The Dharma Gate of No Restriction
If you want to realize what the Buddha taught, then simply: when eating, just eat; when walking, just walk; when sitting, just sit; when thinking, just think; when talking, just talk, and so on. That’s it, gather yourself together, diligently apply yourself to directness, and let your intrinsic nature take over.
Though it’s neither easy or difficult to just live, it is all involving and vitally alive. In giving yourself thoroughly to just this, you are grabbed by just this. In ceasing all of your involvement with a discriminatory mind (which is what just living entails), you are turning towards your true nature and its thoroughness will immediately be proving its reliability, whether you think that you recognize this, or not. The liberated qualities of your unborn nature are beyond whatever you can imagine, and it’s just, boundless, everyday, truth.
This most straightforward manifesting of life (zazen), is what the Buddha taught, and all practices and numberless teachings come from this. It’s faith proven in practice and experience, it’s not found in your thoughts and feelings about life.
Willard Lee April 2024