APPAMADA

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Bernie Glassman

Everything in Zen is present perfect tense. There is no future, no past—it’s all now. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to reach, it’s all here, all One Body, one thing. Since we are already here, we are already at the end of the path and we are also at the beginning. We don’t practice to become enlightened, we don’t practice to realize something; we practice because we are enlightened. We don’t eat to live; because we are alive, we eat. We usually think it’s the other way around, that we eat and breathe so we’ll be or remain alive. But no, because we’re alive, we breathe, we eat, we do.