Step One: Wake Up

Buddha's essential teaching? - it all comes down to just being fully, totally present, right here, right now. So in the now the question that can be asked is

Who's reading this story?   

Dumb question?  Let's see.

Rinzai's is a Zen master (pdf link) and one of his ideas is that  questions must stop, answers must stop, thinking must stop.

This and questions like it were the bread and butter of Rinzai's teachings.

One of the classic spiritual questions you can ask repeatedly in meditation is:

Who am I?

The Greeks urged - Know thy self.

The Bible has many verses on this topic. One verse is from Proverbs 26:12

Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

The Qur'an also talks about if a man knows himself he knows his Lord

Rinzai invites you to go behind your current ego identity and see the  immutable being behind your present role, behind your name, behind your gender and age, behind your nationality or political party, behind your racial identity.
He asks the question countless ways.  I invite you to invent them to fit your own life.  Use them all the time as a way to wake up the deeper reality that is here now all the time.

·         Who is reading this blog?

·         Who is sitting in your chair?

·         Who is driving this car

·         Who is eating dinner?

·         Who is washing her face?

·         Who is going to the bathroom?

·         Who is watching TV?

·         - Who is sitting on this meditation cushion?

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Have fun with these.  They will faithfully puncture the delusions of  the moment and remind you of the depths.