We are told that we should sit without expectation of gain. That isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete.
It is our karmic self which decides to practice, and which gets us to the Zendo, but the ‘person’ who sits without expectation of gain is not ‘I’.
We are double aspected. One aspect is our karmic self, the other is our universal self.
Universal self isn’t the personal self inflated by ‘enlightenment’, it is the whole shebang, dependent origination.
The karmic self occupies a position within dependent origination: universal self – no self – is dependent origination. Each thing is everything.
Zazen is dropping off the karmic self, endlessly. We don’t pin medals on it as it falls.