Finding the True Self

latch
Originally uploaded by Robby Garbett [lawntffoto].

I've been working on a copyediting project that occasionally grabs me and shakes me. Here's a section, in progress from the book. It's by Harada Sekkei, entitled The Essence of Zen, forthcoming from Wisdom
Publications, 2007.

In our lifetime there is only one person we must encounter, one person we must meet as though we were passionately in love. That person is the essential Self, the true Self. As long as you don’t meet this Self, it will be impossible to find true satisfaction in your heart, to avoid feeling that you lack something, or to be clear about things in general.

To meet your Self is the purpose of human life, and the objective in Buddhism. The shortest, most practical way to do this is through Zen. Buddhism is the teaching of the Dharma, which Shakyamuni Buddha expounded after his liberation. This was not a conclusion he arrived at within the realm of ego-self thought, whereby reality is perceived as objective and thought is used to determine what reality is. Rather, Buddha discovered the nature of reality by liberating himself from discriminatory and dualistic thought, and he became reality itself. Thus, his teaching is very different from the sort of explanation that depends on dualistic thought, on knowing and not knowing—which is generally prevalent in the fields of religion, philosophy, physics, medicine, and biology.