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{"id":1392,"date":"2012-12-02T09:40:17","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T15:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/?p=1392"},"modified":"2012-12-02T10:37:58","modified_gmt":"2012-12-02T16:37:58","slug":"what-is-a-zen-life-and-what-does-it-have-to-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2012\/12\/what-is-a-zen-life-and-what-does-it-have-to-offer.html","title":{"rendered":"What Is A Zen Life And What Does It Have To Offer?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

If you\u2019re a person who sees through the hollowness of the American Dream (pseudo-fulfillment through reflectionless absorption in the consumer, warrior culture) and instead you insist on realizing directly rather than solely believing others\u2019 stories, Zen is for you.<\/p>\n

What is a Zen life?<\/p>\n

It is simply to become a zazen person, hiding yourself in zazen and playing peek-a-boo with the 10,000 incredible things. In becoming zazen people we become who we are \u2013 the many faces of zero.<\/p>\n

A Zen life for the zazen person includes dharma<\/a> study and work.<\/p>\n

To study the dharma is to embody the sutras \u2013 the threads that connect us to the buddhas and ancestors and run through us toward the misty future \u2013 including the examination of teachers living and dead, through koan or other forms of contemplating dharma, digging out the marrow.<\/p>\n

The work of a Zen life is to sing the great song of the bodhisattva through all the activities of sitting, standing, sleeping, lying down, and yes, even falling face first in a dung pile. As Ginny Whitelaw puts it in Zen Leadership<\/em><\/a>, Zen work is about moving from \u201cit\u2019s all about me\u201d to \u201cI\u2019m all about it.\u201d Joko Beck once called this \u201cthe talk nobody wants to hear.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

What does a Zen life have to offer?<\/p>\n

Simply what it is, of course.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will have lots of spiritual experiences but they are just scenery,\u201d Katagiri Roshi told me in our first meeting. \u201cYou must be long-distance train, anyway. Do you understand? Long-distance train. Most important point is to reach terminal station \u2013 you are exactly Buddha. From there you can go anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"