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{"id":1790,"date":"2013-05-08T07:33:24","date_gmt":"2013-05-08T13:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/?p=1790"},"modified":"2013-05-08T07:35:24","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T13:35:24","slug":"what-good-is-zen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2013\/05\/what-good-is-zen.html","title":{"rendered":"What Good is Zen?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a>What good is Zen? What can we expect from our practice? Is Zen about transformation?<\/p>\n

We do expect a lot, of course, and that\u2019s normal and healthy. When we tie ourselves up in knots of pseudo-no-gain, hiding our gaining ideas even from ourselves, we betray our simple humanity.<\/p>\n

Our gaining ideas are dreams, or course, and are equally the real deal. As are all the sights, sounds, smell, tastes and touches of this dream life.<\/p>\n

Yes, dream life. Sometimes even on a sunny day, it inexplicably rains so hard we still need an umbrella.<\/p>\n

Clearly, life doesn\u2019t always fit our ideas and awakening seems quite happy to follow suit. We might expect our great enlightenment to be a shattering \u201cAh-ha!\u201d but it comes instead as a quiet, loving \u201cahhhhhh.\u201d<\/p>\n

The in-the-flesh Wild Fox group concluded our study of \u201cExpressing a Dream within a Dream\u201d on Monday night. The passage that we returned to again and again, the passage that seems to summarize the whole chapter, is this little Dogen nugget:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dream state and the waking state are respectively the real nature: no largeness or smallness, no superiority or inferiority applies to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that\u2019s something that we can sit quietly with for a long time.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"