interviews with teachers face-to-face. But when we do face-to-face it’s not just with a teacher; the teacher’s role is to help you come fully face-to-face with your life.

Why do we need help being face-to-face with life and death? And what is abstraction? Is fear an abstraction? Vulnerability? We are so tempted, so conditioned, not to go there.

Dogen says: “The action of buddha takes place in unison with the whole earth and takes place together with all living beings. If it does not include all, it is never the action of buddha . . .  Just understand that birth-and-death is itself nirvana. There is nothing such as birth-and-death to be avoided, there is nothing such as nirvana to be sought. Only when you realize this are you free from birth-and-death.”

We say again and again that our practice is birth-and-death, it’s something we know cognitively; it’s a whole other experience when it feels like a punch in the gut. And that’s what we’re facing now. Even those of us who don’t worry about getting sick worry about the ramifications for job, money, home, our family, our friends, the basic relationships and structures that we care about. What will happen?

We look over our finances and worry about income that won’t come in. We feel fragile, and in some way this fragility is a lot more real than how we felt before, when we lived in the delusion that we were masters of the universe, solid, smart, at the top of the evolutionary chain. In this age of coronavirus, we see that is not the case. We see how much we depend on others, how much they depend on us. This fragility that we feel, born out of our interdependence, is very real.

I think of every time a large black bear comes into our back yard to gulp down the birdseed and I’m reminded that I may not be on top of the food chain. I watch it run, I watch it climb up and over the fence, the next morning I see 10 yards of fencing that it bent down and reflect on its strength. And I feel vulnerable.

Enter a coronavirus that doesn’t meet scientists’ criteria for being a fully realized life form, and it devastates these same humans that consider themselves the highest form of evolution. For the first time I feel my humbler, true proportions, just one pearl in Indra’s infinite net of pearls. That is life and death, realizing how porous we really are, how porous the boundary is between life and death. How infinitely fragile.

Dogen’s practice of life and death is this very apprehension, this very vulnerability. When we say we’re interdependent, there’s no real self to protect here, things are constantly changing. Maezumi Roshi, quoting Dogen, wrote: “Dogen Zenji also said, ‘When the Budda is within birth and death, there is neither birth nor death.’” He went on. “This is a wonderful koan. If there is no birth, no death, then what exists? Answer me. What exists? Just buddha.”

Death is the existential basis for all  our fear, realizing our lack of solid, independent self. Watch the resistance to experiencing that. We get busy, become addicted to the news, maybe eat or sleep a lot, we each have our patterns--just not to feel the tenuousness of self-based, individual existence.

These patterns of resistance is what I call abstraction, or confusion. Even the feeling--OMG, what’s happening in the world!—even that is an abstraction. It’s not saying: What do I fear? What do I worry about? Can I feel it in my body in my belly, in my mouth? Can I go beyond concepts? When we do, we are practicing with life and death.

My basic form of escape is being busy, so I have to remind myself: Settle down. We’re told this is the time to go inwards, but we’re afraid, because what will we find if we go there? For now, facing your fear, your pain, your vulnerability is the practice. Watching the forms of resistance that come up—that’s all practice.

I see this Time of the Virus as a gap. Our routine life patterns reinforce our beliefs and usual ways of thinking, but when a gap occurs we can’t take anything for granted, things aren’t normal anymore. These gaps are wonderful. It’s like stretching out the instant between the end of exhalation and the beginning of inhalation: What now? Will I inhale again? Will I die? What happens now?​

I mentioned this to a friend of mine on the phone yesterday, and he emailed me a short while later: Good gappin’ with you. Please practice in this gap. This so-called gap is our real life. It’s raw, it’s terrifying, and it’s exciting; we’re confronting something we can no longer run away from or resist, this practice of life and death.

(From a talk given by Roshi Eve at a one-day retreat on June 23 at Windhorse Retreat Center)

The dharma, incomparably profound and infinitely subtle,
Is always encountered but rarely perceived.
Now we see it, hear it, receive and maintain it.
May we completely realize the Tathagata’s true meaning.

A few of you may remember that we used to chant this verse as it’s chanted in most Zen centers:
The dharma, incomparably profound and infinitely subtle,
Is rarely encountered even in millions of ages.

​Bernie had joined us to give a talk at the end of the one-day. We chanted the verse as we usually did, and when we finished he looked at me and laughed. “No,” he said, “the dharma isn’t rarely encountered even in millions of ages. It’s there all the time, only we rarely perceive it.”

