Sublime

Dogen-zenji said, “Time goes from present to past.”

Zen is, of course, a continuation of the old dhyana yoga, in which one just sits silently and allows one’s thoughts to go away by their own dead weight.

Shunryu Suzuki writes in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Strictly speaking, there are no separate individual existences. There are just many names for one existence. Sometimes people put a stress on oneness, but this is not our understanding. We do not emphasize any point in particular, even oneness. Oneness is valuable, but variety is also wonderful. I

This koan resists the totalitarian impulse in spiritual paths.

When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners.

In the words of Dogen, the thirteenth-century Zen master, “when we forget the self, we can remember the 10,000 things.”

You must be true to your own way until at last you actually come to the point where you see it is necessary to forget all about yourself.