Fukan-Zazengi 10: Reality, Not Religion.


More essential, incisive directions from Master Dogen in his instructions for zazen...


Do not aim to become a buddha. How could [this] be connected with sitting or lying down?


The nature of many everyday activities is basically transactional - I go to work and expect that my paycheck will arrive at the end of the week, I show people friendship and respect and expect a level of the same in return, I work out and expect to feel the physical benefits of it... so if I sit zazen I'll eventually be all blissed out, everyone will love me, and I'll have remarkable intuitive powers, right? Zazen isn't like that.

Basically, in zazen we can observe that our thoughts (our imaginings and beliefs about, and expectations about, reality) are not reality itself. They are just our own very partial, limited mental representation of it. The state of 'buddha' is just being in reality in accordance with reality, seeing thoughts and feelings for what they are. It's therefore not what we think nor imagine it to be. Ever.

The state of buddha is not expressed via our imaginings and expectations of what a 'buddha' is but by dropping off those imaginings and expectations in 'dropping off body and mind'.

Even though regular zazen practice informs all our conduct, this is a very different sort of action from everyday conventional sitting and lying down and zoning out or having a think or a daydream, and we can clearly learn to distinguish it as such, so Master Dogen says -- 'how could [this] be connected with sitting or lying down?'

It may be interesting and instructive to honestly ask ourselves questions such as - what do we think we are practicing zazen for? Are we hoping to get anything out of it?

What do we think a buddha is? (A: it's not that!)

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