While I have collected the complete catalog of all of the Zen practices, techniques and meditations that I have covered thus far, I feel that a brief discussion regarding the concept of Zen practice itself will also be helpful. Ram Dass said, “All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.” There’s a lot to unpack there. In order to achieve lasting peace, both correct understanding of the teachings and consistent, earnest practice will be of value to us. That said, as we will repeat time and time again, neither one of these things leads to a direct realization of lasting peace. Correct understanding and practice properly position us for a transformation to happen to us. It is a transformation which comes of its own accord.
Yet, understanding this, we continue to do the practices, even when they seem to come up short or fail us. Allow me to quote my upcoming book. “Practices help us right up until the very time in which they don’t. When this happens, we must be honest in our evaluation. We must not look to blame ourselves or our circumstances for coming up short. In the same way that we once valued the practice for helping us, we must now be willing to put the blame for its failure squarely where it belongs, on the practice itself. Don’t worry. It can handle it.
Many times we will hear from many different sources that a good practice destroys itself. We need the practices. They will help us. They will change our views and experiences, but nothing can truly transform us except Tao. Doing the practices right up and through the point in which they stop working for us can help reveal this hard truth to us. Ultimately, we are building toward a practice that universally lets go of everything, all at once, in totality. If that is the case, then obviously we will be letting go of the importance and need for practice itself.”
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