Zen is not a religion. It is a practice with a goal.
What's the basic Zen practice? "Cast away all things, become without thought and without mind."
What's the goal? "Liberated right where you stand." Sokushin jobutsu -- Buddhahood in this life.
Zen is not concerned with past lives, future lives, karma, ideas and opinions, or anyone's level of so-called spiritual development. Cut all that away. Drop body and mind in a single instant.
"Body and mind dropped in a single instant."
Here it is! Wonderful! Yet -- where is it?
Can you grasp empty space? Does it have bones? Eyes? Ears? A mouth? Nostrils?
Buddha holds up a flower; Kasyapa smiles. A crow screams on the mountain. Ants crawl out of a hole in the ground.
"One thousand nights of cold rain." "Wearing a straw hat under the hot blue sky."
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