"In our practice we have no particular purpose or goal....You may think that if there is no purpose or no goal in our practice, we will not know what to do. But there is a way."--Shunryu Suzuki
Usually, before we act, we think. "I have to get up and go to work."
Then the difficulty begins: Why do we have to go to work?
We answer this question. We are satisfied with the answer. We have a reason or purpose or goal--I am going to work to support my children or to earn a paycheck so that I can go shopping tomorrow.
If we have no reason or purpose or goal in our activity, we often become confused. Since we do not know the true reason for our activity, we may be tempted to give up our practice and go back to bed!
But Zen Master Suzuki tells us there is a way. The secret is non-attachment. When we are not attached to any reason or purpose or goal, we can just concentrate on expressing ourselves in the present moment.
That is the purpose of Zen practice: To express our true nature and our sincerity on each moment, moment-by-moment, with a constantly renewed appreciation of the phenomenal world.
Without this practice, we may lose our respect for each other--and even for ourselves.
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.--Henry David Thoreau
No comments:
Post a Comment