Navigation bar
  Print Start Previous page
 4 of 4 
Next page End 1 2 3 4  

once or twice a week, or once a day, or three or four times a day or for a few
decades but whose entire lives became no other than what zazen is.
I know that many people would prefer to think about Zen than to sit. Or to try
to make Zen into a religion of being kind and warm and friendly yet coolly and
strangely and provocatively mystical. Or to say that continuous practice is whatever
you do because you do it in a Zen kind of Way and so everything is your practice,
daily life is your practice. We find these kinds of things said in glossy magazines and
in most contemporary books on Zen. Even people who actually practise zazen of
some kind often confuse themselves about this. But it’s all very simple, really.
There’s nothing to be confused about. Zen is the continuous practice, in each and
every moment, of the instructions of the Buddhas and Awakened Ancestors. If you
have ever seen the frown on my face when leafing through a Buddhist magazine,
imagine the much darker scowl of Mazu, of Dongshan, of Fayan and Yunju. 
Let’s hear what Eihei Dogen zenji has to say to us.
In the great Way of the Awakened Ancestors the most important thing has
always been continuous practice. Beginningless, endless, and seamless, there
is not even the slightest gap between rousing the mind which seeks the Way,
practice, Awakening, and nirvana. Continuous practice is an endless wheel
turning. It is not forced out by your own effort or someone else’s effort.
Continuous practice is stainless.
There are various ways we can delineate and mark out stages or aspects of
practice. There is the eightfold path. There is beginning the practice through the
stirring of some recognition of what the Dharma presents. There is accomplishing the
practice, Awakening and fruition. The Indian texts are teeming with categories and
numbered lists all buzzing and humming. But they are all part of a seamless whole if
we are actually talking about actual practice. In a single round of zazen there can be
many moments of confusion and clarity but all of these are arising within zazen.
When we try to think about our practice, we stand too far away from it to see it
clearly. If we grab at this moment of clarity and try to deny that moment of
confusion we are standing too close and are overshadowing the moment with our
presence. Practice as a whole is only understood through practice and practice is a
turning, a movement, an activity that doesn’t begin when you sit down or end when
you stand up.
Continuous practice is not something you can do at all since you continuously
rise and fall and come and go moment after moment. One moment you’re struggling
and the next you’re collapsing. You tend to be whatever state rises and falls. When
there is a gap in the continuity of tendency, the beginningless and endless energy
and vastness of continuous practice beyond habitual patterns is seen. True practice
is not something that you do, and it is not that someone else will or can do it for you
either. You are rising and falling, coming and going but continuous practice is the
embodiment of what is always true about this coming and going. When zazen is not
stained by pushing and pulling, is not dragged under what rises or falls, is unclouded
by delusions of self and other, then this bodymind turns the Wheel of the Way.