What I want to talk about is zazen. Zazen is sitting upright in the present moment, right here, in the midst of Buddha’s mind. There is a text about zazen by the great teacher Dogen Zenji, Zazen Shin. In Chinese there are two ways of reading this title. Zazen means, well, no one knows what it means, zazen is zazen; and shin means needle. In particular, it refers to the bamboo needles that were used in the old days for acupuncture. Zazen is a needle that we stick into our life; it’s the needle with which we care for life. If we put this zazen needle in the right place, it will tenderize our life. We will become sensitive to the totality of our life, tender to all beings, so responsive that we realize how deeply connected we all are. This tenderness transforms ourselves and others. This is what happens when we understand zazen as an acupuncture treatment for our life.  The other way of understanding zazen shin is as a medicine for zazen itself. It’s a needle to treat our attempts to practice zazen. It’s a medicine to treat our misunderstanding of our relationship with our environment.
When we first begin, most of us practice zazen just as we do other things. We practice zazen to get something out of it, to improve some situation. We practice zazen as though there is something we could do by ourselves.  We understand our self as something which can do things, do Buddhist practice, do zazen and this misunderstanding is deeply ingrained in us.  This is normal; we all do this.

Dogen Zenji says, “When you first approach the Way, you remove yourself from its neighborhood.” When you first approach Buddhist practice, you go away from it just by the very fact that you are approaching it, rather than realizing it on the spot. We can’t help this. We’re looking to improve things. It’s the way we see everything, it’s unavoidable. And once we start practicing we need a little medicine, we need a treatment for our misunderstanding of what practice is. So may I insert a needle into your zazen practice?
First of all, zazen is a practice of living with all sentient beings.
Zazen cannot be practiced one-sidedly. I cannot do zazen apart from you.  You cannot do zazen apart from all of us. Zazen is realized in concert with all sentient beings. Good cannot be done by any one person. All good things are done together with all sentient beings.
Zazen is just life, our life and our life is like riding in a boat. You can’t ride in a boat by yourself. As Dogen Zenji says, you raise the sail, you sit up straight, you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth, you cross your legs, you row with the oars. And although you row, the boat gives you a ride. Without the boat, no one could ride, but your riding makes the boat what it is. This realm of mutual creation with all sentient beings where we make each other what we are, is the realm of zazen. Zazen is the way we care for our lives together.
We can care for our lives by ourselves, and that’s the way we’re accustomed to living. We have all done a pretty good job of it. You got this far because you did a good job of taking care of yourself by yourself. But this is not zazen. Now that you’ve taken care of yourself so well, you have a chance to enter the great mind of Buddha, to learn how to take care of yourself along with all sentient beings. This is “cultivating an empty field.” Cultivating the empty field is the same as cultivating the sky. Do you know how to plow the clouds? This cloud farming is done with all sentient beings. It’s also called zazen.
I heard a story today. Somebody came up to Suzuki Roshi and said, “Why haven’t you enlightened me yet?” Suzuki Roshi said politely, “I’m making my best effort.” He might have told the student to make more effort herself, but he didn’t say that. He said “I’m making my best effort.” Zazen is the way we care for our life with all beings. I can’t do it by myself. Can you have faith in a way that you can’t do by yourself? Most people can only trust a way that they do by themselves. But living a life that you can do by yourself is unadulterated misery. Completely trusting a way that you can’t do yourself, that you do with all sentient beings, is immediate liberation.
Some people say that Zen is hard to understand. And it is hard to understand, but not because it’s obscure. It’s hard to understand because it’s like the sky. Look at the blue sky. It’s nice to look at, but it’s hard to understand. It’s so big and it goes on forever. How are you going to get it? It’s hard to understand all sentient beings, too, but it’s not difficult to sit upright and be aware of them.
One day a monk asked the great teacher Matsu, “What is Buddha’s mind?”
Matsu said, “Mind itself is Buddha.”
Later someone told Matsu, “I hear you said that ‘Mind itself is Buddha.’”
“I say that to people, to children, so they will stop crying.”
“What do you say after they stop crying?”
“I say, ‘No mind, no Buddha.’”

This is like trusting what. What, trust it. Put aside your doubts and trust it. Trust what. Don’t trust it, a thing that you can think of. Trust what you can’t think of. Trust the vastness of space. Trust every single living being. Trust cause and effect; vast, inconceivably complex and wondrous cause and effect. This faith has unlimited possibilities. Think about not moving. Think about giving up all action. And remember, giving up all action does not mean stopping action. That would be another action.  “Giving up” means giving up the attempt to do things by yourself, and embracing the way of doing things with everyone.
Trust Buddha’s mind. Trusting Buddha’s mind means trusting all sentient beings. This is fearless love. You can give it all up and then you can love every single thing.
Dogen said, “Mind itself is Buddha. Practice is difficult, explanation is not difficult.” People like a practice where you can explain how to do it.  It feeds the deluded karmic mind. First you do this, then you do that, then you do this; people like this. But what is easy to explain is difficult to practice, because the explanations move you farther away from the practice itself, and you need all kinds of antidotes to get you back on track. “No mind no Buddha” is not difficult to practice but it is difficult to explain. Sitting still is not difficult to practice because it’s just like the sky, but it’s as difficult to understand as the sky.
Practicing goodness is like riding in a boat. When you make a bag lunch and give it to someone who is hungry or take a present to someone who is sick, if you think you are doing this by yourself, you’re missing the point. You can’t ride in a boat by yourself. You need the boat; the boat gives you a ride. If you make a lunch for someone, the food gives you a ride, the food makes it possible for you to make the lunch. All sentient beings give you the food. All sentient beings make the lunch through your hands and your eyes and your body. Without you, the lunch couldn’t be made. Without them, the lunch couldn’t be made. Now let me ask you: If the practice of all the Buddhas and Ancestors is being realized right now, who is it realized by?
Yes, all beings! All beings are sharing the way at this moment. Never graspable, totally available. There is no other thing outside of this. My question is, do we trust it? Looking at myself, the only thing I can find that holds me back from completely trusting the practice in which all sentient beings are now engaged is lack of courage; lack of courage to affirm all life, which is the same as the lack of courage to affirm death.  Without being able to affirm death, I cannot affirm life. This is the courage that comes with insight, so I could say that what holds me back is a lack of insight.
When I think of some sentient beings, I lack the courage to meet them. I’m afraid of what he or she may do, and what I may do in response. So I hold back, and by holding back I don’t affirm life. Holding back, I’m unable to care about the other person completely.
But I can make a vow, which for me is the same as practicing zazen. The vow will not be to meet each person completely by my own willpower. I will not make that vow. I will vow to trust that all sentient beings meet in my life, as my life. I will witness the arrival of all things as my life.  That’s my vow.
What will be your vow? Do you want to commit yourself to the way of the Buddha, the way that all sentient beings practice together? Or do you wish to continue an ancient karmic pattern of living by your own will power?  Consider my question and tell me the answer. Again and again, tell me the answer, so I can understand the heart of your zazen, the heart of your love, the heart of your wisdom.