Actualization and Forgetting the Self
Returning to Purpose as the Seasons Turn
As leaves turn and the Earth squeezes out its last bit of color, we prepare for winter and what has fallen. Both the loss, and the celebration of light, that winter inspires.
Bina and I took a long overdue vacation for my birthday this month, and I am returning with a continued sense of purpose and a clearer vision of what I want to see in the world.
A Life Shaped by Service
Since leaving Florida in 1994 to enter Zen training, being in service has been a primary focus in my life. Whether it was opening the temple doors, sitting as a monitor in the Zendo, or later volunteering as a coach or ceremonial assistant, one of my greatest motivators over the last 30 years has been to support containers that support personal transformation.
My own transformational process began 40 years ago (the conscious aspect at least), but it wasn’t until I began training at the monastery that I realized my contribution to others was part of my own unfolding. To focus outward — on others — was, paradoxically, a way of realizing the Self.
A Core Teaching of Zen
One of the central teachings in Zen states:
To study the Way is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be actualized by the 10,000 things.
This teaching offers a critical clue in the pursuit of understanding and self-realization.
While we begin with “me,” the journey is not about me.
To focus outward is to learn about the nature of Reality and the nature of the Self — and how the two are actually inseparable. What we choose to focus on changes everything.
The Power of Intention
The next step of the journey was deepening into intention.
What we place our attention on — giving, service, connection — becomes the doorway to refining intention. And intention asks us to examine quietly:
Is it to gain favor?
To be liked?
To look good?
Or is it connection, contribution, generosity?
(In another essay, I’ll write about how it’s also okay to have mixed intentions. We aren’t saints, after all.)
In acknowledging our intention, we clarify it. And in clarifying, we harness its power.
Values as Guideposts
Our values serve as guideposts, with intention as our north star. As our intention aligns with our values, we begin to live with meaning and purpose.
In doing so, we shift from being a passive receptor of consequences and information to an active co-creator with our environment — shaping our results, choosing our experiences, and authoring our lives.
A Return to Love
Which brings me to Love, and the image at the top of this newsletter.
To “focus out” is to love.
To be actualized by the 10,000 things is to be love.
To have the intention of being loving is the key to creating love in our life.
We are raised to believe that we need an outside force to love us, that we must earn it or transform ourselves into something worthy. But this duality is a farce.
We are the generators of love.
We are the fountains of love.
Love comes from within.
We can create what we have spent so long searching for. And that elixir is enough. Because you are enough.
That enoughness is wholeness. And when we experience that, we are the love. There is no getting, no acquiring.
So — we are what we search for.
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