"To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things."
Before you sit down, listen for three sounds around you for ten seconds. When thoughts about 'me' pause for a moment, what comes through more clearly?
To Know Yourself, Must You Forget Yourself?
Dōgen was a 13th-century Japanese monk of the Kamakura period who trained in Song China and returned to found the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan. He taught that enlightenment is not a special experience but is already present in the practice of simply sitting, right now.
While in China, he asked an elderly temple cook drying mushrooms under the blazing sun why he didn't have a younger monk do it. The old monk replied, 'Others are not me,' and 'If not now, when?'—and Dōgen recorded in his Instructions for the Cook that this taught him everyday work itself is practice.