if you walk long enough, thoughts disappear and you become walking.

Two nights ago I walked home from the train station – about two miles – late at night. I had parked at a train station closer to home, but would have had to wait another 45 minutes in the city for a train to take me the extra two miles, so I chose the farther train station figuring I would take a cab to the car. I was tired before the walk but it was peaceful and a cool night. The universe said walking was the thing to do.
Earlier in the day I was driving my daughters somewhere and asked aloud:
“Is it better to stay straight here or turn?”
Not prying her face from her iPad, my older girl said, “um, I don’t know”.
“Don’t worry darlin. I was asking the universe.”
pause
“okay Dad. you just keep talkin to the universe and let me know how that goes.”

Of course, she was onto something and missing it at the same time. Are you talking to the universe, or listening to it? I think Dogen is recommending listening.
“The real way circulates everywhere; how could it require practice or enlightenment? Nothing is separate from this very place; why journey away? And yet, if you miss the mark by a strand of hair, you are as distant as heaven from earth. … If you are wandering about in your head, you may miss the vital path of letting your body leap. … Take the backward step and turn the light inward. … Do not be concerned with who is wise or who is stupid. Do not discriminate the sharp from the dull. Practice realization is not defiled with specialness; it is a matter for every day. … Do not judge right or wrong. Stop conscious endeavor and analytical introspection. Do not try to become a Buddha. How could being a Buddha be limited to sitting or not sitting? To practice wholeheartedly is the true endeavor of the way. … Now sit steadfastly and think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Beyond thinking. This is the essential art of zazen. … Know that the true dharma emerges of itself, clearing away hindrances and distractions.”

My favorite part of the Lord’s prayer is: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

You can either listen to the universe, or you can talk to it. I don’t know which is better. But I know that if you walk long enough, your thoughts disappear and you become walking.

“It cannot be reached by intellect – much less can those who lack trust or who lack wisdom know it. …. Know that fundamentally you do not lack unsurpassed enlightenment, and you are replete with it continuously. But you may not realize it, and may be in the habit of arousing discriminatory views, and regard them as real. Without noticing, you miss the great way, and your efforts will be fruitless. Such discriminatory views create flowers of emptiness.”

For a man who espouses direct realization, Dogen sure knows how to use a large number of words. It must have been difficult or him to have spent sooo much time with a topic, completely understand it and have no real way to transmit the knowledge to someone else except to say: “Sit still and pay attention. Pretty soon you will get it.” This is, after all, the heart of the matter. Sit still and pay attention. Eventually you will stumble onto your discriminatory views. Where do you begin? Four and a half billion years ago when some membrane formed creating an inside and an outside of a something – was that the first discriminatory act that has led to our delusion, anger and greed? Or was it some parent child quest for pleasing? This is where I begin to understand the Buddha’s teachings because it doesn’t matter what the answer is. He wasn’t interested in finding that answer because he considered it unknowable. The fact is the discrimination, the sense of separate self, the sense that You are somehow not linked to every other aspect of the universe and that You should have something permanent that IS separate from everything else – this is the root of all suffering, all dissatisfaction.

All the reading and writing about it doesn’t bring realization, I can attest to that. Yesterday was a challenge. This, of course, means I was a challenge, because there is nothing to tolerate but me. I was barely patient. There is such a mess to life, to work, that accomplishing something of substance within the mess often seems an insurmountable task. Perhaps the way, for me at least, is to simply keep an eye on the path and expect us to fall off it and keep acting as sheep dog keeping us all together.

I wonder if the border collie is unhappy with the crazy wandering sheep. Is that what Joshu was asking?

I sit, every day that I can, and follow my breath.  My thoughts come and go – some are pleasant and some are worries that I have collected over the years – but the space between breaths is where I find peace.  The waiting, pure and simple waiting without expecting anything, is where I find peace.  When I first started sitting I became very worried with my leg falling asleep.  I imagined that I would sit right through the pressure on my nerve until it failed to return and I had a permanent foot drop.  I was very afraid of this for awhile, in every way possible.  How would I explain the damage to my colleagues at work?  Or my family?  When I said that I had sat so still without moving even when the leg was going numb that it was permanently damaged I was sure they would consider me crazy.  I considered myself sort of crazy at the idea too.  What part of my super-sized ego was so concerned with getting meditation “right” that I was going to ignore the reality of my leg dying?  This mixture of debate and fear and fear of failure went on for some time, but since I was sitting I have no idea if it took seconds or minutes or the better part of an hour.

Irony:  In my work as a trauma surgeon I often have to amputate limbs to save a person’s life.  Talking with them about this is difficult, but I have often stressed to them that they are the same person after the amputation they were before. You are not your leg.  Nor your hair, nor nose nor eyes nor even your face, though we often define each other by some compilation of those things.  This takes my patients some time to wrestle with, and not everyone gets there.  I don’t always have this conversation with the patient – sometimes it is with a family member who is afraid of the change and they don’t grasp it any easier.  Often I am asked by a concerned family member, in the setting of being able to save a limb:   “Are they going to have a limp?”  I answer “yes”, and then follow pretty quickly with “but so what?”  What is a limp?  What is your right way of walking?

Then it occurred to me:  would I trade my leg for pure peace and happiness?   If my leg died and fell off, but I gained insight and wisdom and peace and happiness, well … that seemed an acceptable trade.  So I let go. 

There is always something to hold onto.  Second after second, another item to grasp arises in the mind.  They can be grasped equally well by sitting still or by running around.  One way of living is to choose your side of the coin, the other is to be the coin as it spins through the air before it falls.  Whatever you choose will be your True Expression.