What Zazen Is and Is Not

If we are sitting in Zazen and we say, "I am thinking," the "I" might think it is the one doing the thinking. But when we look closely, we're not that so-called "I" that is thinking. We're the formless Awareness to which the thought "I am thinking" occurs.

The sky doesn't try to control the clouds. It doesn't manage them... approve them... reject them. There isn't even really a consideration of the clouds. They come and go on their own, and the sky gives zero f*cks, because It's busy skying.

Farts come and go in the body as a natural function of the body being a body. Are you really going to spend your time... your life force... trying to manage every fart that comes and goes? Of course not. That would be absurd.

Awareness' relationship to thought may be very much like that. Thoughts come and go as a natural function of the brain braining, doing what it naturally does.

Do you have any true awareness as to how many are coming and going in a day? It's a ridiculous number. They arise, they pass like farts. Zazen is not about managing every fart thought that the brain produces. It could be not building a home for those thoughts, making a garden for them and then paving a drive way, setting up shop.

Last question... when the body drops... so-called dead... do you really think think think that Awareness does with it... as in, when a wave collapses on the ocean, the ocean dies with the wave? Wake up!

一We Are the Practice Itself