After that, we chanted it as we do now: The dharma is always encountered but rarely perceived. It’s not some hidden treasure that, once in a billion kalpas, is finally found; it’s life as it is, day in, day out, right in front of our faces. And probably for that reason, it’s rarely perceived.
That moment stays with me now. Bernie had been “doing Zen” for decades, always alert and curious, and one day it hits him that this verse that he’d been chanting since the late 60’s wasn’t his understanding of the dharma or of this practice.  It happens to all of us. One day you find yourself saying something you’ve said a million times, and suddenly you stop in your tracks: Wait a minute! That’s not right. That’s not how I see it now.

That moment of insight is very important.

Huang Po, instructing the community, said, “All of you people are gobblers of dregs; if you go on travelling around this way, where will you have Today? Do you know that there are no teachers of Chan in all of China?”
At that time a monk came forward and said, “Then what about those in various places who order followers and lead communities?”
Huang Po said, “I do not say that there is no Chan; it’s just that there are no teachers.”

What do you mean when you say that there are no teachers? We’re sitting today in a one-day retreat. Fleet and I sit closest to the altar, we give talks, but what are we really doing?

Basically, there’s nothing to depend on. You can’t depend on a book, a teacher, the way things were once done. So what do you depend on? What do I depend on?
That’s a lifelong question because we usually depend on something to feel alive, to feel valuable and real. Is it work? Is it having a companion or relationship? Is it being paid a certain amount or living in a particular house or place? Is it other people’s approval?

A friend of mine wrote me about her life as a widow over the past 13 years, and particularly about what it is to belong, to use the pronoun we: “Our need to belong is so fundamental, basic and essential. The WE offers a false sense of protection and togetherness. It’s tribal and was essential to our survival from the beginning of time. To ‘belong’ to another person offers us respite from the agony of being alone as a way of life. The constructs of the mind tend to rush to create new connections, new ‘buildings’ for belonging, so vital for our search to finding a place, a position, in life. I envy the people that belong to a group, a country, a culture. I also do everything to escape it.”

As it did for me, as it did for my friend, life finally strips off these things, and you look at the mirror and say: What do I depend on now?

Sometimes, in search of a meaningful life, we read a lot of books and go in search of many teachers. The Chan monks did that as well. The commentary on the koan includes a terrific exchange between Huang Po and his teacher, Pai Chang. Pai Chang related an episode out of his own training with his teacher, the great Ma Tsu. Don’t we love to hear stories about our teachers and their teachers?

Sure enough, the commentary relates, “Huang Po unconsciously stuck out his tongue in awe. Pai Chang said, ‘After this, won’t you be a successor of the Great Master Ma?’ Huang Po said, ‘No. Today, because of the master’s recital, I’ve gotten to see the Great Master Ma’s great capacity and its great function, but if I were to succeed to Master Ma, in the future I would be bereft of descendants.’”

Huang Po searched for a great teacher like Ma Tsu, but that couldn’t define him. He would have to find his own path in practice and teaching instead of depending on Pai Chang or even Ma Tsu, both great Chan masters.

People tell stories about their teachers; I certainly have done that a lot about Bernie. But please, don’t depend on that. Bernie had a hard time with people who were awed by him. When that happens, a duality creeps into your practice. There’s a you watching your teacher and his/her life. Please pay attention to your life, not someone else’s.

In the early years of our retreats at Auschwitz/Birkenau, survivors of the camp would take part in the retreat. After a few times we stopped inviting them to come because other participants would sit at their feet, their tongues stuck out in awe just like Huang Po’s. As the verse commentary puts it: “How could you one-sidedly hold fast to a single corner? The more you abandon, the more you aren’t at rest; the more you seek, the more you don’t see; the more you take on, the more you sink down.”

A good Zen teacher takes down the peg you hang your hat on. Instead of giving you something, he or she takes things away, especially the beautiful ornaments you depend on for living a meaningful life. So there is such a thing, after all, as teachers and students, but it’s all a matter of conditions.

Zazen takes things away, too. It leaves you with nothing to hang your hat on, just you yourself at this moment. Stop chasing after thoughts and feelings, memories of the past and hope in a future; you’ll never catch up. There’s always more and more, it never ends. Instead, sit and face this changing moment. Not the moment of 60 seconds, but Dogen’s eternally changing moment. When you do that you are completely independent and connected to all beings.​

Do this when you get up from zazen, too. Just make tea or coffee, walk, drive, talk to your spouse or child. Just be this moment. When you practice in this way, you will not back off from moments that challenge you. Nothing will be extra because you’re not depending on anything.