You should stop searching for phrases and chasing after words. Take the backward step and turn the light inward. Your body-mind of itself will drop off and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.
*Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt, Ed. The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master.
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You should stop searching for phrases and chasing after words.
Amassing words - books, talks, teachings, articles, videos - will not get anyone there or anywhere.
"Chasing" ... emotional attachment. Does "STOP" stop a car? "STOP" can help but won't stop a vehicle... or you. At some point, "STOP" doesn't help at all. Words ferry us only so far, then become the bog.
Why, then, would one keep looking, when looking is no longer needed? Keep drinking and eating, when the tummy is full? (Follow the way of Nature, among all things.) (Ikkyu: you can't make cherry blossoms by tearing off petals to plant[,] only spring does that.)
Take the backward step and turn the light inward.
Words are outside. We need intimacy. This isn't inside or outside. Not a there or a here or an anywhere.
We need space. A step back.
Going, one gets farther away. One step back, then closer.
"Light." Look intimately, wakefully. Don't let the mind fall asleep. Bright awareness, not dull mind.
It'll make sense in doing it, but until then, no. Then, yes.
Your body-mind of itself will drop off and your original face will appear.
We can't tear or throw body-mind off. No one can take it off for anyone. It'll just drop. Gone!
What's left? You. Original face. Before others gave you many faces, masks, conflicting, false, but necessary - some of them.
Faces helped you assimilate with other faces. Faces aren't the face, however. Blessed are those tired of play-acting? (One presence is not a performer-on-stage; two, three, four begins the act.)
"You," not the you you think you are, have been told you are, or anyone thinks or says - or ever has - you are.
You're not a thought. You're not an appearance. You're not a personality, so, You're not a person. (You temporarily appear as a person.)
What are you? Not a who or what. Not a you.
You can't be anything, for you're not anything.
If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.
A garden grows because someone plants and cultivates. Yet, plants and flowers do and, so, just grow. So, "practice," Trust the true Face and true Teaching. Be like plants and flowers without faces.
Practice "immediately." "Intimately, close, inseparable, gapless" (Japanese, shimmitsu, shinsetsu.). (Ikkyu: I'm in it everywhere what a miracle trees lakes clouds even dust.)
You step back - no distance.
Practice what? "Just this." What? Just this teaching?
Put wheels on it. Whether laughing, dancing, burping, meditating, or praying.
Just this whatever is happening? Happen with it wholeheartedly, intimately. (Three are the same: teaching, doing, you.)
You don't have to go anywhere. Gates are everywhere. Welcome them to open. How? Practice. Do. Do whatever. That simple.
Do you trust - this? If no, how can it work? If yes, how can it not?
(Fish swim for fish are swimming. Wind blows for wind is blowing. Birds sing for birds are singing. Adding to it, you step off the deep point.)
Why not give this a chance - to let all your faces drop?
So, Yes. "Yes," and you're on the Way, whether you know it or not. You may not even claim to be religious or spiritual, good or bad, witless or intelligent.
What's the Way? Step backward and see - a seeing having no eyes.
Too complicated? Not true. How odd, so many ignore the "too simple" and keep walking about, looking for their ten toes.
Now, how weird is that! No wonder so many look jaded and joyless. Such seeking never ends! Drop into the one-sky-moment - you're free!
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*(C) brian k. wilcox, 2025
*Dogen words in italics; taken from Kazuaki Tanahashi and Pete Levitt. The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master. Quotes of Ikkyu's haikus, in Stephen Berg, Trans. Ikkyu: Crow With No Mouth: 15th Century Zen Master.
