Just sitting is not ultimate.

Zen masters like Dahui/Ta-hui (1089–1163) didn’t put much stock in zazen.  Unlike Dogen Zenji,  Dahui didn’t absolutize zazen.  The use of a particular practice such as zazen depended upon the degree of the students spiritual illness.  As Zen master Hsu-yun ( Xuyun) notes:

"Ch'an [Zen] does not mean sitting (in meditation).  The so-called Ch'an hall and the so-called Ch'an sitting are only provided for people (who encounter) insurmountable obstructions (of their own) and who are of shallow wisdom in this period of decadence (of the Dharma)."

This is not to suggest that Zen masters, themselves, did not sit in zazen.  They did. Teachers like Dahui sat but had no attachment to the practice, itself.  It is not ultimate—we might even call it provisional.  Walking, for some, might be a better practice.  We need not absolutize any such physical practices.  On the subject of meditation, in Zen master Dahui's Second Letter in Answer to Vice Minister Chen he writes:

"When it is desirable to do quiet sitting, just do quiet sitting. At the time of sitting, you must not have any attachment to sitting and consider it as ultimate. At present the party of perverse teachers is prone to taking silence-and-illumination quiet-sitting as the ultimate dharma, misleading younger followers" (Jeffrey Broughton, The Chan Whip Anthology, p. 3.4).

For teachers like Dahui the most important thing is penetrating through the mind of birth and death—the antithesis—which if accomplished revealed the ultimate truth or the unchanging Mind-ground.  Yes!  This is the big fish we have to catch either by a net, or by a hook or other devices.  Even the right words can do it.  

This absolute we are searching for is buried deep within us being constantly covered up and hidden by our desires for conditioned reality.  When we break through the obstructions, which are like a cloudy sky suddenly revealing the sun, only then can we meet our self face to face.  Can sitting alone accomplish this meeting?  Can koans do it for us?  Not entirely.  Only when we have the ‘eye of copper and iron’ (the eye that sees through everything) can we finally see our True Self.

Comments

[n. yeti]

Kantairon

That is also pretty much what Brahman is in the non-dual dharma of the Vedas, except that true self would not be sublimitable into terms or ideas or anything the mind fixes on in ignorance as a separate entity.

"Similar to a person who is not attached to external pleasures but enjoys happiness in the Atman (soul), the person who perceives Brahman in everything feels everlasting joy." (B.G. 5.21)

"In half a couplet I state, what has been stated by scores of texts; that is  Brahman alone is real, the world is mithyā (not independently existent),
and the individual self is non-different from Brahman."
Adi Shankara in Vivekacūdāmani

[Susan]

Kantairon, could you be a bit more explicit? I can't find the Tony Page you're talking about.
I doubt that anyone who studied Buddhism would say that the "true self" is Buddhism's name for God. "Emptiness" or rather "The Law of Causation" might qualify...sorry, just joking around. As I understand it, even the word "god" has a different meaning in Mahayana Buddhism than the Western concept of a supreme being. There is no Unmoved Mover, no Other. In Buddhism cause and effect operate, and have operated, forever. At the center of creativity and extinction is the infinite regress. Ultimately, you either fight it or go along with it...and it's easier to surf the waves than go to war with the sea.

[Kantairon]

Dr. Tony Page says that the "True Self" is actually Buddhism's name for God...