"Despite the comparative sobriety of its architecture, Zen often seems to inspire in its adherents a supercilious attitude to the rest of mankind; an attitude that delights in one-upmanship, in riddles, puzzles, and the power of extraordinary experience. But Dogen maintained that in order to grasp the meaning of existence it was not necessary for a person to be unusually clever or to spend his life doing remarkable things. Simply by 'sitting still and doing nothing' a man could discover what there was to be learned about life. Prayer and ritual were important to Dogen, but not much more so than cooking or sweeping the yard. All functions of the body, including the most basic, became, in the temple he founded, limbs of Zen... It was Dogen's intention to make Zen not an abstract philosophy but a practice. The advice he gave his meditating disciples was blunt, straightforward, and mind-wrenchingly practical:
Think of not thinking.
How do you think of not thinking?
By not thinking."
From Alan Booth's, "The Roads to Sata" (1985), pp. 161-162
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