If we find that we're wrong about anything that we have said or done, that isn't any particular problem either. When we can just speak simply and clearly, there's a certainty to what we're saying. We don't need to be compelled by the impulse to overpower what the other person is saying, or by a feeling of rushing, or by the need to justify or to excuse ourselves. When we speak, we can feel the tongue against our teeth and we know what we are saying. When we breathe in, the breath is this breath. There is a certain unshakeability and confidence to our life as it is. We begin to realize a sense of strength and confidence which is not based upon puffing ourselves up in any particular way, but is grounded in simply being as we are.
We become able to face whatever is arising for us without panicking, and without trying to hide from it. Since we practice with the body and with the mind, both body and mind gain great benefit from practice, simply because they can function freely. There is no pressure being placed upon any of the internal organs by scrunching them as we fall into some slouching posture, or as we try to draw ourselves in and hold our chest tight. The shoulders allow tension to fall away from them and the weight is evenly balanced. It allows the body to sit in such a way that the spinal cord is erect, but not stiff. The sitting posture itself allows the body to be as it is. We can obtain health and well being through our practice. To limit oneself when it is not necessary is like tying your own hands. We are not saying that any of these approaches to practice are "wrong" it is just that some of them are more limiting than others. There is nothing wrong with wanting to develop a sense of health and well being. Bompu zenīompu zen, or "usual zen," means engaging in a meditation practice in order to procure the same kinds of things that one has always been looking for that is to say health and happiness, some sense of well-being. The more deeply we practice, the more we find that practice encompasses us. We will find that it is so simple, so profound, so ordinary, so vast and so limitless, that we can never encompass all of it. If we sit and just sit, so that it isn't even a matter of "you" sitting or "me" sitting, but just sitting, then the practice begins to open for us. It is not just a matter of not being able to hold onto things the whole act of grasping is one of limiting. Yet, no matter how hard we grasp or clutch, we cannot hold on because everything and everyone is always changing and coming and going. Every time we grasp at something, we limit ourselves.
Even if we are able to hold onto one thing, as soon as we close our hands around it and hold on, we can't pick up anything else, we can't use anything else. We will find that grasping at these riches pushes them away. However, if we can approach it from where we are, sitting directly in the midst of our life rather than coming at it from any particular angle, then all of its riches will begin to open for us. Zen practice is so vast that we can approach it from almost any angle and still gain something. In this sense, we could say that zen with a small "z" means simply a form of practising. He spoke of five different kinds of Zen, which are bompu zen or "usual zen," gedo zen or " Outside Way zen," shojo zen or "Hinayana practice," daijo zen or "Great Practice zen" and saijojo zen or "Easy and perfect" zen. Tsung-mi was a C'han master, and also the fifth Ancestor of the Hua Yen tradition in the Tang dynasty in China. One particular way of understanding various approaches to practice was taught by Kuei-feng Tsung-mi. This requires honesty with ourselves and our own motives and a very open and clear investigation and recognition of the ways in which we might be approaching our practice as a means to try to grasp at things within our life, instead of opening to the vastness of our life itself.
Since our practice is about opening to our life as it is, opening to this moment as it is, and allowing this clear seeing to pervade our life, it is important that our view of practice also be open and clear. This is true of how we view our practice as well. When we become fixated on our "point of view," our interpretations and expectations blind us. A point of view is merely one degree out of the three hundred and sixty degrees of a circle each point of view can see from that point only, and so is three hundred and fifty nine degrees blind. The way in which we view something defines for us what we're going to allow ourselves to see of it.
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