“It is difficult to receive and accept oneness because human speculation doesn’t catch it. But if you practice with full devotion, finally you will come to the final goal—silence. When you touch the core of existence and see the fundamental truth, there is nothing to say; you are just present in silence. This silence really makes your life alive. Then, even though you don’t say anything, your silence has lots of words, demonstrating the truth in a physical and mental way, which can be seen by others. This is Buddha’s teaching appearing through the form of a person who sees into the pure and clear depth of human existence.” ― Dainin Katagiri (Each Moment Is the Universe)

Dainin Katagiri (1928 – 1990) has always been the teacher who could take me the most directly to silence with his words, demonstrating the true paradoxical nature of Zen.  Katagiri titled his first two books Returning to Silence followed by You Have to Say Something.  He was a profound teacher with a great sense of humor.  Both his profoundness and his humor arose from his dwelling in the space of silence where all things connect, giving rise to words and actions, which reflect the truth of “the pure and clear depth of human existence.”  The third and fourth books of his teachings were Each Moment is the Universe and The Light That Shines Through Infinity, the titles pointing us to the truth of existence beneath and beyond the noise and distraction of the man-made world that so confuses us.

There is a Zen parable which tells us the realization of Zen is like discovering there is a pure land of our true nature where the point of Buddhism, the cessation of mental suffering, is realized.  This land, however, is like a shore which lies across a river, and we must cross this river to arrive at this other shore, and to do this, we need a raft.  The teaching goes on to say that having arrived at the other shore, we must leave the raft behind if we are to explore and come to know this new land.  To carry the raft would only encumber the exploration.

In this parable, we are beginning this journey from our usual confusing world of conventional and hectic striving for happiness and avoidance of unhappiness.  This is the shore of the life we have been living.  We have heard of a philosophy called Zen coming from the far reaches of Asia that promises to take us beyond confusion and unhappiness to a quite different kind of way of experiencing life, a way which offers real peace, that is deeply spiritual without being a religion in the usual sense.  In this parable this is called “the other shore.”  And so, we decide to read about Zen and to take up its essential practice, meditation.  This is the beginning of building our raft.

Our own confused and conflicted mind is like the river – the width, current, and turbulence of the river, unique to each person, and it is this confused and noisy mind we must cross to get to the other shore, the shore of peace and clarity.  What we do not know when we begin is that this other shore is silence, the dimension of consciousness which lies beneath our confused and noisy mind.  If we read the great teachers, like Katagiri, we have heard this, but we are unable to know it, perhaps even to believe it, for all we know is life inside our active mind.  So, in hope and on faith we begin to build our raft studying the teachings of Zen and most importantly engaging the practice of zazen – Zen style meditation. 

The word “Zen” means “sitting” and so we must stop our running around, physically, and mentally, to “sit.” We must sit right here, right now, in the middle of our life, in the middle of the Universe, to contemplate who we are and what being human really is, just as did The Siddhartha Gotama, 2600 years ago.  As he sat, entering deeper and deeper into silence and stillness, into the infinite mystery which is a moment, he became “Buddha,” the word in the Sanskrit language that means “Awakened One.”  Our goal, as was Siddhartha’s, is to wake up out of the trance of conditioned mind, what we have been told we are and what life is, to discover what lies beneath these stories of being a confused and anxious human in a world with too much cruelty, conflict, and contradiction, to find within us a completely sane, peaceful, and wise human being. 

So, we set aside twenty or forty or sixty minutes to stop running around in our life and we sit. We engage and inquire into our unruly mind.  We find insight.  We find peace.  We may find this moment in awareness is our true self.  Then we go back to our lives, perhaps a little calmer and with some new perspective. Eventually, we learn to “meditate” in any situation, for “sitting” is really a relationship to mind, but, in starting out, and thereafter in deepening our exploration, we sit in the Zen manner called Zazen, quiet and erect, eyes half or fully closed.  We focus our attention at first on our breathing to corral the wayward mind.  Then we enter into an inquiring relationship with the activity of the mind.  Who is this anxious, conniving, striving, wanting, sometimes happy, sometimes miserable, sometimes angry or despairing, often bored or lonely, insecure person generating these thoughts?  And who is it that sees this mental activity and has perspective on it, that sees yet is not caught in the thoughts?  Who am I?  What am I? 

