Questions to Master Deshimaru

Question

You say that when we practice zazen we are Buddha or God, and you also say that we must abandon the ego. How can the two be reconciled?

Answer

If you abandon your ego, you become God or Buddha! When you let go of everything, when you have shed everything, when you have finished with your own personal consciousness, then you are God or Buddha ... When everything else is finished. There's nothing contradictory in that. But if you tell yourself, "Now I have abandoned everything and I am God," if you think you are God, then you aren't God at all. That's what counts, and everybody gets it wrong. We cannot certify that we are God. If I say, "I have satori," then I'm just crazy. A crazy person always says, "I'm not crazy at all, I'm in my own normal condition." If the crazy person said, "Maybe I'm not quite right. Maybe I'm making a mistake," then that person would not be so crazy after all and could surely be cured. But if he says he is God or Buddha then his madness is incurable, When everything is done with, thrown away, one becomes God or Buddha. For someone looking at a zazen posture, the posture itself is Buddha or God. The authentic thing is unconscious. That is a good question and everybody gets it wrong. That's why I am forever saying that when you practice zazen you don't need to say to yourself, "I must become like this or like that." Unconsciously, naturally, automatically you can become it. That is the essence of Soto Zen. Mushotoku ... without any goal, without any object, just concentrating on the posture of zazen.