When we first come to Zen practice, we are usually told there are two basic rules during formal zazen: sit still and no unnecessary noises. Avoiding voluntary sounds, such as sniffing, clearing our throat, and loud breathing, is usually straightforward. However, sitting still often takes some work and brings to the fore some of our earliest challenges in practicing zazen.

For most people, adopting one of the various acceptable postures for sitting practice requires some adjustment. Often there is an element of discomfort, and our ordinary response to discomfort is to try to change some aspect of our environment. At some point our legs, back, shoulders, or neck, either separately or in combination, all start to “hurt.” We want to move. Or a fly lands on our nose during sitting and it feels unbearable. But the rule is simple and clear – no moving.

If we want our minds to settle, we first must settle down physically. There is a direct relationship between mind and body: Agitation in either area manifests as agitation in the other. Requiring the body to be still is a basic condition for realizing a still mind.

If there is irritation or discomfort and we are not allowed to change the situation, then frequently our minds generate a stream of self-centric mind activity. “Why can’t I move?” or “This is stupid!” or any of a variety of colorful rants about our self, the rules, the officers, etc. Our peace of mind disappears in a flurry of subjective activity.

These outbursts are just mind noise. However, they are difficult to ignore because we believe that they are our self. Correspondingly, we believe that the outbursts are important and should be listened to. The problem with this thinking is that we presume the subject is our self, and it is at odds with its circumstances, the object. In short, we suffer.

Some folks can push through these minor irritations, but for others it is more difficult. With the minor irritations that arise in the Zendo it is usually just sufficient to deepen our determination to be still. Yet, each of us has a threshold beyond which the dissonance is intolerable. In our lives too, we have or will face bigger problems that we cannot avoid or eliminate. What will we do then?

The Zendo situation highlights a deep misunderstanding: our belief that our self is our subjective activity, separate from our circumstances. Thus, we divide our experience into self and other, pitting one aspect against the other. We bind ourselves to the inwardness and volatility of subjective activity, rather than realizing the whole of our experience. This is why we suffer. The tragedy is that this division is an illusion we inflict on ourselves. Our self is not merely thoughts, memories, and emotions.

So, what is our self? Any statement, no matter how wise or prestigious the source, is nothing more than an explanation. Either we believe it or not. It does not deepen our understanding of self. True understanding does not arise from belief; true understanding is insight into our life. Unlike most religions and some other schools of Buddhism, Zen Buddhism is not a belief system. The Buddha did not ask people to believe him; he asked people to study their own experience. The Buddha devoted his life to this investigation, and his awakening, which came after years of exhaustive practice, was the maturation of his insight, not the product of some skillfully chosen set of beliefs about who he was.

The Buddha’s practice was to investigate his self and test his conclusions in the living of his life. This, in turn, led him to deepen his investigation and refine his conclusions. He lived his convictions and tested them, again and again, which is the heart of all Buddhist practice – and zazen is the essential tool in the investigation.

However, accepting the commonsense belief that subjective activity is our self hamstrings our investigation. If we want to study ourselves, we must start out with the clear understanding that we don’t know what our self is. What is the totality of our experience, prior to the assumptions and divisions we create in our minds? To realize this totality, we must manifest our entire experience by being completely still, open, and aware.

Yet, even if we ignore our mind-noise, there is still that sensation of discomfort. When something hurts, we want to distance ourselves from it, but when it is our own body that feels uncomfortable, we cannot. We cannot change our circumstances, nor can we separate from them. There is only one solution: embrace our discomfort. This is not acceptance or acknowledgement, which are both self-centric actions. A parent, having been away from his or her young child a long time, wholeheartedly hugs the child when they are reunited; this is embrace. Willingly, completely unifying with our situation as it is, subject and object, mind and body become one.

Unifying with our body is essential, but there is another step. Every moment we are surrounded by our world. As long as we see our world as separate from our body we are repeating the same misunderstanding of dividing experience into self and other: we see our body as our self and the world as other-than-self. As before, we cannot realize the totality of experience if we divide our experience. Every moment the world is embracing us and we must embrace our world as our self.

If we are to manifest the whole of our experience, we must be free from self-interest. Taking a step back from identifying with subjective activity is the beginning, but we must also free ourselves from self-interest – our identification with the subject – which always colors the situation. Our commitment must be to embrace the world that is embracing us, not to affirm our self-interest. It is the only way to realize the totality of our experience.

Feeling and embracing subject is easy, but we must equally feel and embrace object: our world. In the words of Joshu Roshi, we must “give love.” We naturally give love to subject, manifesting thoughts, memories, and emotions as our self. Equally we must give love to object and manifest tree, mountain, or our partner as our self. To give our love is to manifest each person or thing just as we experience them. With our entire body we become one with our experience; there is no separation.

When we give love to everything; everything is our self. There is no self assertion because all is self manifestation. We manifest the total content of our experience as our self.

We must give ourselves so completely that we disappear into our love; with our whole body we manifest love. When we manifest with our entire body the observer, all traces of self-consciousness disappear into the experience itself. When the observer disappears there is no doubt or hesitation; there is no separation. We all have experienced complete giving. Perhaps when dancing with our partner, skiing down a mountain, or hugging our child – subject and object unify. When we completely disappear into our zazen, mind, body, breathing and environment all become one. This is complete love and the realization of still and quiet sitting.