What is freedom? Who’s in control? Who’s responsible for your life? Are you responsible for your life or is someone or something else? Zen practice is always pointing us back to the source of experience. Are you aware of what guides you? How we approach this question has implications for how fulfilled we are, and what we offer to the world through the medium of our life. When we live obedient to a “should”, we hand over our freedom to choose. Just like a slave, we surrender personal agency. But we don’t have to do this. Even though the overall conditions of our current life may not be in our control, how we respond to them is. We have responsibility, the ability to respond. We can ask, “Is this moment my own? If not, when is my moment?” You may know the Zen story about Master Dogen, when he inquired why the elderly cook was drying mushrooms out in the heat of the afternoon sun. The cook answered, If not now? when? If not me, who? The old cook knows who he is and is wholehearted in his task. What is ours to do is how we use today. How do you use this day? With what spirit do you meet the conditions that you are dealt?
