Deeply Understand Yourself
To truly understand ourselves requires both our own individual investigation and also the support of our community. Our practice will naturally draw us closer in to looking at who we are, and holding those insights and continuing to stay committed to practice requires the knowing that we are not alone on this path.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Deeply Understand Yourself
”We are warmed by fire, not by the smoke of the fire. We are carried over the sea by a ship, not by the wake of a ship. So too, what we are is to be sought in the invisible depths of our own being, not in our outward reflection in our own acts.
We must find our real selves, not in the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon the beings around us, but in our own soul, which is the principle of all our acts.”
This is Thomas Merton. I had been looking through one of his books, No Man is an Island, and this passage caught my attention. If we change the wording slightly at the end, we might say: we must find our real selves, not in the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon others, but in selflessness, which is the principle—the basic truth—of all our acts. Merton is speaking of the soul, of course, but I think what he’s really saying is that we must know ourselves deeply, not just look at the surface of our actions to discover who we are or what our lives mean. We must know ourselves so that we don’t simply reflect, react, or deflect, but instead come from the clarity that arises when we see the basic ground of our being—what Daido Roshi used to call the selfless ground. That clarity, that selflessness, should guide all our actions.
Sincerity, Connection
Last time I gave a talk, I mentioned another Merton quote about sincerity. He was speaking about sincerity among the sangha—among people trying to be awake to themselves and to one another, doing their best to live from that truth. He understood how difficult it is to be sincere and honest when we don’t always know ourselves, or each other. I’ve always felt that practice is not complete unless it helps us do exactly that. No matter how many koans we pass or how far we go in training, if it doesn’t help us truly be in touch with ourselves and genuinely see one another, it isn’t fully working.
Can practice help us get closer, help us truly connect? I think it can. Do we always want to? Probably not. It requires openness—a degree of sincerity that can be frightening, even threatening to our sense of self. And we’ll do almost anything to protect me, to protect mine.
In the Identity of Relative and Absolute, which we chant every Sunday, we say: “To encounter the absolute is not yet enlightenment.” It’s not enough to simply understand intellectually that the self is empty, because we live as if it isn’t. We live not knowing that it is. We also need to recognize the wake of the ship—the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon others—because we’re not islands, living independently of one another. To be clear, we have to see everything: our light and our darkness, what we feel and how what we feel affects others. That sounds self-evident. Of course we feel; we’re sentient beings. Yet often, we don’t really know what we’re feeling as it’s happening. We only realize it afterward—through a dream, an outburst of anger, or a deep sadness that finally surfaces. Sometimes we feel so much that, just to cope, we shut down. Even when we recognize that we’ve shut down, it can be hard to break through the veil.
For me, it feels almost as if I’m wrapped in a wet blanket. There’s just enough distance to feel a little safer. My voice—sometimes I can hear it—becomes distant, slightly official. When I look closely, it’s usually because I’m feeling one thing and saying another. There’s a gap, if not an outright disconnect.
Anger, Awareness
Shugun Sensei once said that anger simply appears. We don’t sit here and decide, “I’m going to get angry.” But often, once it’s there, we feed it. We choose to keep it going because something else is happening underneath. Have you ever been stuck in that in-between place? You’re not truly angry, but you’re too embarrassed or confused to admit what’s really going on. You raise your voice, slam a door, make a fuss—anything to break through what’s happening until things normalize.
There’s always a part of you that sees yourself doing this. You know, at least partially, that you’re exaggerating or pretending, but you can’t stop. You just need to move through it. That’s the thing about practice—it spoils your tantrums. When you see what you’re doing, they lose their power. They become a little embarrassing. I’m not talking about raw feeling itself, but about what we layer over it.
There’s a story of a man who came to Nagarjuna and asked to study with him. He was drawn by the teacher’s beauty and grace. “Is there something here for me,” he asked, “something I can attain by studying with you? But you should know—I’m a thief. I’ve tried to stop, and I can’t. I’ve given up. This is who I am. I don’t want to discuss it; you should just know this.” Nagarjuna replied, “Why worry? Who’s going to talk about you being a thief?” The man said, “Every priest or monk I’ve met has told me I must stop stealing before I can study.” Nagarjuna laughed. “Then you’ve gone to thieves, because I don’t care. I’m not a thief. If you want to steal, that’s your issue. The only thing I ask is that you be completely aware.” The man agreed. “That seems fair enough.” Nagarjuna said, “Then do as you wish. Break into houses if you must—but be aware.”
Three weeks later, the man returned. “You’re tricky,” he said. “When I’m aware, I can’t steal. When I’m stealing, awareness disappears. I’m in a bind.” Nagarjuna said, “Why are we still talking about stealing? I told you, do as you please.” The man explained, “I finally broke into the king’s palace. I’d dreamed of it for years. I reached the treasure room—if I’d taken it, I’d be the richest man alive. But I was aware, just as you told me. And in that awareness, the jewels looked like ordinary stones. I said to myself, ‘What am I doing?’ Then awareness slipped away, and the jewels were beautiful again. I tested it many times—it was always the same. I could either steal or be aware. I couldn’t have both.” He decided it wasn’t worth it. He shaved his head and became Nagarjuna’s disciple. That’s what happens when you become aware: your story loses its luster.
