• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“The other shore” is enlightenment but enlightenment is also this shore, where we are right now.

Does that irk ya? No? Read it again until it does.… If Zen Buddhism were only the understanding that what we are right now is fine and dandy why do we bother practicing zazen and reading books and listening to teachers? It’s an important question.

This was the burning question that our man Dogen—the founder of Japanese Soto Zen and one of the coolest Zen guys ever—took up when he began pursuing Buddhism in earnest: If we’re already perfect as we are, why should we study Buddhism and practice Zen? No one could answer Dogen’s question for him, and so Dogen had to find the truth for himself. In a sense, Dogen’s entire multivolume Shobogenzo was his attempt to answer this one simple-sounding question. But that’s his answer. What’s yours?

There are people who think of the spiritual life as a journey. Buddhism isn’t like that. We may use the word path, but we’re not trying to get anywhere. We’re trying to fully experience the wonder and perfectness of being right here. Some of those other paths might claim to whisk you off to some magical place—and maybe they’ll really do it. But when you get there you’ll be just as baffled as you are right now.

BUDDHISM WON’T GIVE YOU THE ANSWER. Buddhism might help you find your own right question, but you’ve gotta supply your own answers. Sorry. No one else’s answer will ever satisfy you—nor should it. But the real magic is that once you have your own true answer, you’ll find you’re not alone. As unique as your own true answer is—the one you find after questioning and questioning and questioning—it will be absolutely in tune with the answer Gautama Buddha found all those centuries ago, the answer Nagarjuna expounded upon, the answer Bodhidharma brought to China, and the one that Dogen wrote about in Japan.

And that answer will announce itself like thunder from the sky overhead and an earthquake from the ground beneath your feet. And it will be just like nothing at all.

Sitting in the back of your grandma’s VW Bug, in that little indentation there by the rear window, you’re three years old and the world is big. Suddenly, as the engine warms up and the car begins to back down the driveway, you look out at the clear blue sky and for an instant see that you are everything. You want to say something, but none of the words you have will stick at all; nothing will come except for a wide, wide smile that crosses all of space and time—and the moment is utterly forgotten. Then one day you’re walking along the banks of a river somewhere far, far from that driveway and all at once it comes rushing back, though it never really left.

But still, none of the words you have will stick to it at all.

“DON’T WORRY,IT WILL COME... WITH ENLIGHTENMENT!”

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

PHILIP K. DICK

WHILE LIVING IN TOKYO and working on selling Ultraman to the world, I kept attending Nishijima’s weekly zazen sittings, finding them alternately stimulating and exasperating. 3 The nice little Zen books on the shelves these days don’t give you much of a sense of how truly grating Zen masters can be. They’re the ultimate in know-it-alls. You can’t tell them anything. And Nishijima may be the very worst of the lot. He seems to delight in throwing lines into his talks that are guaranteed to put everyone in the room on edge. The image of the gentle Zen master soothing his audience with tranquil words of serenity and peace is a Hollywood invention that far too many wanna-bes spend far too much energy learning to imitate. Nishijima’s talks are never stilling—they’re downright irritating.

In addition to his weekly sittings and lectures, Nishijima also hosts several zazen retreats at a temple near the city of Shizuoka, in the foothills of Mount Fuji about two hours south of Tokyo by bullet train. It’s a beautiful old Zen temple surrounded by tea fields, miles from the nearest convenience store and not a McDonald’s® or Starbucks® in sight. Still, if you