This is certainly a departure from the way you were trained. Many Zen practices are about suppression - sheer concentration and shutting out things. I realized that what you shut out is exactly what turns around and runs you. So I began trying to get students to work in a different way, and it proved to be effective. Dogen [the thirteenth-century Zen master] said that to study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self - your thoughts, etc. - is to forget the self. And to forget the self is . . . what? It’s to be enlightened by all things.
Suppose somebody has hurt my feelings - or so I think. What I want to do is to go over and over and over that drama so I can blame them and get to be right. To turn away from such thinking and just experience the painful body is to forget the self. If you really experience something without thoughts, there is no self - there’s just a vibration of energy. When you practice like that ten thousand times, you will be more selfless. It doesn’t mean that you’re a ghost. It means that you’re much more non-reactive, in the world but not of it. Dualism transforms into non-dualism, a life of direct and compassionate functioning."
Suppose somebody has hurt my feelings - or so I think. What I want to do is to go over and over and over that drama so I can blame them and get to be right. To turn away from such thinking and just experience the painful body is to forget the self. If you really experience something without thoughts, there is no self - there’s just a vibration of energy. When you practice like that ten thousand times, you will be more selfless. It doesn’t mean that you’re a ghost. It means that you’re much more non-reactive, in the world but not of it. Dualism transforms into non-dualism, a life of direct and compassionate functioning."
Exciting insight....maybe try to practice and give it a try!
