Rather, in Zen practice, what you are looking for is to realize yourself as a self that does not distinguish between subject and object. You must go from your self which you accept unconditionally right now to the self that is based on the universal root.— Joshu Sasaki Roshi
There is something profound in the the above words of the Roshi who still, I assume, is abbot of the Mt. Baldy Zen Center in California. His words certainly don't seem to chime with the current rhetoric that is being pumped out of a typical American Dharma center. But then who would ever expect an old Zennist like Sasaki to be typical?
Zen, and for that matter Buddhism, is not about self denial or self negation. Nor is it about the individual self to which one is attached that eventually craps out. Put that out of your pretty little heads. Zen is a matter of seeing the real self which is outside of the category of subject and object.
As Sasaki notes, the real self is based on the universal root. There are, of course, many names for this root from Suchness to Buddha-nature. Essentially, universal root refers to the pure Mind which underlies our mental life as its very living substance—but as a pure animative substance. This is analogous to the element water and the waves it generates. The goal of Zen, therefore, is to dip into the water. Yes, a Zen baptism! At all costs, one tries to avoid the habit of wave grabbing!
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