In my direct experience, Zazen is not an isolated practice. It's not confined to a set beginning, middle, and end... a beginning and ending clapper, marking time as so many 'think.' Zazen isn't a hobby. It's not a gimmick. It's not a 'self-help' program to make us think and feel "Better." Zazen isn't a task to be checked off on a to-do list when it's convenient or we "make time for It"... or laid down when some-thing calls our attention somewhere else. The Way taught to me by Roshi is that Zazen is a 'continuous practice—常行 (jōgyō)'—a ceaseless and seamless flow—soaking each moment... each activity, and all expressions of BEcoming and BEing.
To see Zazen as something that begins when we sit on the cushion and ends when we stand is to miss the essence of the practice entirely. In the Japanese Rinzai tradition, Zazen is not an action to be completed but a continuous BEingness that saturates everything we do. It is the pulse and heartbeat of existence, a constant invitation to rest in the openness of awareness, allowing attention to remain bonded to BEing itself, rather than entangled in the content of thoughts coming and going by themselves, incidental to our authentic nature.
In this continuous BEingness, there is no gap between the so-called 'spiritual' and 'ordinary,' no line separating meditation from daily life. Every breath, every step, every task is Zazen when seen through the active awareness of jōgyō. In this unbroken flow, the distinction between form and emptiness dissolves, revealing that there isn't the so-called 'many' but continuous ZERO. Zazen is the living experience of this truth, not merely a practice but the very nature of Reality Itself.
That said, our practice could be, not to be tricked by thinking mind into believing that we can compartmentalize Zazen into fixed moments but to notice It as the context of our entire life... what is beyond the "cosmic background radiation" that came with the 'Big-Bang' of our alleged physical birth. In the continuous practice of jōgyō, we realize that the True Heart of Zen isn't in isolated acts or periods of sitting but in the seamless engagement with our life, such as It is, as It Is, as the vertical of Now, instead of the horizontal line of a past, present, and future that's a convenience for thinking mind so it can locate itself through its suffering.
This is the transformational path of Zen, rather than its transactional imitation of practice. Every moment, regardless of how It shows up, is an opportunity to 'Notice,' to return Attention again and again to our Original Nature, and to live from the wholeness and wholesomeness of our BEingness.
— Empty Flow, Clear Peak
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