The Continual Unfolding of Zazen (No End to Insight)

Zazen is a continually unfolding process. There is no backsliding. At the beginning of any session, you are at exactly the same inner place as when you ended the last session. There is continual progress.

There is no end to this progress. In the Bloodstream Sermon, Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen or Chan in China and the first Chinese patriarch, says of enlightened consciousness, “The mind’s capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible.” Even after enlightenment, either sudden or gradual, spiritual insight continues. Dogen says in the Genjo Koan:

When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. For example, when you sail  out in a boat to the midst of an ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as  you can see at that time. All things are like this. Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world  beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety; whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet, or in a drop of water.

Zazen practitioners can reflect that wherever they may be on the spectrum of spiritual insight, there is no end or conclusion to the spectrum. It doesn’t matter where a person is on the spectrum, everyone on it is equally ignorant.