“People who sit for zazen trying to become something, not letting go of the things they are holding on to but trying to obtain or attain a certain state of mind, move further and further away from what this clarifying of mind, this repentance, can do. When we try to find some sate of mind that we have experienced before, or we have an idea about what our state of mind should be and strive to attain that goal, our sitting becomes more and more cumbersome; when we cannot the state of mind we think we should be attaining, the weight of the ego becomes heavier and heavier. This process I am describing
of clarifying our behavior
is a way of emptying rather than of putting on. I try always to bring this into my teaching because people are often unaware of this way of practicing. I feel that much of the behavior that creates problems in the monastery comes from the lack of this type of practice, from people doing their practice without ever reviewing their behavior or looking carefully at how the behavior is reflecting their zazen. We have a great gift from society to be able to spend so much time doing zazen, but zazen also allows us the opportunity to look at our behavior and clearly see how we are manifesting our practice. If we do not use it for that, we are wasting an excellent chance and will be endlessly doing a form of dead-end, closed-circuit zazen that exists only as an idea of something we think we are tying to pursue.”
