The Daily Nightwalker

Some people are very confused about Zen and the Tao. They say, “I don’t get the Tao,” or “I don’t get Zen. It’s over my head and there’s nothing more to it.” Zen and Tao are the same thing, you see. They are both symbols representing the mind’s true nature. This may also be confusing to people, and so I will do my best to clarify.

Taoists and those who understand Zen have no use for hope or fear. They understand both as empty as the change in the world. Everything anyone owns is actually composed of conditions. No matter how they think that they are content as they are now, someone who is awake to a certain extent is aware that this is not going to remain. Everything comes and goes. Even the mind is made of conditions. A Taoist or Zen Buddhist has faith in this truth, that solid things are but dreams. Gradually being more and more aware of this allows one to detach from their desires as they cannot always possess. Indeed, what possesses anything but the conditions that create them?

Once this is all understood, that the world is a dream and that we too are also but dreams, not non-existent but not truly real, we see the Tao. All perception without attached thought is the Tao. Zazen practice, sitting meditation, is dwelling on the dream.

A man and a Buddha both die. A man and a Buddha don’t die. The difference is the Buddha is aware of both of these things. The man only sees it one way or the other. Awareness is seeing the dream, not grasping to emotion.

A vampire is not-dead, not-alive. A vampire is Buddha, who sees the majesty of the Tao, whether it be rotting, flourishing, feeding, weeping, or laughing. A Vampire realizes he is the process of the Tao, an emanation of something that is beyond him.

William Butler Yeats said, “Man can embody the Truth, but he cannot know it.”