Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice

by Kosho Uchiyama

What I want for you, the reader, is that you understand with your own intellect that Zen concerns the true depth of life that is beyond the reach of that intellect.

What is most crucial is to remember to pursue the way of the self selflessly, not for any profit. Because we concretely are universal self, there is no particular value in talking about it. Yet if we don’t make every effort to manifest it, just knowing about it is useless.

When we let go of our conceptions, there is no other possible reality than what is right now; in that sense, what is right now and here is absolute, it’s undeniable.

Dwelling here and now in this reality, letting go of all the accidental things that arise in our minds, is what I mean by “opening the hand of thought.”

Actually, all that there really is, is now. As the scenery of the present, however, there is a past, present, and future. Let me say that again: within the present, there is a past, a present, and a future. The past and future are real and alive only in the present.

People go through life thinking of themselves as members of a group or society. However, this isn’t how we really live. Actually, I bring my own world into existence, live it out, and take it with me when I die.

You might try looking at all the stuff that comes up in your head simply as secretions. All our thoughts and feelings are a kind of secretion. It is important for us to see that clearly. I’ve always got things coming up in my head, but if I tried to act on everything that came up, it would just wear me out.

Zazen is to Buddhism what prayer is to the Judeo-Christian traditions. Just as prayer is a giving up of our small petty desires and asking that God’s will be done, zazen is also a giving up of our egotistical evaluations of ourselves (whether as superior or inferior) and entrusting our life to the power of zazen as embodied in the fourth seal, all things are as they are.

We are always living out the reality of life. However, as soon as we start thinking and calculating about things, we become, in a sense, suspended from reality. That is, human beings are capable of thinking about things that are not real.

To rely on others in order to know yourself is to be unstable. Of course this does not mean you should live in some kind of isolation from others. To be isolated is just as unnatural and unstable as to live always in reference to others. Your true self is beyond either relying on others or avoiding them in order to know who you are.

The self of Western psychology is the Cartesian “I think, therefore I am.” But actually, we are, whether we think so or not, and behind the conscious self your life continues even when you are unconscious or unaware. And precisely because of that we are alive with a life that includes our thinking self.

Our whole self is the force or quality of life that enables conscious thought to arise, and it includes that personal, conscious self, but it also includes the force that functions beyond any conscious thought.

“self is what is there before you cook it up with thought.”

Ordinarily, we live just as an “I” related to the world, an “I” that has only a social appearance and only a market valuation. In other words, we find the value of our existence only in the midst of others.

The life of the self does not come about by being defined. Life lives as real experience even if it is not understood or defined.

If one thinks about a reality that exists before the definitions of speculative thought, that in itself creates a kind of definition, recreating the problem.

If we actually touch fire, we will certainly be burned, but if we merely say the word fire without actually touching it, we won’t be burned. Likewise, if we only think of the word fire, our heads will not be set ablaze. Therefore, the definition of fire, whose nature is to burn all things, cannot itself be the reality of it. Fire exists apart from its definition.

Whatever our way of life may be, that is the reality of life, so there is no possibility of living outside the reality of life. Nevertheless, it is all too possible to live losing sight of that reality, and because of that, to suffer and agonize about our lives.

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 a kind of insane reality.

In zazen we have to vividly aim at holding the correct posture, yet there is no mark to hit! Or at any rate, the person who is doing zazen never perceives whether he has hit the mark or not. If the person doing zazen thinks his zazen is really getting good, or that he has “hit the mark,” he is merely thinking his zazen is good, while actually he has become separated from the reality of his zazen. Therefore, we must always aim at doing correct zazen, without being concerned with perceiving the mark as having been hit.

So the essential point when doing zazen is to aim, full of life, at the posture of zazen with our flesh and bones while at the same time leaving everything up to the posture and letting go of thoughts.

If a thought comes to mind while we are wide awake and we chase after it, this is called thinking. And, if a thought comes to mind when we are sleepy and we drift after it, we are simply chasing after a dream in our sleep. Or we may be nodding away and at the same time thinking that although we are sleepy we are holding out and sitting as solidly as ever. What we are really doing here is just dreaming about doing zazen.

Since desires and cravings are actually a manifestation of the life force, there is no reason to hate them and try to extinguish them. And yet, if we become dragged around by them and chase after them, then our life becomes fogged over.

our day-to-day affairs, but what usually happens is that in confronting a problem we begin to struggle. And by doing so, we force ourselves into an even worse situation.

The world we live in is not something that exists independently of our thoughts and ideas. Our world and these thoughts and ideas appear to us as a unified whole. Depending on what our thoughts and ideas are, our world may appear to us in completely different ways.

