Originally Posted by
Risho
I've really been in a psychological rut this year; I'm not in a bad place, just sort of sitting and riding it out; so I haven't been posting as much, but this sangha, and practicing together and reading together helps me stay on the path.
I love the Tenzo Kyokun. I think it so relevant, especially considering that we are practitioners outside of monastery walls.
I think that when we pay attention to what we do, strive to be better, and handle all of the little details, really take care
of our work as if it were our child, magical things happen in our lives. Handling the details, zoning in, not zoning out, is really a key point in life. It's a lesson that I"ve learned from practice. Shikantaza is zoning in.
I know, "Tenzo Kyokun, how is it related to this chapter?" It's about living the life of the true self that Uchiyama Roshi so eloquently describes.
When you get to a level of mastery in whatever it is that you do, you know when to lead, you know when to follow, you know
when to help others, you know when to help, you have no ego that worries about not knowing. You live this work, and it
is what matters. The work working you. You don't own these things; you may have helped them come to fruition, but what I do
can only be done because I stand on the shoulders of giants in Computer Science who made these tools available to me.
I honor those ancestors by developing new things but not forgetting that they, too, were there with me while I created whatever
it is that I created. But nothing was really created because its potential was there all along.
It's easy to fall into a role of "expert", but the true master is the best student. The master knows that the more they learn,
the less they know, and this irony continually drives them to go deeper and deeper into their art, whether that art be artistic expression,
song, computer expression, medicine or what have you. It becomes the truth that matters, not the whims of the small self that always wants to be right.
The level of art comes when you've mastered the basics, realize it's always the basics, and that the basics can never be mastered.
Applying this same ethic to zen, and discovering it through zen, also is magical. We realize that this sitting just for sitting; we realize (and I'm stealing
this phrase) zazen sitting us, that we never sit zazen. And if we do, we're doing it wrong, although that wrong is right because
it is part of the path. Zen is the core (well a core, but my core practice) because it helps us zoom into and go meticulously through the details, which mainly happens to be the details
of where we are hung up so we don't have to keep acting out negative, reactive habits.
Most importantly we start realizing that it is us, we are not it. We lose the self-importance while realizing that, "yeah we of
course exist", but we are much more than this uniform that we are wearing to fit a role in the world.
It humbles us by reminding us again and again, very painfully at times, that these negative emotions, while self-justifying are life energy sappers.
Gassho,
Risho
-sattoday
) and the waking up this implies were a kind of key insight for me. "Don't believe everything you think" - I've heard this very often, but never really believed it applied to me personally, that is to me as a person (latin word for mask)... I mean, come on, I'm the center of my (the?) universe, so it can't be me who's in the way... 
Good to hear from you!
Then, ZZZZZ is experienced both when there is simply ZZZZZ and also right as and amid all life's most dark and stormy AAAAA. "ZZZZZ" and "AAAAA" are 'not two', as we say in Zenspeak. When such happens, AAAAA just does not seem quite like dark and stormy AAAAA as it did before. 