Today, Roshi wanted to take a moment to discuss the foundation of our pratice, Zazen itself.

Some people say you can either live an authentic, real life and be present; or you can continually be obsessed with distractions and mental creations. It’s an either / or situation.

But this is not true, because you can’t escape living your life. From your first breath to your last, you’re living your life. Even if your brain is full of distractions, you still sleep at night. Whether you sleep well or not, you’re going to sleep. You’re going to eat, whether you eat well or not. Life continues whether we like it or not.

So the question is really: as we’re living our life, what is the quality of our life? How do we distinguish between what is our actual life and these other thoughts? 

The good news is, it’s actually not that hard to distinguish between the two. If, as you go through your day, your brain is landing on a subject, or an idea, or a topic that brings you some unease — for example a relationship, or a fight that ruins your whole day — if you were to remove that thought, would life discontinue? 

The answer is usuallly no, which means it’s just a distraction. It is mental garbage, noise. It is Zatsunen.

We still have to make our meals, and live our life. And for for many of us, if we’ve distinguished between the two, it’s a little bit shocking how much time we spend on all those other things, that actually aren’t life itself. 

Roshi offered the analogy of a burger.

Imagine life is a burger. As we’re looking at this burger, we have all these condiments to choose from. We have our pissed-off ketchup. We have our jealous mayonnaise. We have our relish of discontent. We keep adding these flavors to our burger, and that’s our life.

We keep piling these things on to the point where we can’t taste the burger anymore. We essentially have a condiment sandwich. We cannot enjoy the burger anymore.

The burger was served to us. But the condiments we chose. 

So our practice is about removing some of those condiments, and getting to the burger. 

People come to Zazen with many misunderstandings. It’s not about having no thoughts. We are human, we have thoughts. The question is, what do we do with these thoughts? Dogen recognized that we have thoughts — it only becomes a problem when we grasp them and ruminate on them.

What is the difference between the open hand of thought and the closed hand? If you have a thought and keep having that thought, if it keeps repeating itself, you’re then grasping that thing. You’re attached to it. 

If you have an open-hand approach, when the thought arises you examine it, see its true nature, and let it go.

Roshi gave another example. A finch had built its nest on a wreath on Roshi’s front door. Unfortunately, because of the many teenagers in the house, this door is a high traffic area, and on many days, he would find a broken egg on the ground.

One day, the finch had had enough, and flew into the house. The teenagers were very excited, and yelling, and the finch fluttered around the house even more.

Roshi approached the bird with calmness, and took it in his hand. He let one of his children pet the bird, then he let it go outside. That is Zazen.

He told another story of a young artist in Tokyo. She was a great painter, winning many prizes by the age of 18 or 19. She had exhibitions where people would buy her paintings right and left. The  woman was able to live this life because her parents, who were older and lived in the countryside, had some money and were able to support her in her craft to become that good, and successful.

After a certain point, her parents were not doing well. She went back to the countryside to care for them, thinking she would paint during the day and care for them at night.

She lived with her parents, and they gradually got worse and worse.  She felt really disconnected from her life in Tokyo by then, and over time, the parents’ fortune went away.

She decided to move back to Tokyo. Her idea was to bring her parents with her, and relaunch her career. So she came back to Tokyo, did some exhibitions, and no one cared. The critics had no interest. No one wanted to buy her paintings, and she wasn’t winning prizes. 

It drove her crazy. The parents’ money was gone, and she had to get a part-time job. She got more and more depressed and frustrated and angry at her life. She was so promising and successful, just a handful of years ago, and now it was the complete reverse. She was taking care of her parents, and had no money.

She went to her Roshi for some advice. And he scolded her.

This is all your fault, he said. Why are you painting? It is bringing you such misery.

It is your expectation — all the attachments you have — about the money, and the awards, and the accolades from the audiences that you’re not getting anymore, which is making you miserable. 

So you’re not an artist, he said. You had this other identity before.

Your unhappiness is completely manufactured, he told the woman. If you just loved painting as much as you say you did, then you’d be perfectly happy having a part time job supporting yourself, and taking care of your painting. 

That’s where the condiments come in. The beauty of Zazen is that you can sit down and realize okay, this is real, this is my actual life.

Don’t feel bad if you had a bad sit, said Roshi. Don’t feel guilty. Just open the hand.