“A man can seem to be the sum total of his days, of all that he does from the beginning to the end. But this is not the true man. What you do is just on the periphery. What you feel goes a little deeper. What you are is really at the roots. A man is not the sum total of his acts. A politician is the sum total of his acts because he lives only on the circumference; that’s why it is easy to write history about the politicians. It is difficult to write history about buddhas because they live at such a depth where we cannot reach them. They live in such eternity that time makes no record of them. They exist in such a transcendental way that they leave no traces on the earth. They are like birds in the sky: they fly, but no footprints are left.

      “Politicians leave footprints. They live in the mud, in the dirt; they drag themselves in the mundane reality. They leave many footprints; they leave much bloodshed behind them. A buddha exists as if he has never existed. He exists so absently, he exists like a space, empty space.

      “Remember, a man is not a sum total of his actions, and if he is, he is not yet a man; he is just a fiction, he is living in illusion. You are not what you do, so don’t be too concerned with your doing. Start going deeper into being. That’s why all meditations are basically a way to sit silently – so silently that all action stops. On the physical plane, on the mental plane, action stops, thought stops. Because thought is also action on the mental plane – you are doing something. When all doing disappears and you are simply there, just there, a presence, then meditation has happened.

      “Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

      That is the meaning of the word zazen. Za means sitting doing nothing. And zen means: in that sitting when you are not doing anything, you fall upon yourself, you encounter yourself, you see yourself. That is Zen, dhyana, meditation. The word zazen is beautiful. “Sitting and looking into yourself” – that is the meaning of it.

      “Man is more than the sum total of his acts, his thoughts, his feelings. Behind the acts, thoughts, and feelings there is another man – that which is, that which essentially is. But many seldom if ever show themselves in their essential being. Very few ever reach that point of their essential being-hood, to their very ground of being. Only those who reach know that life is a benediction, a sheer joy, eternal celebration.”