What do we mean by ‘Presence’? In one sense we are always present, there is nothing outside this present moment. Right? This ‘presence’ is all there is. And yet we have the experience of being present and the experience of not being present. It is like night and day. What is actually happening in the moment where we seem to not be present? This is worth investigating firsthand.
Dogen Zenji says in the Fukanzazengi “It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.”
What is this ‘like and dislike’? This ‘seeking’ that pulls us from activity to activity, from thought to thought, and propels us to live in a state of, often subtle, but sometime very obvious, dissatisfaction? If we look closely at what propels our incessant and obsessive thinking, we find this sense of wanting and not-wanting, this sense that something isn’t quiet right and that we need to make it right. The steady stream of stressful past and future thoughts that most of us experience are the flowers of a deeper root. The Buddha called this root ‘dukkha’ which is often translated as ‘suffering’ or ‘friction.’ As we practice we often become more aware of it.
Zazen, although it includes this dukkha, is at the same time it’s opposite. Zazen is the practice of satisfaction. We sit down and we say, with our whole being, this, right here, this entire universe right here, exactly as it is, dukkha and all, is enough. Just for this moment we stop trying to make it something else. We become exactly this present moment and this present moment become exactly us. We enter the samadhi of life being itself. How utterly simple! How relieving! How free!
Zazen is an art and like all forms of art it takes devotion to master. “If there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth.” So let’s keep practicing until there is no gap! And let’s see that already there is no gap!