I sometimes talk about an aspect of our Zen practice I call "acceptance without acceptance" ...
By that I mean an approach to all the ugly and painful aspects of life and this world which are just so hard (perhaps impossible) to accept.
We can accept and not accept simultaneously, repair what needs to be repaired.
I recall, for example, a dear zen-friend of mine who, facing a serious illness, accepted the condition fully, accepted that it is natural for us to all get sick sometimes - yet fought the good fight for a cure.
That is acceptance without acceptance.
Today, I would just like to add another perspective that makes us the mystics which we are ...
For besides merely accepting while not accepting ... we might EMBRACE, CELEBRATE and SINK RIGHT IN! (and that includes the worst of it)! Maybe not all the time, but lots of times even in the face of the worst crud of life!
Any garden is flowers and weeds ... life is beauty and ugliness (some of it heartbreaking). Yet we see ALL of that as life's nature. We not only accept and tolerate ... we GIVE THANKS FOR all sides of it.
...
Now, don't ever get this point wrong: Praising the weeds and wars and wrongs, and being thankful for all of it ... that does not mean we do not set to pulling weeds, fixing this world, righting wrongs.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/treeleafzen/2 ... k-rig.html