For me, it often comes down to wanting to protect myself. Sometimes I tell myself it’s to protect someone else, but really it’s me. It doesn’t feel great to have that distance or that disconnect, but it’s not terrible either—that’s why we stay there. It’s comfortable enough. There’s something safe about not breaking through the veil. Sometimes, if we’re paying attention, we realize it feels like a shroud. A little dying happens in it. And if we’re lucky, we remember that we want to live too much to let it take us. So we turn to anger. Not consciously, usually. But when the embers of feeling are cold, we need a spark to reignite life. When we’re angry, we know we’re feeling. We may not know what we’re feeling or why, but at least we’re alive. It’s not surprising that anger feels empowering—it’s better than helplessness.
I’ve always thought that anger is never just one thing. It’s a blend—a layered emotion, a combination of fear, pain, sadness, and longing. When we can be honest with ourselves, we begin to sense what lies beneath it. Often, anger appears because something in us feels unseen, unheard, or unloved. It rises as a cry for connection, though it usually pushes others away.
Selflessness and Deep Life
Merton says that we must find our real selves, not in the froth stirred up by our contact with others, but in our own soul—the source of all our acts. Yet that doesn’t mean retreating from the world. It means learning to meet it differently, to act from awareness rather than reaction. Nagarjuna’s teaching shows us that awareness itself is the gate. When we’re aware, we can’t act out of blindness; when we’re blind, awareness vanishes. This, to me, is what Zen practice is about. Not erasing emotion or suppressing desire, but learning to see clearly enough that we no longer confuse the jewels for stones, or the stones for jewels. Awareness restores perspective. It makes us honest.
When I look deeply, I can see how every impulse to protect myself is a form of separation. Each time I pull back, a small death happens—the death of openness, of connection, of the living current that moves between beings. Yet, that same closing also becomes the very condition that allows awakening to appear, because it shows me, viscerally, that I’m choosing to contract. The moment I see that, I’m free to let it go.
Zen often speaks of dying before we die. When the small self loosens its grip, even for an instant, we experience that dying—a quieting of the restless “I” that always wants to be right, to be safe, to be seen. It’s not a morbid idea; it’s profoundly alive. Every time we release a story or a defense, we make space for something larger to breathe through us.
There’s a line from the Dhammapada that says, “Hatred never ceases by hatred, but only by love; this is an eternal law.” It’s easy to read that as a moral statement, but it’s also an experiential truth. When we meet anger with anger, we solidify it. When we meet it with awareness—with love—it dissolves into the very energy of life. The Buddha called this the transformation of poison into medicine. Anger, greed, delusion—these aren’t obstacles to awakening; they are the raw materials of it. Awareness is the fire that refines them. The more clearly we see, the more everything becomes workable. Even our mistakes become part of the path.
When Merton says we are warmed by the fire, not the smoke of the fire, I hear that as a reminder not to confuse the signs of life with life itself. The smoke—the noise, the drama, the endless spinning of our minds—isn’t what truly sustains us. The warmth is quieter, more intimate. It comes from being in direct contact with what is. That’s why practice must reach into the invisible depths of our being. It has to touch the place where we can no longer pretend—where awareness burns away pretense and leaves only what’s real. Sometimes that feels like loss. Sometimes it feels like relief. But always, it feels alive.
When I first began practice, I thought the point was to get rid of what was difficult—to smooth the rough edges, to feel serene. Over time, I’ve realized it’s the opposite. Practice doesn’t protect us from life; it throws us into it. It asks us to be intimate with everything—the pain, the beauty, the confusion, the silence. To be intimate is to stop standing outside.
Awareness restores perspective. It makes us honest.
That, I think, is what Merton means when he speaks of being “carried over the sea by the ship, not by the wake.” The ship is awareness itself. The wake is what we leave behind—the traces of our struggle, the turbulence of our passage. The sea is our life. To live deeply is to entrust ourselves to that movement, not to cling to what we’ve already stirred up. When I forget this, I return to the froth—to all the ways I define myself through doing, through comparison, through others’ eyes. But when I remember, even for a moment, that the self is not a fixed point but an unfolding process, something in me relaxes. The need to prove or defend dissolves, and what remains is simple presence. In that space, sincerity arises naturally. It isn’t forced. It’s not about being good or right—it’s about being true.
When we see clearly, we act clearly. When we forget, we stumble, and that too becomes part of the practice.
The work, as I see it, is to keep turning toward awareness, again and again, until it becomes second nature. Until we trust, like the thief in Nagarjuna’s story, that awareness and confusion cannot coexist. Until we understand that the real warmth of the fire—the real light of our lives—comes not from what we do, but from the still, luminous ground from which doing arises.
Perhaps that’s what it means to find our real selves: to live in such a way that nothing is left outside, that even our anger, our fear, our longing, and our love are seen for what they are—expressions of one continuous movement. In that movement, selflessness isn’t something we achieve. It’s simply what remains when we stop mistaking the smoke for the fire.
Deeply Understand Yourself, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast, and transcript available.