Make Your Life Yours
We just sat for one half hour. Sometimes the clock goes very slow, sometimes it goes very fast. Sometimes your leg hurts, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes your mind is clear, sometimes it is not. Here’s the interesting thing, all of that was yours. That was your experience. That wasn’t anybody else’s idea, that was your idea. That’s what Zen means, “make your life yours." The Buddha had many interesting things to say about human beings and their lives. The most interesting thing he says is right after he gets enlightenment. In fact, it is my opinion that it is the most interesting thing that anybody ever said that could be considered “religious.” He said, “How wonderful, everything already has it. Everything already has Buddha Nature!” This is really good news, it means that everything you experienced over the last 30 minutes is your Buddha Nature. And the next thing he said was. “But, human beings don’t understand that.” They don’t understand they already have Buddha Nature. And because of that they suffer. This is very interesting. Human beings suffer, they create all this suffering for themselves and everything else in the world. Because they don’t understand what they truly are. In English we would probably say this is all caused by a misunderstanding. Zen is to help you get over your misunderstanding.