Description
Life after life you have been doing this and it’s not a surprise that you come eventually to the Buddha, who is sitting on an ordinary zafu smiling, and Buddha says, “Yes, that’s it, you are doing it alright, just do zazen like that!” and happiness comes over you.
Summary
Yunmen taught, “Everybody has a light inside. When you’re looking for it, you
can’t see; it’s obscured in the dimness. What is this light that everybody has?”
He answered his own question, “The kitchen pantry, the entrance gate.”
Then he said, “It’s better to have nothing than to have something good.”
—Blue Cliff Record, Case 86
(transl. by John Tarrant & Joan Sutherland)
Enlightenment happens inside this life that we have. It’s not some other more satisfactory life with special conditions.
So you set off!
You go through one archway, and then you go through a second, and then a third archway, and eventually your worries fall away, though you didn’t ask them to; all desperation falls away and any cause of suffering in the mind is illuminated.
Life after life you have been doing this and it’s not a surprise that you come eventually to the Buddha, who is sitting on an ordinary zafu smiling, and Buddha says, “Yes, that’s it, you are doing it alright, just do zazen like that!” and happiness comes over you.
Meditation is also extra good if you do it together with friends.
Meditation can’t be praised enough.
The benefits of generosity and discipline,
prayer, self-reflection, and practice,
have their source in meditation.
With what we gain from just one sitting,
all our crimes are wiped away.
—Hakuin Ekaku
Deep Sit Sunday Zen with Tess Beasley & John Tarrant, on April 26th, 2026
Read More▼