“Self” is not some fixed concept regarding who you are, it is the all-inclusive self you personally wake up to. This self is the whole reality of life. Furthermore, the only thing we can wake up to as reality is the life of this whole self, and this is always self which is only self.

the force that makes my heartbeat sends blood flowing through my whole body and allows me to breathe so many times per minute. It is not something that I control or activate. The power that performs these functions works completely beyond my thoughts. Can we say this power is not me because it comes from beyond my thinking mind? It is neither a “higher power” nor some “other power,” nor is it my personal “self-power.” It is the energy of life. As long as this power is working in me, it is surely the reality of my life.

While the reality of the life of the self exists beyond the thoughts of this individual, it is at the same time the very power actually functioning as this small individual.

We are going to feel uneasy as long as we live a life of trying to get into heaven and avoid hell. It is vital to cultivate the spirit of living willingly in either situation.

In zazen we let go of thoughts, lower our level of excitement, and live the universal self just truly being self. This is the basic meaning of belief, so the very act of doing zazen is an expression of our belief.

Whether it be Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other religion in the world, a religion for this era must be able to identify and address the problems that cannot be solved by any amount of scientific progress.

That we make continuous scientific progress resulting in greater human comfort is fine, and that we possess the dissatisfaction that serves as the force for developing and progressing is also certainly a wonderful thing. The problem is that dissatisfaction with the present easily leads to impatience for our desires to be fulfilled, and that engenders a behavior of daggers drawn toward any and all competitors, resulting in the total loss of any peace in our lives.

Moreover, the content of my thoughts, which I refer to as I, has also been radically changing, from infancy to childhood, adolescence, maturity, and now in old age. Not just that—even this present I is an unceasing stream of consciousness. Yet, taken momentarily at a given time, we grasp the stream of consciousness as a fixed thing and call it I.

Impermanence is ungraspable, but this never implies nonexistence. We live within the flow of impermanence, maintaining a temporary form similar to an eddy in the flow of a river. Though the water is always flowing, the eddy, like the flame of the candle, arises out of various conditions as a form that seems to be fixed. That there is this seemingly fixed form that is based on various conditions is interdependence.

Buddhism teaches that our attachment to our self as though it were a substantial being is the source of our greed, anger, suffering, and strife. It is crucial that we reflect thoroughly on the fact that our self does not have a substantial existence; rather it has an interdependent existence.

Thought has a dual nature: thought springs from life, and yet it has the ability to think of things totally ungrounded and detached from the fact of life. This is delusion and it leads to some strange consequences.

Being detached by our thoughts from reality, we fabricate seemingly substantial and accumulable entities such as money, position, or power right in the middle of this insubstantial world.

In the zazen posture we are able to calm down, and our mental excitability diminishes. It is by nature a posture in which it is impossible to think continuously about the same thing, and the fictions we set up in our heads dissolve. Therefore, when doing zazen we just sit, letting go of everything that comes up.

Zazen has nothing to do with thinking about results. It is essential just to aim at the posture of zazen without trying to observe its effects.

“There is no reason to expect the reality of immeasurable and unbounded life to satisfy your puny little thoughts.”

we are concretely enabled to directly experience through zazen the self in which this moment is one with eternity.

Taking as reality what precedes division, we will not conjure up objects of desire, opponents, competitors, and so on. As long as we are walking in this direction we will not labor under the burdens of greed, impatience, and envy; we will not go around cheating, deceiving, wounding, and killing one another.

Acting in accordance with the entire earth and with all beings is zazen practitioners’ whole life direction, and simultaneously it is their direction right here and now. In Buddhism, this life direction is referred to as vow.

There are times when an evaluation or criticism by others hits home, but then there are other times when it’s way off the mark. If it’s correct, then you ought to sit on it for a while and consider the matter. If it isn’t, then it should be enough for you to tell yourself it’s off the mark and let it go at that.

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.

Rather, what is crucial is magnanimous mind, with which we take the attitude of living straight through whatever reality of life we are presently faced with. In other words, if I fall into hell, then hell itself is my life at that time, so I have to live right through it, and if I find myself in heaven, then heaven is my life and I have to live right through that.

Human progress is by no means the same as the advancement of natural science; nor does it follow the path of the development of material civilization. Human progress lies in each and every human being becoming an adult.

We human beings make up illusions and then become lost and confused in the jungle we ourselves have created.

You have to understand that practicing the buddhadharma is nothing like drinking a bottle of soda pop and feeling refreshed. People want the buddhadharma to be useful or to satisfy their desires. That’s no good. The true Buddha Way is to practice buddhadharma for its own sake.

For breaking the ego’s grip, nothing is more effective than giving something up.