![]() uncovered by continuous practice is who you are, which is the luminosity that is
radiant as every one and every thing that is coming and going.
Dogen zenji says,
You may be unaware of what circumstances are behind your practice
but it is continuous practice that actualizes you even in your not knowing. The
reason why you do not understand them is that continuous practice is not
some special thing. The interdependent arising of conditions is continuous
practice, but continuous practice is not conditionally generated. You should
diligently come to understand this.
When we think about it, we can never really understand why we practise Zen.
In fact, the more that we define what we do and why by the flickering of thoughts
and tendency, the less we understand anything about Zen practice. When we just
want to hide, just want everything to be stable and certain and unquestioned, then
practice makes no sense at all to us. If we are looking for some special mystical state
of mind to define ourselves with, practice will always leave us unsatisfied. And even
when we have found that we have no choice but to practice and to follow it through
to the end, wherever it leads and beyond, to the end of our days and beyond, we still
cannot understand it. How is it possible that someone so filled with fear, with
grasping, with insincerity, could have ever come into contact with and be allowed to
have anything to do with this incredibly and incomprehensibly wonderful, dignified,
tender, and vast practice?
We cannot make sense of it, except through seeing, hearing, touching,
tasting, smelling, thinking and feeling all together as a whole. Gyoji is not some
special thing, some extraordinary event to be experienced. Continuous practice is
simply the endless activity which appears as bodies and minds, as breath and sky, as
sitting and walking. It cannot be understood by trying to stand under it or over it or
behind or in front of it, It can only be understood by sitting up straight as it, standing
as it, thinking and seeing and moving as it.
The interdependent arising of conditions, which means that arises because
this arises, is itself continuous practice. But the wheel of continuous practice is
seamless, it is an endless wheel turning. It doesnt come about because of this or
that, self or other. The endless activity of continuous practice is always unstained
and through it is released the ten directions of the world. A single moment of your
continuous practice upholds and releases Buddhas and Ancestors and opens the Way
for yourself and all beings to move past all conditions. Seeing with the eyes of
continuous practice we can see that each being abides as a Buddha, transcends
being Buddha, realizes the mind as Buddha, and is perfected as a Buddha, endlessly.
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