Why do we practice?

It is a simple question, yet not an easy one. If we asked everyone in our Sangha, we would probably hear many different answers.
We practice to become calmer. To suffer less. To understand ourselves. To find peace. To awaken. Every one of these answers and many more are true. Over the last few days, while thinking about a talk for our Sunday Zazenkai, I found myself wondering whether all of them point toward something even more fundamental. Perhaps, in one way or another, we all come to practice because we long for freedom?

When I look back at my own life, I think this is what first brought me to the cushion. I became aware of a cage I had quietly built for myself—made of habits, fears, expectations, and stories about who I was supposed to be. I did not experience it as a prison at first. It simply felt like reality. Only gradually did I begin to notice how much of my suffering came not from the world itself, but from living inside that invisible construction. And as practice continued, something unexpected happened. The walls did not suddenly disappear. My life did not become free of difficulties.
But sometimes the cage became a little less convincing.

A horizon opened.

This quiet sense of freedom is one of the gifts practice has given me. It is also one of the reasons I wanted to ordain.
Not because I have found freedom once and for all, but because I have seen enough of it to know that it is real, and because I hope that others may discover it for themselves. But what kind of freedom am I talking about?
When we hear the word freedom, our minds immediately fill it with familiar images. We imagine a life without obligations. Without pain. Without difficult people. We imagine finally being able to do what we want, to become who we really are, to shape life according to our wishes. It is an attractive picture. And yet, if we look closely, something about it seems fragile.
If my freedom depends on circumstances always unfolding according to my preferences, how free am I really? If a single unpleasant conversation can take away my peace for an entire day, what has become of my freedom? If my happiness depends on other people behaving differently, on success arriving, on pain disappearing, or on my own mind finally becoming quiet, then my freedom remains dependent on conditions over which I have only limited control.

This is the ordinary understanding of freedom. It is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Zen invites us to ask a quieter and more unsettling question. Can there be freedom even in the presence of pain? Can there be freedom in uncertainty? Can there be freedom while grief is present? Can there be freedom without waiting for life to become different? Not as a philosophical question. It is a question that arises each time we take our seat on the cushion.

What is it that imprisons us?

The freedom we usually seek is closely tied to changing our circumstances. If only I had a different job. If only this pain would go away. If only this relationship were easier. If only my mind were quieter. There is nothing wrong with wishing for a better life. I don’t think Buddhism has ever taught that we should enjoy suffering or refuse to improve our circumstances. If we can reduce suffering—our own or someone else’s—we should.

And yet practice invites us to look deeper. If the freedom Zen points toward is real, it must be possible even before circumstances change.
Perhaps what imprisons us is not only our circumstances? Perhaps what imprisons us is the way we relate to them?
When I look at my own mind, I notice how quickly experience becomes a story. A difficult emotion becomes my anger. A passing thought becomes my opinion. A temporary failure becomes the kind of person I am.
The mind is not content with the world simply being what it is. Almost immediately, it begins to classify, compare, judge and define.
Some of these definitions are practical and useful. We could hardly live without concepts. But something changes when concepts stop being tools and quietly become reality itself.
“I am shy.” – “I am successful.” – “I am a failure.” – “I am an anxious person.” – “He always behaves like this.” – “She never understands.” – “This should not be happening.”
When we look closely, every one of these statements has something in common. They freeze what is alive into something fixed. They transform a moment into an identity.

Every prison sentence begins with certainty.
Not certainty in the sense of knowledge, but certainty in the sense that we already know what this moment is, who this person is, who we ourselves are. And once we know, freedom quietly disappears.
If I truly am “an angry person,” then anger has already become my nature. If I truly am “a failure,” then every future is already written. If another person “always” behaves in a certain way, then I no longer meet them as they are today. I meet yesterday’s idea of them.
Every fixed identity narrows the field of possible responses.
The prison is not the thought itself. Thoughts arise naturally. The prison begins when the thought becomes something that feels necessary. When “I am angry” can no longer become simply “anger is present.” When “I am afraid” can no longer become “fear is here.”
Nothing has changed in the experience itself. Only the relationship has changed.

This is also why I believe the freedom discovered in practice has little to do with the philosophical debate about free will. Whether our choices are ultimately determined or not is a fascinating question, but it is not the freedom that shikantaza invites us to investigate.
The freedom of practice is much more immediate. It is the discovery that our thoughts, emotions and identities do not compel us as completely as we usually imagine.
Today we are surrounded by invitations to “be ourselves”. We are encouraged to discover our authentic self, express our true self, improve ourselves.
Zen asks a surprisingly gentle question. Which self?
The self before breakfast, before my first coffee? The self that is angry? The self that is joyful? The self that is sitting silently on the cushion?
Practice does not ask us to reject these selves. It simply invites us to look carefully enough that we stop mistaking any one of them for the whole truth.
Perhaps this is the beginning of freedom. Not becoming someone else. Not becoming a better version of ourselves. But no longer needing to hold ourselves so tightly.

