Studying sutras is one way to awaken this heart/ mind. this big mind as Shunryu Suzuki calls it. And the same goes for our ability to embrace moment to moment awareness.. This moment that is free of description and temptations. In my own practice, the floor has become the greatest anchor…as my eyes fluctuate between closed and partially open the moment I look at the floor, it lifts the haze of the imaginary space, hurling me back to reality. Likewise, when we study sutras as a spiritual practice, the principles of these prayers began to infiltrate our lives and inform us of a different way of being that we can engage. I must engage it. I cannot just think about it. But the thinking is an important beginning. There is no one-sided practice… that is just more wanting mind.

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.