Choices Matter

Dogen Zenji and other Dharma teachers sometimes refer to "hotsu bodaishin," a Japanese word that means “aspiration for awakening” or “heart/mind that seeks the way of liberation.” I believe the phrase means that mind itself is seeking mind, or that the principals of reality are seeking the principles, or that the ocean is seeking the ocean. It means that we exist within the thing we are seeking and, therefore, our aspiration to awaken is also an example of the thing we are seeking.

However, it’s important to realize that such an understanding doesn't mean that practice is happening on its own. Practice only happens when we choose to practice. If it were not a choice, then it would be like having to go to the bathroom - you don't have a choice. Yet with practice, you do have a choice. Your choice is the difference between living the moment with mindful awareness or not, between sitting down on your meditation seat or not, between telling the truth or not. It doesn’t just happen to you; you must choose to take up the practice of awakening.

The choice to practice is also part of practice, is also part of perfectly harmonious and complete reality, but it is not aware of its perfect harmony and wholeness until it has done some practice. Until that awareness of perfect harmony comes to be, practice is like the clouds in the sky seeking sky. They are part of the sky, but because they appear solid, they cannot see sky until they become clear, and then there is only sky and no clouds.

So we choose to practice again and again until we drop off the sense of self and other, until we experience the reality of dependent causation. We experience the fact that what we think of as a self and as a choice to practice is all phenomena integral to the whole picture and driven by karma and impermanence, equally unique and short-lived and subject to cessation. Then we know awakening.