September 5^th, 2025

Just Sit As Yourself

That you are here means you will vanish. Things that exist are bound to vanish, and things that you attain cannot be perpetually retained. The only thing that exists forever is that which exists before anything else appears. As long as you seek something, you will get the shadow of reality and not reality itself. Only when you do not seek anything will you find it, and only when you do not strive for enlightenment, will you have it. Because you try to attain something, you lose it.

Because A tries to be C or D, there are problems. Renunciation is that A is just A, and A is bound to disappear. To practice renunciation is to be beyond forms and colors. We have full appreciation of forms and colors, but they are bound to disappear, and we should not be caught by them. We do not give them up, but we accept that they go away: That is renunciation. If A always tries to remain A, that is not renunciation. A should just be A, and A will vanish in the form of A, though it will appear again in some form of C or D. But C or D should not try to be something different from C or D...

Only when we are satisfied with ourselves as A, or as I - is there a chance to have renunciation, a chance to vanish...Everything that exists must vanish. If you didn't vanish, you would not exist; you would be a ghost.

So we say, "just to sit," or "A should be just A," and this "just" directly points to our liberation from A. You lose your reality only because you try to be something else...This is not something you should believe in because I say so or because Buddha says so; this is the truth that is waiting to be found by you...

Moment after moment, you will find your own way when you just sit, when you are simply you yourself.

Shunryu Suzuki, Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life quoted in Tricycle Magazine, Fall 2025, pp.47-8