Get in touch with your life.
This means seeing it as it is, right now. Not what you wish it was.
Not what you hope it might be, next year, next month, next week, tomorrow, or even later today. Just this. Your life, as it is. Right now.
When Bashõ wrote this famous haiku poem, he was just this, living here and now, in the moment. That is the nature of all haiku.
What you need, in order to do this, is to quietly, gently, drop all thoughts arising that are of any nature at all, unless they are necessary, in order to be doing that which you are doing right now. For example, I am typing this. But I am not thinking about it. You might be surprised just how much we do without even engaging in conscious thought.
In order to live in the moment, we don’t need conscious thought. We simply need to be awareness.
How do we “be awareness”, what’s the method?
No method. In the early days of zen training, nobody explained this to anybody. They simply had to work it out. if you worked it out, great! If you didn’t work it out, that’s just fine too. It wasn’t so different with my own teacher.
Whatever you're thinking, you simply note it, drop it, and return to the silence of just being.
It’s not a silence without sound. Anything could occur in this silence. Sounds of traffic, a bird calling, the hum of the refrigerator, even your own heartbeat.
You can practice this whilst in sitting, meditating. That’s why they call it practice.
But you can also take this practice, and engage with it in your daily life. Start with the small things, like the tea meditation, sweeping the floor, dusting, eating your lunch, putting out the trash, writing email, reading this, anything.
It really is this simple. Zen is just this. Right now. That is it.
This is it. Live it now.
ANDO / LIVING ZEN RETREAT / DAY 11 / THURSDAY 16 JANUARY 2014, 12:00.