Does awakening depend on my own efforts?

Question

I am happy to be able to write to you.

Why embark on any practice if I am already essentially awakened?

Won’t practice, whatever it is, reinforce the ego by creating a new identity, this time spiritual, religious, or even moralizing?

And ultimately, does awakening depend on my own efforts?

Anonymous

This is a classic question Master Dogen often answered. My answer is:

It is precisely because you are already essentially awakened that sitting in the Buddha’s posture reveals this nature and this awakening, which is your intimate, essential nature.
Certainly, beginning to learn something new involves questioning what you call the ego. By considering new paradigms and having new experiences, the boundaries of your personality will expand into previously unknown territories. Your personality will therefore have to adapt to these new spaces, and it will do so with more or less skill and flexibility.
Learning anything, especially knowledge not based solely on conscious awareness, inevitably passes through a phase of conscious efforts that ultimately prove ineffective, since only on the day we let go of them will the experience express itself. When we learn, we do not know; but if we do not learn, we will never know.

Kosen