‘We sit to make life meaningful. The significance of our life is not experienced in striving to create some perfect thing. We must simply start with accepting ourselves. Sitting brings us back to actually who and where we are. This can be very painful. Self-acceptance is the hardest thing to do. If we can’t accept ourselves, we are living in ignorance, this darkest night. We may still be awake, but we don’t know where we are. We cannot see. The mind has no light. Practice is this candle in our very darkest room.’

The story of how I found this quote is a little funny: I was asked if I had any pictures of zazen I could share. Going through my hard drives, I came up with almost nothing. I tried searching for ‘sitting’, and did not fare much better as far as pictures went – except for various sitting rooms in different countries – but did discover this, and other quotes on the subject by the venerable teacher.