The freedom will be in the allowance of the arising, not in the arrangement of the arising.

In whatever way Buddhas are directing their attention, their abiding and dwelling happens there.

Sometimes that Buddha ancestral connection is represented between a teacher and a student – which Dogen talks a lot about – but it can be represented by our relationship to the Buddhas and ancestors we don’t see right in front of us, that we know came before us. And so we speak to them about what it is we wish to renounce and what is we wish to manifest, and we ask for their support.

This practice, this way of understanding, this way of knowing, is crafted in such a way that we have access to freedom in each and every moment of our waking hours. The freedom that I am speaking to is the freedom from the conditioning, the freedom from being reactivated in response to conditions or persons or circumstances. The freedom to be who we are, unafraid. The freedom to be able to meet whatever comes our way with a magnitude of heart and wisdom. To know in that moment what the action may be or not be. Where we want to direct our energy — not in reaction to something but because we want to be engaged in contributing in the lessening of suffering for all beings.

It starts to become really clear that […] responding to the difficulties of our lives often requires the energy of others. That being with others, our daily routine that we take for granted, is often the way we gather the strength and energy to meet our lives.

In the knowing that needs no words, the entire reality of the thinking mind is called into question.

The ceremony of zazen is a ceremony of non-separation. It’s our intention to sit down and be with everything. This is how we start working with those many moments of painful separation, of harm enacted upon us, or that we have enacted upon another – all the vulnerability of our humanness.

We all, just like Siddhartha Gautama did, run back to the palace for a bit. We learn about the suffering of the world, we feel it, we run back to the palace. We come out again, we feel it, we run back to the palace. Until we come out enough that we decide: “Ok, I am not going back to the palace, I am staying here. I am going to understand what is going on, I am going to understand why we do this to each other.”

We are being confronted with the amplification of centuries of historic pain that just seems to want to be acknowledged, demanding our attention, demanding we reckon with it.

All I can do is cultivate conditions that are conducive for a vow to emerge. […] Vow is not something I generate out of my own power. It’s something that happens in community and relationship with others and through a practice that cultivates the conditions for it to emerge.