The gruesome part of sitting (and it is gruesome, believe me) is to begin to see what is really going on in our mind. It is a shocker for all of us. We see that we are violent, prejudiced, and selfish. We are all those things because a conditioned life based on false thinking leads to these states.

And yet there is something within each of us that basically knows we are boundless, limitless. We are caught in the contradiction of finding life a rather perplexing puzzle which causes us a lot of misery, and at the same time being dimly aware of the boundless, limitless nature of life. So we begin looking for an answer to the puzzle.

What we are doing is not reprogramming ourselves, but freeing ourselves from all programs, by seeing that they are empty of reality. Reprogramming is just jumping from one pot into another. We may have what we think of as a better programming; but the point of sitting is not to be run by any program. Suppose we have a program called “I lack

I don’t think that there are evil forces around us. I think that there are evil acts being done, but that’s quite different. If someone is hurting a child you certainly want to stop the action; but to condemn the person doing it is as evil is unsound practice. We should oppose evil actions, but people—no. Otherwise we’ll go around judging and

I am left with the direct experience of the physical reaction in my body, the residue, so to speak. When I directly experience this residue (as tension, contraction), since there is no duality in direct experience, I will slowly enter the dimension (samadhi) which knows what to do, what action to take. It knows what is the best action, not just for

life and each other.

Most of us are here chasing after Buddhahood. Yet Buddhahood is how you deal with your boss or your child, your lover or your partner, whoever. Our life is always absolute: that’s all there is. The truth is not somewhere else. But we have minds that are trying to burn the past or the future. The living present—Buddhahood—is rarely encountered.

once we begin to get a glimmer that the problem in life is not outside ourselves, we have begun to walk down this path.

So the degree to which our practice ripens, to that degree we can do more, we can include more, we can serve more; and that’s really what Zen practice is about. Sitting like this is the way; so let’s just practice with everything we have. All I can be is who I am right now; I can experience that and work with it. That’s all I can do. The rest is