Master Dogen asked “If the cart is stuck, do we beat the horse, or beat the cart?”
Almost all meditation teachers would say the horse, the mind. Surely that is the point of meditation? To empty and purify the mind.
But Dogen said that we should beat (give attention to) the cart, the body. How so?
Zazen is the way of liberation through the body. Not the body as thought. Not the body as object, but the body as it actually is. Because that body, completely alive, is already part of the body of the universe, completely alive.