No preparation for something else

Our way is not to sit to acquire something; it is to express our true nature.  That is our practice.

If you want to express yourself, your true nature, there should be some natural and appropriate way of expression.  Even swaying right and left as you sit down or get up from zazen is an expression of yourself.  It is not preparation for practice, or relaxation after practice; it is part of the practice.  So we should not do it as if we were preparing for something else.  This should be true in your everyday life.  To cook, or to fix some food, is not preparation, according to Dogen; it is practice.

We should appreciate what we are doing.  There is no preparation for something else.

There is no need to remember what I say; there is no need to understand what I say.  You understand; you have full understanding within yourself.  There is no problem.

-- from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind p. 53-55

Calmness in activity

Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity.  Real calmness should be found in activity itself.  We say, "It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness."

I do not feel like speaking after zazen.  I feel the practice of zazen is enough.  But if I must say something I think I would like to talk about how wonderful it is to practice zazen.  Our practice is just to keep this practice forever.  This practice started from beginningless time, and it will continue into an endless future.  Strictly speaking, for a human being there is no other practice than this practice.  There is no other way of life than this way of life.  Zen practice is the direct expression of our true nature.

-- from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki p. 46-47

Unexciting way of practice

Zen is not something to get excited about.  Some people start to practice Zen just out of curiosity, and they only make themselves busier.  If your practice makes you worse, it is ridiculous.

Our unexciting way of practice may appear to be very negative.  This is not so.  It is a wise and effective way to work on ourselves.  It is just very plain.

When your mind is calm and ordinary, everyday life itself is enlightenment.

-- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind p. 58-59

Zen mind- breathing

When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world.  When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world.  The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless.  We say "inner world" or "outer world", but actually there is just one whole world.  In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door.  The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door.

When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no "I", no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.

-- from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki p. 29

Hiding

Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose, the snowbound internal pulse of the hibernating bear.  Hiding is underestimated.  We are hidden by life in our mother's womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world....

What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening.  What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.

Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others.  Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about ourselves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed.

Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control.  Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself.  Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.

-- from Consolations, by David Whyte p. 113-115

Help

Help is strangely, something we want to do without, as if the very idea disturbs and blurs the boundaries of our individual endeavors, as if we can not face how much we need in order to go on.  We are born with an absolute necessity for help, grow well only with a continuous succession of extended hands, and as adults depend upon others for our further successes and possibilities in life even as competent individuals.

[As adults] the need for help becomes more subtle, hidden as it is by the illusion that we are suddenly free agents able to survive on our own, the one corner of the universe able to supply its own answers.

To ask for help and to ask for the right kind of help and to feel that it is no less than our due as a live human being; to feel, in effect, that we deserve it, may be the engine of transformation itself.

-- from Consolations, by David Whyte p.107-110

Gratitude

Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within us and without us.  Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the even, it is the deep, a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

- from Consolations, by David Whyte p. 89