By Taylor
Happy Thanksgiving. I’m Taylor, and recently I volunteered to speak at our meditation group. If I’m honest, the main reason I volunteer is that I can’t stand that awkward moment when we’re all standing in a circle and no one steps forward. I just raise my hand so we can all move on.
The funny part is that once I volunteer, the real work begins. I don’t usually have something profound ready to go. I spend the whole week turning ideas over in my head, wondering what I can possibly offer that would be worth everyone’s time. It’s not exactly stressful, but it is a genuine struggle. Sometimes it even keeps me up at night.
But that process—wrestling with what to say—ends up being part of my practice. I start asking myself: What does this practice actually mean to me? Why am I doing this? What is all of this for?
I’ve come to feel that this struggle is very similar to sitting itself. I don’t think we’re here just to zone out on the cushion. We’re here to wake up, again and again, to every breath we take. That isn’t always easy. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be. Practice isn’t meant to be something we just relax into and let happen on autopilot. It asks something of us. It invites us to be fully present, even when that’s uncomfortable.
Yet somehow, even when I can’t quite put it into words, I know I get something real from this. There’s a sense that this effort—this repeated attempt to show up, breathe, and be awake—matters. It feels connected to the very point of life, even if I can’t neatly explain how.
There’s a quote that has stayed with me for half my life now. When I was nineteen—about half a lifetime ago—I went to an introductory retreat at the Rochester Zen Center. I haven’t practiced consistently since then, but a fragment from that time is still clear. There was a wooden board with a quote on it, attributed (I think) to Dōgen. I might be misremembering the details, but the essence was this:
Wake up, wake up, don’t waste a moment.
Great is the matter of life and death.
That line has followed me ever since. It surfaces when I’m sitting on the cushion, when I’m lying awake at night trying to decide what to say to a room full of people, and when I catch myself drifting through the day on autopilot.
So that’s what I offered to my group, and it’s what I’ll offer here too:
Don’t waste a moment. Wake up, breath by breath. Great is the matter of this life, of birth and death.
And if all you can manage today is just noticing one breath fully, that’s already a start.
Hakone Zendo 