Why does Zen speak of emptiness?

If our thoughts, identities and certainties are not as fixed as they appear, an obvious question arises.
Why?
Why is change possible at all? Why are we able to grow, to forgive, to learn, to awaken?
This is where Buddhism introduces one of its most famous – and perhaps often misunderstood – teachings. It says that all things are empty. To „untrained” ears, that can sound discouraging. We hear the word empty and imagine absence, meaninglessness, or even non-existence. It is not surprising that Buddhism has sometimes been misunderstood as pessimistic or nihilistic. But this is not what emptiness means.
Emptiness does not deny the reality of this world. It points to the way this world exists.

Our ancestor, philosopher Nāgārjuna expressed this insight with remarkable clarity in one of the most famous verses of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā:
Whatever is dependently arisen,
that is explained to be emptiness.
That, being a dependent designation,
is itself the Middle Way.

To me it feels as if this single verse has shaped much of Mahāyāna Buddhism. It also describes the way we can understand the word emptiness.
Things are empty because they do not exist independently. Nothing stands alone. Everything comes into being through an immeasurable web of causes and conditions.
A tree depends upon soil, rain, sunlight and countless living beings. The words you are reading right now depend upon language, teachers, parents, cultures and thousands of years of human history. Nothing exists by itself. Everything exists with everything else.
This is what we call dependent arising. Emptiness is not something added to dependent arising. Emptiness is another way of describing it. Or, to say it differently: Things are empty because they are completely dependent.
At first this may seem like a limitation. We often imagine freedom as independence.
Buddhism turns this picture upside down. If something possessed an independent and unchanging essence—what classical Buddhism calls svabhāva—how could it ever become anything else?
A child could never become an adult. Wood could never become ash. An angry person could never forgive. Practice itself would become impossible. The very possibility of transformation seems to depend upon the absence of a fixed essence.
In this sense, emptiness is not subtraction. It is possibility.

I sometimes find it helpful to think of emptiness as openness. Not because openness is a better translation. It is not. But because it points toward something we can recognize in practice. A mind is compassionate because it is open. A conversation is alive because it remains open. Our lives unfold because they remain open to conditions we cannot fully predict.
Shikantaza is not an attempt to empty ourselves of thoughts or emotions. Perhaps it is better understood as learning, again and again, not to close. Not to close around a fixed opinion. Not to close around a passing emotion. Not even to close around the idea of who we are.
This has gradually changed the way I hear the word emptiness.
Today, if I had to express it in my own words, I might say: Emptiness is not the absence of reality. It is the absence of necessity.
By necessity I do not mean the lawful regularities of nature, nor the philosophical question of determinism. I mean the felt certainty that things—or people, or even we ourselves—must be what we imagine them to be.
“I am just this kind of person.” – “This relationship will never change.” – “This moment should not be happening.”
Emptiness gently loosens that certainty. It does not deny this moment. — It simply refuses to imprison it.
The same is true for ourselves. Zen does not ask us to become someone else. It asks us to stop believing that we were ever fixed in the first place.

What does freedom look like?

If emptiness is not merely a philosophical idea, then it must become visible somewhere.
For me, it becomes visible in the ordinary moments of practice. Not in dramatic experiences. Not in moments of certainty. But in small moments that are easy to overlook.
A thought arises. And it does not have to become a belief.
An emotion appears. And it does not have to become an identity.
An opinion forms. And it does not have to become an argument.
A self appears. And it does not have to become a prison.

Nothing has been removed. The thoughts are still there. The emotions are still there. The personality has not disappeared. Life continues exactly as before. And yet something has changed. The feeling of necessity has softened. There is a little more space. A little more openness. A little more freedom.

Perhaps this is one of the quiet miracles of shikantaza. When we sit, we are not trying to manufacture a particular state of mind.
We are not trying to become someone else. We simply sit.
Again and again, we return to this moment, allowing thoughts, feelings and sensations to arise and pass without needing to arrange them into a better version of ourselves. At first this can feel surprisingly unproductive. Modern life constantly encourages us to optimize ourselves. We should become more efficient. More mindful. Meditation is often presented as another tool for self-improvement.

