Perhaps a fellow sits down to Zazen for the first time who is a violent man, a thief and alcoholic. He hears that “
all is Buddha just as it is“, so thinks that Zen practice means “
all is a jewel just as it is, so thus maybe I can simply stay that way, just drink and beat my wife and rob strangers“. Well, no, because while a thief and wife-beater is just that … a thief and wife-beater, yet a Buddha nonetheless … still, someone filled with such anger and greed and empty holes to fill in their psyche is not really “
at peace with how things are” (or he would not beat and steal and need to self-medicate). In other words, he takes and craves and acts out anger and frustration because he does not truly understand “
peace with this life as it is” … because if he did, he would not need to be those violent, punishing ways.
If the angry, violent fellow truly knew “
completeness“, truly had “
no hole in need of filling“, “
nothing lacking” everything “complete just as it is” … well, he simply would not have need to do violence, steal and take drugs to cover his inner pain.
You see … kind of a self-fulfilling Catch-22.
Thus, our “
goalless sitting” in Zazen is
–not– merely sitting on our butts, self-satisfied, feeling that we “
just have to sit here and we are Buddha“. Far from it. It is, instead, to-the-marrow dropping of all need and lack. That is very different. Someone’s “just sitting around” doing nothing, going no where, complacent or resigned, giving up, killing time, is not in any way the same as “Just Sitting” practice wherein nothing need be done, with no where that we can go or need go, for all is faced ‘head on’ and energetically as already whole and complete … even while we realize that the choices we make in life have consequences, that how we choose to walk the walk in this life, and the directions we choose to go, do make a difference!
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