![]() Depending on the extent to which we are practicing, there is some awareness of the thinking. When we think, we are experiencing thinking. The longer we sit, the more we see that any thought that comes up is just another thought and that all thoughts arise within the vastness of Awareness. So simple that we don't know what to think about it. This book " The Straight Path" is a guided tour through the structures of attention we experience and a manual for opening them. These are technical terms for certain activities of attention. When he uses words like "release" or "bring together", or "allow", it's not just good prose. When the Roshi speaks, he tells us how to practice. When we read, we think we are reading about thoughts and that we should think about them. ![]() Although the Roshi provides clear instructions on how to understand our practice in one concise paragraph, we don't do it. If reading that were enough, I wouldn't need to say anything further. This is zazen, the shikantaza of all Awakened Ones". Bring together every aspect of mind, everything hidden and everything obvious, and allow each to resolve itself into the knowing of it. When we release all of our states and our avoidance and identification then we are always right there at the very moment that the world arises, right at this pointless point. We are always the context of whatever content arises. We cannot be anything that we are aware of. ![]() Before Thinking means to be prior to experiences in the same way that a mirror is always prior to what it shows even at the moment of showing it. Zen is not a matter of thinking (shiryo) or of shutting out thought (fushiryo) but of being Before Thinking (hishiryo). The Roshi unfolds the meaning of this passage in this way: How do you think of not-thinking? Be before thinking. In the text The Straight Path, Zen Master Anzan Hoshin quotes the following from Zen Master Dogen's Fukanzazengi, or How Everyone Can Sit: Thinking about not thinking is thinking and the notion of trying to stop thinking comes from thinking about it and is a strategy, a kind of thinking. As a practice advisor, I am often asked, in one way or another, "How can I stop thinking?" And so I've done a lot of thinking about this. ![]()
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