Hi James and Thomas
I’m finding a lot of insight in your posts.

As a third party observer when I read Thomas’s reflections, I did not interpret them as statements of personal belief, but rather as pointing toward something to be embodied in practice. That is why I was somewhat surprised by James’s response, which seemed to frame Thomas as holding onto a belief.

It feels like both of you are pointing to the same truth but from different sides. Thomas is describing how Zen teachings emphasize that enlightenment is already present, not something to be achieved. James is reminding us that even holding onto that description as a belief can become another form of attachment.

I wonder if the word ‘believe’ is where the wires cross? Thomas is using it to mean ‘Zen points toward,’ while James hears it as personal belief and something to hold on to. If we shift the language to ‘Zen teaches’ or ‘Zen points to,’ the overlap becomes clearer: enlightenment is not attained, but realized when clinging drops away. In that sense, you’re both describing different aspects of the “stepping off the raft“.

And because I’m me 🙂 a reflection and story

When I first began dancing, there were moments when the music carried me, no counting, no measuring, only flow. A quiet noticing. These moments came by accident, before I knew the steps, before the mind whispered, “Let me…”

Later, as lessons multiplied, I chased the flow by trying to perform correctly, and the experience of flow vanished. Until one night, weary and forgetting myself, the dance remembered me. The steps and rhythm had always been in the music; I only needed to step aside. And then, of course, the mind returned: “Let me…”

The dance feels like a circle of remembering, arriving, and forgetting… until perhaps, forgetting itself becomes arrival?

I hear the value of words and quantification, yet as I age, I’m drawn to the moment when it dissolves into fulfillment, when love is the ground and the steps remember themselves.

I wonder if what feels like a secret teaching is simply resistance to a subtle truth: one must step off the raft before reaching the shore. The Dharma carries us across, yet clinging to it keeps our feet from touching the ground. The secret is not hidden; it is only hard for a self to trust, so the mind insists: “Let me…

A Day in Flow – (need it be a dream?
Morning light spills across the kitchen table. Peter pours tea, not hurried, not slow, just present. The steam curls upward, and he watches it dissolve, smiling at how it mirrors his own thoughts. No need to chase them, no need to hold them.

On his walk to work, he notices the crunch of snow beneath his boots. A child slips, then laughs, and he laughs too, because the joy is contagious. He doesn’t think, I should be kind, he simply bends to help, and the gesture feels as natural as breathing.

At the office, emails pile up, but he doesn’t feel trapped. He answers what he can, then lets the rest wait. A colleague comes in tense, words sharp, but Peter listens without defense. Something in his quiet presence softens the room. The colleague exhales, as if remembering themselves.

Evening arrives. He cooks a simple meal, humming to the rhythm of the knife against the cutting board. Later, he sits by the window, watching the sky fade into indigo. No grand revelation, no fireworks, just the steady pulse of life, already whole.
He laughs softly, remembering: We work for that which no work is required. And the day folds into night, the dance continues without his effort, carrying him gently along.

Hi everyone

I wonder if all these labels are simply the mind insisting on complexity, a restless attempt to weave patterns where simplicity already breathes. It forgets the subtle truth: the raft must be left behind before the shore can be touched.

Then I wonder, does the mind truly forget, or does the self know, deep down, that stepping off the raft would resolve the questions… only to find such a step too frightening?

For a lifetime I have lived in thought, circling the same waters, repeating the same motions. And know I’m surprised to admit that these games of the self interest me less and less.

The student asked, “Is the shore reached by words?”
The master replied, “Words are the raft.”
The student pressed, “Then must I carry them forever?”
The master said, “Step off before you arrive, or you will never stand.”

James, your words and question remind me of a Sufi story.

There is a legend that God formed a statue of clay in His image and asked the soul to enter it. The soul, being free and unbounded, refused to be imprisoned. Then God commanded the angels to play music, and in ecstasy the soul entered the body so that it might experience the music more clearly.

“People say that the soul, on hearing that song, entered the body; but in reality the soul itself was song.”- Hafiz

The soul refused clay.
The angels sang.
The soul entered.
It was not bound.
It was music.