In Zen, we live by vow. We follow a 2500-year-old value system that appears through actualization. This is not just being values-oriented, but by actualizing values day-by-day-by-moment. This must be our "Way" if we are Bodhisattvas. "Our Way" is what Shakyamuni Buddha actualized.

Buddha lived a life fully awake: impermanence, interconnectivity, and non-self. This now becomes our "Way of Life" (The Buddha Way). When we act as such. the commonality between the Buddha's way and the "Buddha-Way" is fluidity or non-fixation. This is Zen.

Zen is being thorough in the moment. As I type I hear the door open, the hum of the computer, see my two-fingered-typing hitting the keys, and am aware that I don't speak the words in my mind as I type. The more we get hung-up, snared-by or fixated on something the more we long for permanence, being self-contained, and being the center of it all. Self-induced pain is the attachment to control.

"IT" (life) is improvisation. Based on our life experiences and conditions, we engage in the fluidity of creating our life in the moment after moment...