When we start to sit, and probably for quite a long time afterwards, we think that Zazen is about changing our state: making us wiser, more compassionate, happier.
But after a while, we understand that Zazen is not about changing our state, although it does. It’s about addressing the Primary Wound of separation.
We don’t heal that wound by ornately decorating one side of it.
If we imagine that we become something great, like a warrior or a mountain, our practice is immature.
When we are sitting in the balanced position we’re weightless, like a little bird.
Not absent from the world but filled with it. Entirely in it.
The primary task of that little bird is not to ponder the motivations of herons or crows.
It isn’t to ask if the world’s entirely made of branches or not.
It is to sing Everything! Everything!