I’ve been enjoying Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki and thought I’d copy down an interesting quote (and my thoughts about it) and put them up here.

What intrigues me so much about this book, is the different approach to Zen. Most literature I’ve read on Zen seems to rely heavily on koans and symbolic syllogisms based on Japanese culture … a background that I’m not familiar with. Suzuki’s approach is to teach Zen from direct, physical experiences. While I’d hate to see it in a yellow “Dummies” book, it does seem to be more practical.

He states, “Zen practice is the direct expression of our true nature.” and elsewhere he clarifies this by saying that “You do not meditate to gain enlightenment, you meditate because you are enlightened.” The shift here is that enlightenment (that illusive goal of Zen) is not really goal at all. It is just our true nature, and we just need to be true to that nature.

Ok, enough of an introduction, let’s get on to the quote…

When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. We say “inner world” or “outer world” but actually there is just one whole world… The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, “I breathe,” the “I” is extra. There is no you to say “I.”

Our culture and our perspective is very concerned with dividing, labeling and valuing everything we encounter. The Buddhist view is that these things are really just a part of us. I read a story about a person who laid on her bed quietly with her eyes closed and tried to figure out the exact point where her skin ended and the air began. She couldn’t do it. While we are aware of and can feel our bodies, our bodies aren’t like cars with hard skins. Look at it this way, a spec of dust gets inhaled … is it inside my body? Yes, but not really as it is just in the space within my throat. The membrane between us and the world is too thin.

And let’s not get into the fact that the stuff that makes me up is the same stuff that makes up everything around me. The carbon in my fingers are the same as the carbon in the desk they rest upon. The DNA that makes me up is almost the same as the tree that supplied the wood for this desk. And let’s not forget that the matter that makes me up is not the same matter I started out with. While we shed our skins daily, we shed every cell in our body after just a few years. So, what am I really?