We have largely been conditioned to believe that we need to constantly push ourselves very hard and make strenuous efforts to attain, achieve, or become this or that. We often bring this same mentality to our spiritual practice, believing that we must make strenuous efforts to awaken and realize our true nature. Dogen Zenji described practice as the dharma gate of ease and joy. He emphasized diligent and wholehearted effort, just sitting, not trying to become or attain anything. In Zen, this is often referred to as wise effort or effortless effort. We will examine this dharma gate of ease and joy.

Eihei Dogen, the great master of Soto Zen, taught that when we know something intimately, it ceases to exist in the old way and, as a result, so do we. Dogen was a lover of nature. He built his monastery deep in the mountains near streams. In the Mountains and Rivers Sutra he wrote about the mountains and rivers, the wind and clouds, as direct expressions of the great body of the Buddha, the whole earth body as well as your body, and my body. These mountains and rivers of the present are the manifestation of the way of the buddhas and ancient sages. Each abides in its own, dharma state, exhaustively fulfilling its virtues. What Dogen is pointing to is the immediate, non-dual experience of our lives using the language of our natural world.

What does it mean to practice the Noble Eightfold Path's 'Right View'? How do we walk the Buddha's teaching of the Middle Way? ​ Master Shitou shared his deep insight into these questions with two profound poems that became the foundation of the Soto Zen School: The 'Sandokai' and the 'Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage.' We will look into maintaining this life of balancing the Absolute and the Relative, not two.