Zazen is not learning to do concentration. It is the dharma gate of great ease and joy. It is undivided practice-realization.

The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain. For you must know that just there (in zazen) the right Dharma is manifesting itself and that, from the first, dullness and distraction are struck aside.

shikan-taza (just doing zazen),

"I can only say that from ancient times, Buddhist practitioners have valued the zazen posture. I think zazen is a wonderful invention. Nuclear power, jet airplanes, skyscrapers, and many other products of modern civilization do not enable human beings to become noble. People living in modern civilization are doing precisely the same things as primitive people did. How to ennoble humanity is most important. I think zazen is a wonderful invention of the Indian people. Sawaki Roshi said, "When we just do zazen, we emanate a divine atmosphere.

To be aware of the meaning of your life, you practice zazen.

So when you practice zazen, your mind should be concentrated on your breathing. This kind of activity is the fundamental activity of the universal being. Without this experience, this practice, it is impossible to attain absolute freedom.

Each moment of zazen is equally wholeness of practice, equally wholeness of realization. This is not only practice while sitting, it is like a hammer striking emptiness: before and after, its exquisite peal permeates everywhere. How can it be limited to this moment?

Zazen practice and everyday activity are one thing. We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen.

Suzuki said that if we practiced zazen sincerely, we could gradually become free from enslavement to compulsive intellectual and emotional activity. He said calming the intellect would happen first, but that calming emotions was not so easy and would take longer.

Uchiyama Rōshi helped me a great deal in not allowing me to use zazen as an escape. He said, “You must know that behind zazen are the teachings of Buddhism, and behind them, your own life experience.” These words went a long way in clarifying for me a passage in the Shōbō-genzō: Genjō Kōan (Actualizing the Koan): “To study Buddhism is to study the Self.

The word <i>zen</i> itself is a Japanese mispronunciation of the Chinese word <i>ch’an</i>, which, in turn, is a Chinese mispronunciation of the Sanskrit <i>dhyana</i>, meaning “contemplation, meditation.” Contemplation, however, of what?

Let us imagine ourselves for a moment in the lecture hall where I originally presented the material for this chapter. Above, we see the many lights. Each bulb is separate from the others, and we may think of them, accordingly, as separate from each other. Regarded that way, they are so many empirical facts; and the whole universe seen that way is called in Japanese <i>ji hokkai</i>, “the universe of things.”

But now, let us consider further. Each of those separate bulbs is a vehicle of light, and the light is not many but one. The one light, that is to say, is being displayed through all those bulbs; and we may think, therefore, either of the many bulbs or of the one light. Moreover, if this or that bulb went out, it would be replaced by another and we should again have the same light. The light, which is one, appears thus through many bulbs.

Analogously, I would be looking out from the lecture platform, seeing before me all the people of my audience, and just as each bulb seen aloft is a vehicle of light, so each of us below is a vehicle of consciousness. But the important thing about a bulb is the quality of its light. Likewise, the important thing about each of us is the quality of his consciousness. And although each may tend to identify himself mainly with his separate body and its frailties, it is possible also to regard one’s body as a mere vehicle of consciousness and to think then of consciousness as the one presence here made manifest through us all. These are but two ways of interpreting and experiencing the same set of present facts. One way is not truer than the other. They are just two ways of interpreting and experiencing: the first, in terms of the manifold of separate things; the second, in terms of the one thin

Usually when you practice zazen, you become very idealistic, and you set up an ideal or goal which you strive to attain and fulfill. But as I have often said, this is absurd. When you are idealistic, you have some gaining idea within yourself; by the time you attain your ideal or goal, your gaining idea will create another ideal.

In zazen, leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don't serve them tea.

Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.