Sublime

as the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, we “keep our appointment with life.”

The process of the Four Noble Truths. The practice of mindful awareness. The power of self-reliance.

The old teachers thought that not to know is to step into life without repeating yourself. It is to forget the prejudices and comparisons that say, “I’m better than you, I’m worse than you, I’m good at this, I’m bad at that.” If you practice “don’t know” mind for long enough, perhaps you can learn how to be good at anything.

But our approach is just to be concentrated on a simple basic practice and a simple basic understanding of life. There should be no traces in our activity. We should not attach to some fancy ideas or to some beautiful things. We should not seek for something good. The truth is always near at hand, within your reach.

The innocence of the first inquiry—what am I?—is needed throughout Zen practice.

So the first principle of the Zen cook is that we already have everything we need.