Nobody ever transforms himself into an enlightened pattern of life by dividing himself in two pieces, “Good I” and “Bad Me,” wherein Good I preaches to Bad Me and tries to make me over.
The more it appears to be spiritual—that is to say, something different from, aside from, apart from everyday life—the more false that kind of spirituality will be.
In Oriental cultures teachers expect the student to make the effort to attain the understanding. So a teacher is difficult, and you must put yourself out to understand what he says. He’s not going to make it easy for you—because of the feeling that what comes to you too easily doesn’t really come to you.
Zen consists in faith in your innate quality of intelligence, in your organic pattern. Trust it. After all, your eyes are beautifully blue or brown, your hair is wonderfully brunette or blonde, your breathing is fantastic, your heart is working beautifully. That is your Zen. Go ahead.
Whoever really gets this thing and understands it, knows that he hasn’t attained anything. Buddha said in the Diamond Sutra: “When I attained complete, perfect and unexcelled awakening, I attained nothing at all.” And, you see, that “nothing at all” is the same nothing into which all trees and plants and bodies and butterflies and birds are disappearing in the course of endless transformations. Everything disappears into nothing at all. But out of this same nothing at all come all the new things forever and ever.