The teachings tell me I am Buddha, as is everyone.  How can this be?  We sit in this manner because, as the teachers tell us, this is the optimal way to meet ourselves, and this meeting of ourselves is the real purpose of Zen.  If you want to meet the Buddha within you, it helps to sit like the Buddha, erect, fully relaxed yet brightly alert, ready to meet your true self, your Buddha-self, here and now. So, we sit like Buddha, and eventually, ah, yes, we begin to see and feel Buddha.

“Who are you?” is the greatest of Zen questions or “koans.”  We sit and we meet ourselves in the form of our unruly mind and undisciplined body resisting the instruction to just sit and be quiet.  Yet, we meet silence and stillness as well.  We meet the silent mind which looks compassionately upon the noisy mind, and we realize there are two types of mind to this human life.  There is this noisy mind we have been believing is who we are, and there is this silent mind, a realm of intelligent dynamic stillness which sees and envelops the noisy mind in its peace, wisdom, and compassion. 

This mind, this “buddha-mind” says nothing.  It just looks on in silence, yet it speaks without words, without thoughts.  It is the realm of wisdom, of knowing.  We begin to realize we are our own raft, and each time we sit, we begin, with the first conscious breath, to build the raft again and venture out onto the river, into the current of our thinking mind and self-centered ego.  We begin to realize we are both the river and the raft.  We will also come to know that we are the other shore, the shore of peace, wisdom, compassion, and insight. The raft of Zen is taking us to our true self where we discover we are everything, all the noise and the silence, the self-centered foolishness of everyone and the wise and compassionate Buddha that is the Universe having a human experience. We begin to “receive and accept oneness.”

Buddhism emphasizes that Buddha resides within all beings, not just humans, but all beings – the birds, the fish, the deer, and bear, the squirrel, the mosquito, and amoeba, the world of plants included, even the rocks, and mountains, rivers, and wind.  In fact, we begin to realize in our silent knowing that all the Universe is in the silence and the noise we find within ourselves.  We begin to realize in the silence which envelops everything, including ourselves, there is one great silent Being that generates all beings, all the everything that makes all the sounds of the world. 

“Buddha” realizes “dharma,” which means the natural and true way of the Universe, and all beings are naturally and only their natural selves – except humans.  Humans have this evolutionary capacity other creatures of nature do not have, and it is a noisy, self-seeking, very creative mind that imagines itself outside of dharma.  We imagine and think about all kinds of things, mostly about what is desirable to us and what is frightening to us, what will make us “more” and what we fear will make us “less.”  Birds and bears and daffodils do not do this.  They all abide within silent minds doing their bird or bear or daffodil life without thinking about it.  Humans think about these things and confuse and frighten themselves.  This too, of course, is what is naturally human, but when we do not also know our silence, we do not know our true and complete selves or the true and complete world around us, and we feel lost and incomplete.  Buddhism calls this “dukkha,” – suffering.

Zen is “returning to silence,” to know ourselves, to know ourselves and the world in its completeness, and with this knowing, we end our suffering. This is the other shore.  And when we arrive through study and meditation practice, after we have crossed over into silence, we must leave the raft of practice formality behind to explore this new land of natural wonder, of sound and movement, all experienced within its ground of underlying silence and connectedness. We “have to say something.” We, of course, return naturally to zazen, and to contemplation, for it is the natural raft of stillness and silence which IS the other shore, and we know and can feel it as our true self, but now, Zen becomes everyday life, magnificent, mysterious, and powerful.  This is how we become ourselves – natural and wondrous human beings.  Katagiri describes this dynamic presence thusly: “Silence is not just being silent.  You are silent, but simultaneously there are many words, many explanations, and many representations there.  Dynamic actions, both physical and mental are there.  In other words, silence is something deep and also very active.  In Japanese, the word for this silence is mokurai.  Moku means “silence” and “rai” means “thunder.”  So, silence is quiet, but there is an enormous voice like thunder there.” (Each Moment is the Universe).