’If you feel your mind distracted, look at the tip of the nose; never lose sight of it for some time, or look at your own palm, and let not your mind go out of it, or gaze at one spot before you.’  This will greatly help you in restoring the equilibrium of your mind.  Chwang Tsz[FN#248] thought that calmness of mind is essential to sages, and said:  “The stillness of the sages does not belong to them as a consequence of their skilful ability; all things are not able to disturb their minds; it is on this account that they are still.  When water is still, its clearness shows the beard and eyebrows (of him who looks into it).  It is a perfect level, and the greatest artificer takes his rule from it.  Such is the clearness of still water, and how much greater is that of the human spirit?  The still mind of the sage is the mirror of heaven and earth, the glass of all things.”

Forget all worldly concerns, expel all cares and anxieties, let go of passions and desires, give up ideas and thoughts, set your mind at liberty absolutely, and make it as clear as a burnished mirror.  Thus let flow your inexhaustible fountain of purity, let open your inestimable treasure of virtue, bring forth your inner hidden nature of goodness, disclose your innermost divine wisdom, and waken your Enlightened Consciousness to see Universal Life within you.  “Zazen enables the practiser,” says Kei-zan,[FN#249] “to open up his mind, to see his own nature, to become conscious of mysteriously pure and bright spirit, or eternal light within him.”

[FN#248] Chwang Tsz, vol. v., p. 5.

[FN#249] Za-zen-yo-jin-ki.

Once become conscious of Divine Life within you, yon can see it in your brethren, no matter how different they may be in circumstances, in abilities, in characters, in nationalities, in language, in religion, and in race.  You can see it in animals, vegetables, and minerals, no matter how diverse they may be in form, no matter how wild and ferocious some may seem in nature, no matter how unfeeling in heart some may seem, no matter how devoid of intelligence some may appear, no matter how insignificant some may be, no matter how simple in construction some may be, no matter how lifeless some may seem.  You can see that the whole universe is Enlightened and penetrated by Divine Life.

8.  Zazen and the Forgetting of Self.

Zazen is a most effectual means of destroying selfishness, the root of all Sin, folly, vice, and evil, since it enables us to see that every being is endowed with divine spirituality in common with men.  It is selfishness that throws dark shadows on life, just as it is not the sun but the body that throws shadow before it.  It is the self-same selfishness that gave rise to the belief in the immortality of soul, in spite of its irrationality, foolishness, and superstition.  Individual self should be a poor miserable thing if it were not essentially connected with the Universal