Zen teachings are radical. They go to the root of our suffering and offer the deepest freedom imaginable. There is something so utterly honest and true about them. They speak to our deepest heart’s longing for awakening. They speak to the freedom and joy we intimate as our true nature.

What makes the Zen teachings so radical is that they go against all of our conditioning. They are meant to dismantle all the ways we have learned to keep this small self safe. Not because the “self” is bad or wrong, but because the sense of separation we call “myself” –this self that we have been conditioned to protect–is based on a misperception, a lie, a contraction, a reification of space and light.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that we are this contraction. Believing that this contraction is us. We invest in protecting it. We defend it against other people and the world. We even go so far as to defend this contracted sense of self, from our own bodies and other parts of ourselves. All this effort to protect, further reifies this contraction–this sense of self.

But we aren’t this contraction. We never were. The Zen teachings provide a direct path to free us from our mistaken identity. 

Our bodies may contract, our minds may contract, our hearts may contract and what usually happens is we identify with this contraction. We feel the contraction in our bodies and we say or think “my tension.” We feel it in our minds and say “I am..or I am not.” We feel it in our hearts and think “I’m anxious, I don’t like this, I want…”.

In its more elaborated form the contraction can be experienced all over as a feeling of not being good enough, of failure, of something’s wrong, of not knowing what to do, of unworthiness, or one of the other core beliefs.

In its still more elaborated expression, this contraction is worrying about how it will fare in old age, continually trying to get all of the ducks in an order, to achieve a sense of enduring security, reputation, etc.

This is how the mind works. Since I left the monastery, I keep catching my mind in periods of relative quiet and peace–what are you going to do when you are old, and single and can’t work anymore (flashes to a sad scene of me, alone in a nursing home)–or more pressing what’s the plan if the current plan doesn’t work…avalanche of images of all the ways things could go “wrong”.

We are not this contraction. This contraction is simply a contraction of body, mind, thought and then the habits that flow from there. Zen practice empowers us to recognize the contraction for what it is–thought, habit energy, feelings, emotions, body sensations, beliefs–if we can name it, it’s not who we truly are.

I appreciate how practice has helped me take the backward step into awareness. To recognize what is thought, and what is awareness. The contraction of I am, is usually the first thought in this cascade. The backward step into awareness, is a backward step into spaciousness. It is from here we can look into the nature of mind, body, thought, the nature of awareness itself. 

This is where the teachings of luminosity begin. Dogen Zenji says:

Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward

This is the practice of zazen, the practice-awakening of the Zen school.

In the Vast Inherent Radiance Discourse7 in the chapter on Dharani it says,

Then the Generous One said to Vajrasattva, 'The aspiration for Awakening is the ground, great compassion is the root, and skillful means the fruition. Master of secrets, what is Awakening? It is knowing your mind as it is. This is utter, complete and perfect Awakening in which nothing is attained. Why? The form of Awakening is unknowable and inconceivable. Why? Because Awakening is formless. Master of secrets, the formlessness of all things is just this form of Space.

What is Awakening? It is knowing your mind as it is.

Our attention in life is often directed outwards. Our modern lives are full of information, stories, podcasts and news. We have much more support to follow the lives of celebrities, politicians and facebook “friends” than we do to follow our own minds. Another aspect of the radicalness of Zen, is this homecoming, coming back to ourselves, back to our senses. Meeting ourselves as if meeting an old, sometimes long lost, friend.

Part of the work of zazen is re-establishing connection to our own inner community. Offering compassion, witnessing, acceptance to the parts of us who we have neglected, pushed away, attempted to disown. This includes the inner critic, who is often a sacred child inside, who learned to protect us and keep us safe through criticism and hate. Dharma Teacher Tara Brach said one way that she meets the inner critic’s criticism is to gently place her hand on her heart and whisper, forgiven, forgiven. Learning to relate to ourselves with compassion and acceptance is radical.

This is part of knowing our minds. Once we are able to be with ourselves without immediately fleeing or fighting. We can begin to look deeper into our minds. To see what these thoughts, body sensations, beliefs, sense of self, are made of. 

This is the path of wonder + luminosity. It’s bringing the light of attention to bear on the assumptions we habitually make about reality. 

First we make assumptions that our thoughts are us, taking the backward step and stabilizing attention in the present helps us put thoughts in their place. As another sense happening. Noticing thought as sensation, touch, image, sound (how do you experience thought?) 

I found this radical when a teacher suggested I could notice thought in this way. Oh you can actually turn your awareness towards thought and observe what they are made of. I had thought that if I did that I would just get swept away into its content. Instead what I found is another way of relating to my thoughts, as just another sense-object in the field of sensation.

The next assumption that we make, is that thoughts are thoughts–ie an object out there, and we are a subject in here that is aware of thoughts. This subject/object duality is an assumption we bring into our meditation practice. Zazen can help us see through this dualistic sense of separation.

Then, even more subtly we make assumptions about this self subject, this in-hereness. We take its perspective and sense of experience for granted. 

Another radical aspect of Zen is that we are invited to look into even the deepest and most long standing assumptions.

Because we all have access to awareness. We can look into our nature. We can heed the radical call to return home, to our basic fundamental nature. To the inconceivable freedom that we are. Zazen is immediate, in that it can only be practiced–now-here, right where we are. Zazen is also a process, as we practice it, it deepens and matures. How fortunate for us to have encountered these teachings. It is my deep prayer that we feel empowered to actualize the freedom, creativity and love that they offer–for ourselves, all beings, this universe and beyond!