We can’t hear the voices of all the myriad beings because we’re behind the glass of the self.
But, we can’t break that glass with our head.
Accordingly, Dōgen says that we must take the backward step ( eko hensho no taiho – turn the light inward, take the backward step)
What does that mean?
We can describe it, for example, in terms of the five skandhas.
We cease to grasp this consciousness, this awareness as mine.
We cease to grasp this mental activity as mine.
We cease to grasp these perceptions: this is me; here is the world; here are these feelings which I identify with. We cease to grasp in that way.
We cease to grasp sensation. The sensation is simply something which is arising within a whole lived world; arising and changing, not something that we are required to fixate upon or to specify in terms of feeling, without a fixed location or nature.
We ungrasp the body as an object. Ungrasping in this way, we fall backwards into the actual body. That body is not separate from the body of all things.
In this way separation is gradually reduced; not in a transformative way; not in a mystical or heroic way, but in a natural way.