In zazen on the cushion (bench or chair) we look deeply, carefully, minutely into each breath, each sensation, each thought, or impulse…and come to appreciate how ephemeral this “each” is. Beyond zazen on the cushion, the instants unfold in a stream of nowness everywhere off the cushion, taking the form of things, events, thoughts, emotions…all as expressions of “causes and conditions”. Here and gone. A cause produces an effect or result. But try to find something as simple- seeming as a cause and it will most undoubtedly elude you. A condition is indispensable to the occurrence of something else. For example, the nature of the ice we recently experienced depended on a steep drop in temperature and depended on moisture grabbed into air by wind, moved by temperature currents, buoyed by atmospheric pressure, and holding within ever- smaller particles and molecules of dust.
The relationships of all these elements changed continuously from liquid to solid to gas, round or sheet like, crunchy, slick…with no discernable, discreet beginning as well as no end to what these causes and conditions expressed. This is way the infinite web of all and everything unfolds and manifests as you, as me, as the world in activity. Our Zen practice not only points to each radiant emerging expression of impermanent conditions, but it reveals how the idea of something as separate, causing something else, is a relative insight. When we realize this, we live into a lively emergent mysterious universe, just as it is….