But Zen offers a rather disarming alternative. Instead of asking, “How can I become a better self?” it quietly asks, “Who is the self that needs so much improving?”
This is not a rejection of growth. Practice changes us. Anyone who has sat for years knows that. We may become more patient. More compassionate. Less easily carried away by anger or fear. But these changes are not something we manufacture.They are not achievements that we can claim as our own. Perhaps they are better understood as what naturally appears when we stop clinging so tightly to who we think we are.
Dōgen expresses this movement more beautifully than I ever could with the often cited:
To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.
For some years I thought “forgetting the self” carried a sense of „making the self disappear for a while“. I hear those words differently now. Perhaps forgetting the self means forgetting that it was ever fixed.
The self is not erased. — It is released. And in that release, the world is allowed to meet us more directly. Or perhaps, as Dōgen suggests, it is we who are finally able to meet the world.
Freedom, then, is not the ability to become whatever we want. Nor is it the absence of conditions. Freedom is discovering that neither this moment nor we ourselves have to become a prison. That does not mean life becomes easy. Pain still hurts. Loss is still loss. Fear is still fear. But suffering no longer has only one possible response.
Perhaps this is why Zen has always placed such trust in simply sitting. Not because sitting makes us into better people. But because, little by little, it reveals the openness that was never absent. The freedom we discover is not something we create. It is something we stop overlooking.

Freedom is relationship

If emptiness means that nothing exists independently, then neither does freedom.
We often imagine freedom as something we possess. My freedom. My choices. My life. But if our lives are woven together from countless causes and conditions, then the freedom discovered in practice cannot belong to us alone. It exists only in relationship.
This changes more than our understanding of freedom. It changes our understanding of ourselves. The more carefully we look, the harder it becomes to draw a clear boundary between “my life” and the lives of others. Everything I am has been given.
My language. My body. The food I eat. The air I breathe. The teachings I have received. The kindnesses I have been shown. Even this moment of writing depends on countless people I will never meet. Nothing stands alone. Neither do I.

Seen in this light, compassion begins to look less like a moral achievement and more like a simple recognition. If my life is inseparable from yours, then caring for you is not the denial of myself. Nor is caring for myself a rejection of you. Both arise together. This is why I have come to appreciate the Precepts more as descriptions, not as commandments or moral rules. They describe what life looks like when we stop insisting on a separate self.
Of course, none of us lives the Precepts perfectly. I certainly do not. Every day I become impatient, protect an opinion, or place my own comfort before another person’s suffering. Practice does not make these tendencies disappear. It makes them easier to notice. And perhaps that is where ethical life begins.
Not in perfection. But in seeing. Seeing how quickly separation reappears and fear becomes defensiveness. But also how naturally kindness returns when we remember that we belong to one another.
Zazen and the Precepts cannot really be separated. Without zazen, the Precepts risk becoming moralism. A list of ideals measured against an imagined perfect self. The opposite of freedom.
Without the Precepts, zazen risks becoming something else entirely. A private refuge. A way of cultivating calm while remaining indifferent to the lives around us.
Sounds pretty closed, too.
Neither is complete without the other.

Sitting teaches us to let go of ourselves. The Precepts teach us what that letting go looks like in the world. Perhaps they are simply two expressions of the same practice.
Freedom is not the opposite of responsibility. Freedom makes responsibility possible. Not because someone tells us what we ought to do. But because, little by little, we stop experiencing other people as “other.”
There is a line in the Sandōkai that has stayed with me: “Each thing has its own being, which is not different from its place and function.” Every person. Every tree. Every grief. Every moment. Nothing needs to become something else in order to belong. Perhaps this, too, is freedom. Not standing apart from the ten thousand things. Standing among them.

Drawing the Circle

At the beginning of this writing, I asked a simple question. Why do we practice? Along the way, that question led through freedom, identity, emptiness, dependent arising and the Precepts. Perhaps these have never been separate teachings. Perhaps they are simply different ways of pointing toward the same lived reality.
We call it dependent arising when we seek to understand it.
We call it emptiness when we seek to describe it.
We call it freedom when we begin to live it.
And we call it compassion when it embraces the world.

Every time we sit down in shikantaza, we are invited to meet this moment just as it is. Not because this moment is perfect. Not because we have finally understood Zen. But because this moment is already complete.
Again and again the mind closes around certainty. And again and again, without force, practice invites it to open.
This is why the Heart Sutra can say: Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. These words are not asking us to look beyond the ordinary world. They are inviting us to see the ordinary world without imagining that anything stands alone or possesses a fixed nature. This very body. This joy. This grief. This person sitting with us. Each is completely itself. Each belongs completely to everything else. Perhaps that is why each is infinitely precious.

When the bell rings and we rise from the cushion, our lives continue much as before. There will still be dishes to wash. Emails to answer. Conversations to have. Mistakes to make. Apologies to offer.
The practice has never been somewhere else. It has always been here.
Perhaps freedom is not something we finally attain. Perhaps it is simply what remains whenever we stop insisting that life—or ourselves—must fit the stories we have been telling.

And perhaps that is enough.