Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice

by Kosho Uchiyama

Zen is one long inquiry into how to live a truly full life. Life is universal, yet we feel separate from it and from each other.

No matter how sincerely we practice, hardship is hardship. But simultaneously, we are in absolute comfort like the unperturbed sky and we do not need to think of our life in terms of difficulty and ease.

The past, present, and future are all contained within the present. We have to realize that there is nothing outside of the present.

In other words, you feel a hollowness in your life because you have always lived only in relation to other people and things, and haven’t been living out your true self.”9

“The foundation of the self is only the self.”

From the standpoint of Western thought, where everything must be defined rationally, a reality that goes beyond definitions is nonsense and utterly impossible, but from the point of view of Zen practice, the very power that goes beyond just thinking and creating definitions with words must be the reality of life itself.

We are always living out the reality of our own lives, although we very often lose sight of this reality, getting caught up in fantasies of the past or in our relationships with others. We end up being dragged around by those fantasies and by our comparisons of ourselves with others.

If we think about it, there is no doubt that everyone is always living out the reality of life. But so often we live blindly, so caught up in our thoughts that we think they alone are what is real and complete.

This is what a true spiritual practice is about: not spirit or mind separated from the body and the world, but a true way of life.

As long as we base our lives on distinguishing between the better way and the worse way, we can never find absolute peace such that whatever happens is all right.

Instead, we analyze this now. We place ourselves within the illusive flow of time from past to future and become bound by our relationships with others, bound by the force of habit of the past, and bound by our goals for the future.

We must neither oppose nor deny the existence of human emotions and worldly ideas.

This is important because often people are adults only physiologically; spiritually, they’re still children. When childish people get married, it’s only natural that they’ll have trouble, because they expect others to take care of them.