Ordinary Zen

Over the course of this practice, my Zen has gone through several changes, mutations, and transformations... to arrive, more or less, back at the beginning.. but very different than it was at the outset of this practice.

Zen on the cushion, without Zen in day to day, ordinary, mundane life is utterly useless.

It is only when we take our 'cushion-Zen' or 'Zabuton-Zen' and bring it into our ordinary day to day living that it matures and grows and becomes 'life' rather then 'zen'.

It is the dissolving of the boundary... the removal of subject/object that realizes the practice and brings it to life.

We have a pure experience.. hungry.. tired... happy.. pain.. cold.. what have you... it is alive, and real... but, right on the tail of that, we have a thought about the experience... we 'think' about it in a stream of words.... and in so doing, tear the universe in two.

Remove the words... and what do you have?

There are no boundaries... and a bird does not leave a trail when it flies from one tree to another.

The 'I' that I consider when contemplating myself is no more than a story that I have concocted using words... it is what I have convinced myself to believe...

But... at the end of the day... it is only a stream of words.

Remove the words.. and what is left?

EVERYTHING!