Self-fulfilling activity

• Self-fulfilling activity is free of goals or outcomes.
• Play is the best example.
• Related: just do what needs to be done.

A few snippets from Opening to Oneness

• The spontaneity associated with Zen is simply a groundless samadhi of self-fulfilling activity. Free of reasons, grounds, goals, or outcomes. Play is the best example.
• important Zen teachings such as emptiness, suchness, interpenetration, no hindrance, or the samadhi of self-fulfilling activity.
• free of reasons, grounds, goals, or outcomes. Play is the best example of something that is always self-fulfilling.
• When shikantaza, just sitting, can be just as it is, it is self-fulfilling.
• The spontaneity associated with Zen is simply a groundless samadhi of self-fulfilling activity.
• This kind of compassion could be termed feeling-compassion. It’s where my acting to relieve your suffering is based on my ability and maybe desire to feel your feelings and connect them to my own. The compassion of the bodhisattva who spontaneously does what is needed is different in that it is not based on feeling. It’s not based on anything. It is self-fulfilling!

Added 2024-07-07.