Are you going to meditate and practice Zen today? How? When? Where? What's your motivation? Pay attention to your feet touching the earth? Lend a hand? Accept things as they are? Go to a meeting, study a text, ponder the workings of the universe, tune into your belly button. Going to study yourself and let go of yourself? Yes? No? Maybe?
That is a very short list of the mind of Samantabhadra, the Bodhisattva of Zen Practice and Meditation. Her voice is sometimes a gentle loving nudge, sometimes a loud squawk, as in 'get thee to a Zen Center'. Samantabhadra is the icon and energy and potentiality of practice, which is nothing less in Zen than endless awakening. Dogen clarified this with his life by firmly rooting the Soto Zen tradition in practice, the endless turning of the dharma wheel inspired by the vow to save all beings.
The question of how we pick up our Zen practice is like a mirror that reflects our inner life, character, intention, and relationship with all things. How we practice is how we live, how we live is how we practice. There is no life outside of practice, and practice goes beyond our intentions and choices. Practice and wisdom and compassion are the three dancing maidens of Zen: Samantabhadra, Manjusri, and Avalokiteshvara. Wisdom and Compassion may exist within and throughout, but practice potentializes them, makes them known, presents us with the grit and grime of daily life as the blackboard of mind.
Waking at dawn
I whisk the tea
Then sit still awhile
Becoming Samantabhadra
