The Three Things the Rest of Us Should Know about Zen Training: The Value of Zazen Meditation (Personal Transformation series Book 2)

by Dennis E. Bradford

Is a whole its parts? Well, yes and no. This is the glory and misery of conceptualization.

The shift in perspective removes the problem. There's no problem on the whole level or on the parts level; there's only a problem when the two levels are mixed.

There never was a real problem; instead, there was a conceptual problem.

"Paradox exists only in language, in the words and ideas that describe reality. In reality itself there are no paradoxes."

The putative gap is a delusion due to a certain deluded state of mind caused by attachment to the ego/I. It's a matter of difference-in-identity.

"While we are fully aware of and observing deeply an object, the boundary between the subject who observes and the object being observed gradually dissolves, and the subject and object become one. This is the essence of meditation."

First, the separate self disappears. I am not only impermanent but also empty! This is no mere thought: it's the way it is. There is no longer any gap between me and everything else. I am everything else; there’s no separation. I am intimately connected to everything else. Similarly, nothing else has a separate self either. Every other individual is also empty of a separate self and devoid of permanence.

Second, realizing (not merely thinking!) the truth of this perspective immediately undermines all desires. If I am impermanent and empty, how could I grasp anything else? If everything else is also impermanent and empty, how could anything else be grasped? Right here, right now, there is everything necessary.

This explains why Nhich Nhat Hanh wrote: "If you are not satisfied with what is available in the present moment, you will never be satisfied by attaining what you t...

Emptiness permits fullness.

Objections from the ignorant and the lazy should simply be ignored.