Here’s a quote from Hakuin (1685-1768), one of our Japanese Ancestors:
“So what if you don’t experience satori? It doesn’t mean you have to eat your food through your nose. It still goes in through your mouth. It doesn’t mean when you have to piss, you have to do it on a millstone. You still go to the privy. When you want to move, you move. When you have an inclination to sit, you sit. You are from the very first perfectly free. There’s nothing fettering any of your activities. What need is there to seek attainment beyond that some kind of ‘miraculous working’. This self is fine just as it is. It is Buddha…”
Hakuin’s Precious Mirror Cave, Editor and translator, Norman Waddell
Shinshu’s comment: Whew! What a relief. We don’t have to be perfect and when we fail we don’t have to suck food through our nose. Yuck! Perhaps we don’t even have to worry about becoming enlightened. Does this mean we don’t have to do anything? Well, no. The key is ‘miraculous working’. What is that? It is just the everyday life in which we depend upon the continuous practice of all beings for our very breath. Right now! When we can totally express this understanding there is nothing to obstruct the free express of our life. You and all being are not different. It is the family style.
