Awake?

With palms together,


Good Morning Everyone,

Last night was wonderful. We had five of us in the Zendo for zazen. It was good to see zafus meeting butts. Someone asked a very basic question. Usually, these are the kind I like. The practitioner asked, “What does it mean to be “awake”? Well, I do not like this basic question. It’s rather like asking “What is Zen?”



Questions like this are really impossible to answer. As son as we say anything it is wrong. I think of lightning striking within a few yards of me: my response to that event is what I mean by being awake. Or my response to the sudden, jarring out of sleep, or the sudden dropping of a plate to the floor. All senses open and exactly present: no mind involved. To say anything about the interior world of that experience is to take us further away from the experience itself.



Then mind rushes in to fill the vacuum. Our eyes close once more, but not all the way. We cannot maintain a startled, mind-not-involved, state for very long, but we can maintain a sense of openness and wonder. We can maintain an open heart. We can be present and upright. We can practice what Uchiyama refers to as “opening the hand of thought.”



Be well