The Wholehearted Way

Abstract concepts and living reality are entirely different.
- Reality exists before our naming and dividing, our dichotomies and discriminations.
- Reality is not something fixed. It’s vivid, fresh, and vigorous.
Emptiness is the complete interdependence of all things.
Great awakening is the enlightenment that goes beyond delusion and enlightenment.
Practice and enlightenment are not two.
As long as we’re human, thoughts will come up no matter how hard we practice zazen.
- We can’t calm the mind with the mind. It’s like trying to pull up a mat we’re sitting on.
Waiting is a substitute for zazen.

Gathered notes

Abstract concepts and living reality are entirely different.
Reality itself exists before we divide and name delusion and enlightenment, before our human-made distinctions or discriminations.
Emptiness means the complete interdependence of all things.
Awakening to our intimate interconnectedness with the totality of our world and its creatures.
Great awakening is the enlightenment that goes beyond delusion and enlightenment.
Practice and enlightenment are not two.
The Way is like a circle. Arousing bodhi mind, practice, and awakening are like a circle.
The reality of life cannot be separated into dichotomies such as mind and body. Such discrimination is caused by our brain.
That which experiences and that which is experienced cannot be divided into two.
As long as we are human, various kinds of thoughts come up no matter how hard we practice zazen.
The reality of life is not something fixed; it is vivid, fresh, and vigorous.
It does not work to try and calm down the mind with the mind, no matter how hard we try. It is like trying to pull up a mat on which we are sitting.
What we actually do in sitting zazen is let go of thought, which reifies abstract concepts, and live out the actual life that is the oneness of the self and of the world of our own life experience.
When we sit, letting go of all thoughts that reify abstract concepts, all things fall off.
Wait quietly for a while. Waiting is a substitute for zazen. Take your time; then you will naturally calm down.

Much of Dōgen’s teaching encourages wholehearted engagement in our lives, based on awakening to our intimate interconnectedness with the totality of our world and its creatures.

The Way is the naturalness of the whole universe without any man-made distinctions or discriminations.
The Way is like a circle. Arousing bodhi mind, practice, and awakening are like a circle.
Our practice is not a kind of training for the sake of making an ignorant person smart, clever, and finally enlightened.
Our practice is endless. Enlightenment is beginningless.
We create our own personal world through our distinctions, our discrimination, our value judgements and definitions.

Reading literature while ignoring the way of practice is like a person reading a prescription but forgetting to take the medicine.
Practice and enlightenment are not two.
Not an experience that is somewhere other than here and now, it is not something to be acquired or gained.
Emptiness means the complete interdependence of all things.
Great awakening is the enlightenment that goes beyond delusion and enlightenment.
In Buddhism, faith is not belief in some external doctrine or deity, but trusting and acting in one’s experience and realisation of dharma truth.

Abstract concepts and living reality are entirely different.
That which experiences and that which is experienced cannot be divided into two.
As Sawaki Roshi used to say, we cannot exchange so much as a fart with another person.
The past and the future do not exist separate from the present.
“Letting go” is “opening the hand of thought.”

It does not mean that someone who has been deluded becomes enlightened. We actualise the enlightenment that is inherent in each one of us. This is the meaning of enlightenment.
Reality itself exists before we divide and name delusion and enlightenment.
To sit zazen is to stop believing concepts–nondoing, or no fabrication.
As long as we are human, various kinds of thoughts come up no matter how hard we practice zazen.
As long as there is life, a kind of ready-made enlightenment does not work.
The enlightenment you attained yesterday has already passed away today.
The reality of life is not something fixed; it is vivid, fresh, and vigorous.

What we actually do in sitting zazen is let go of thought, which reifies abstract concepts, and live out the actual life that is the oneness of the self and of the world of our own life experience.
When we sit, letting go of all thoughts that reify abstract concepts, all things fall off.
Enlightenment is letting go of thought that claims things as mine.

No chasing after; no throwing away. This is the most important point of zazen.

Wait quietly for a while. Waiting is a substitute for zazen. Take your time; then you will naturally calm down.
Thought is illusion, action is reality, result is an apparition.

It does not work to try and calm down the mind with the mind, no matter how hard we try. It is like trying to pull up a mat on which we are sitting.
Reincarnation was not Shakyamuni’s teaching; such a belief was Indian folk religion from ancient times.
The reality of life cannot be separated into dichotomies such as mind and body, happiness and unhappiness, enlightenment and delusion. Such discrimination is caused by our brain.

The best condition for all parts of the body is that you forget the existence of the body and let each part function in accordion with necessity in each situation. This is called nonaction.

Added 2024-12-28, last updated 2025-01-06.