Does the Fan Disturb the Air?

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

The windows are open and the ceiling fans are slowly turning. The morning air here is cool. The sound of the fan against the still morning air is soft. I wonder about the stillness of zazen.

Someone asked last night, "Can we go deeper?"

Such an interesting question. Zazen as a practice of plumbing the depths, or of mining the earth for its riches. I suppose, but what is deeper? What is behind the question?

We sit zazen for a variety of reasons, all of us. We sit with a variety of intentions, as many as there are sitting buddhas, I am sure. Yet, on this meditation cushion and in this stillness, we seem to settle, some may say 'sink', deeper and deeper into the stillness. So, it often seems as though we are, indeed, 'going deeper.'

I wonder though if it could not be understood slightly differently, that instead of going deeper we are just shedding the many layers we use to clothe our 'self' and in the shedding, come ever closer to seeing ourselves as the universe itself.

Can we go deeper? We are vast emptiness itself, we just need to stop isolating ourselves with wrappings of identity.

Be well.