And this seems like the most Zen idea of all: that one of the world’s greatest chefs can often be found mapping out her meals in silence and solitude, plucking mint leaves in a garden that feels far, far away from anything resembling preening egos and gastronomic luxury. But she seems to know that positive energy has a habit of finding its way out into the wider world. One day, after we have toured the temple, she leads me down to a small bridge that crosses over a creek. We stand on the bridge and she touches her hand to her ear. She wants me to listen. So we listen: She and I simply stand there by the water for a couple of minutes, listening to the sound of the current. Then she smiles — it really is like a ray of light, this smile — and points to the creek and utters a single word in English, as she looks into my eyes.

‘‘Orchestra,’’ she says.

When we sit zazen, anything can and usually does arise in our head; a childhood experience we want to suppress, an unpleasant experience of being criticized by someone, and wanting to reject the criticism, or thoughts of all the nice things we'd like to buy with our next paycheck or about how close to enlightenment we must be because of our good zazen. Despite or because of the fact that we are just sitting facing the wall, we feel uncomfortable and seek to entertain ourselves by forming pleasant thoughts to think about. This wouldn't be so bad if only pleasant thoughts formed, but rarely is that ever the case.
Very often, even when we're not sitting zazen, thoughts form somewhere despite our intention to reject or suppress them — thoughts of the demise of
a loved one (or, heaven forbid, our own death!), or our seeming loneliness, or the lack of a sense of meaning or worth in our lives.

When these thoughts continue to come up during one period of sitting or over a period of several sittings, or over a period of twenty or thirty years, we begin to become suspicious of them (even the horrible or frightening ones) and we begin to settle down and not be so pulled around by them. And living a life of just sitting deeper and deeper into ourselves without being carried away by our thoughts and emotions is living a life based on zazen. The more we practice a zazen of just letting come up whatever comes up and letting it go away, the more we realize that our thoughts are but a mirror of whatever it is that is foremost in our lives at any one time. It isn't that after sitting for many years fewer and fewer thoughts arise until we enter a state of thoughtlessness. Living thoughtlessly is a large part of the problem of our busy frenetic society today! It is in letting the thoughts that arise in our minds come and go as if looking into a mirror but without getting carried away by them (i. e, by trying to suppress, or reject or attach to them) , that the life force that runs through each and every one of us and everything around us straightens out our lives naturally, so that we are able to give full play to whatever the encounter before us calls for.

There is an expression in Zen that goes, munen musô — no thought, no form. That is, it is popularly believed that if a person sits zazen hard enough and for a long enough time, then one day he or she will arrive at a state of munen musô — no thought, no form — equivalent to satori or enlightenment. To be sure, there are times when one sits zazen that very few or even no particular thoughts arise, but such a psychological state should never be confused with Enlightenment. If a state of no thought, no form is the ideally "enlightened" state, then the rock out in the garden is far more enlightened that I am since it has no thought!

The expression, munen musô, very simply put, means giving no thought to "what's in it for me?" It means not being so tied up by conventional forms that we become unable to function. For example, to be so puffed up with pride over our position as top executive in the company that we literally lose our sight towards helping others around us either in the company or in our community at large. This is also the sense of the bodhisattva vow to save all sentient beings before trying to save oneself.

— Zen Gardens: Kyoto's nature enclosed (Thomas Wright, Mizuno Katsuhiko)

The type of themeless zazen advocated by Eihei Dôgen Zenji (1200–1253), founder of the Sôtô School of Zen, is called shikantaza, meaning just sitting. In other words, when the sitter sits down to do zazen, he or she just sits without trying to conjure up some visualization of the Buddha or work on solving some riddle.

Of course, when practicing shikantaza, since there is no problem, no theme, no object of visualization, it would be a very simple matter to just face the wall and go to the movies — the "movies" being the images that arise in one's mind. Therefore, my advice to newcomers to zazen is not to suppress, not to reject, and not to chase after. Or, as Uchiyama Rôshi often said, "Open the hand of thought."

— Zen Gardens: Kyoto's nature enclosed (Thomas Wright, Mizuno Katsuhiko)

Sawaki Kôdô Rôshi, the former abbott of Antai-ji and teacher of Uchiyama Rôshi, once said, "To be pulled and dragged around by zazen — ahh, what a wonderful life!" I understand his words in this way; that selfish aspect of my character or consciousness is always and only looking after itself, but when I sit down and do zazen, that selfish aspect obviously also sits with me. And when those naturally selfish reflections of my past actions arise in my head when I'm sitting, even though I just sit there and let them come and go, they somehow seem to have a power of their own to let me know how foolish I have been.

— Zen Gardens: Kyoto's nature enclosed (Thomas Wright, Mizuno Katsuhiko)

My favorite parts of Freud’s works are when he gets real trippy with it, talking about energetic flows, what he called cathexis. If we blocked our psychosexual energies, Freud believed, then those energies would have nowhere to go except inward, and thus potentially create neuroses and melancholia.

So, it makes sense in a society that is under-stimulated—that is having not enough sex, that is not going outside enough, that is not interacting with humans enough, that is, in short, not discharging its psychosexual and emotional energies—that we would all become neurotic and depressed. Therapy should be, and often is, a way to realize this—to realize that you must enact your desires before they turn inward and wreak havoc on your psyche. But these days, I believe, we have forgotten what comes after therapy—that we must then act on these desires, not just understand them, for our energies to be released, and thus for us to feel healthy and happy.