If after forty years of training, both as a layman and as a monk, I were asked to distill into two words what is the essential thing I have learned, I would have to say…let go! This is hardly surprising, since the Buddha’s Second Noble Truth teaches that it is craving and clinging to thoughts and things that cause us suffering, so the corollary is letting them go. Just as He did on the day of His enlightenment, when He let go of His attachment to harsh physical and mental austerities and striving and just sat under the Bodhi tree.

Like many people, I came to Buddhist training motivated by personal suffering that I did not really recognize or understand. I just knew that I was deeply unhappy. With time, I realized that I was clinging to ideas and expectations, many of which had their origins in the opinions of other people that I had absorbed when I was young. There was no real me there; that is, no True Self, just a motley self fabricated of desires, fears, opinions, anxieties, experiences…the stuff of the ego that I self-identified with. I was upset with life not giving me what I thought I should need and want to be happy, and giving me situations and experiences that caused me unhappiness. In short, I was living the Second Noble Truth: I craved the one and recoiled from the other.

Then, in the very first meditation instruction I received, I was told to “just sit, letting your thoughts and emotions come and go, without grabbing onto them or pushing them away.” It had never occurred to me that this was even possible. I thought I was my thoughts and opinions and emotions, my desires and expectations. If I did not hold onto them and assert them, who would I be?

But that seemingly simple instruction, taken from Great Master Dogen’s Fukanzazengi, that “just sitting, with no deliberate thought, is the important aspect of Serene Reflection Meditation,” is the alpha and omega of our practice and is the key to unlocking our True Life. We start our life of training with it, and (if we continue training) end this earthly life with it. Letting go in pure meditation dismantles the edifice of the egocentric self, and in the space opened up by that release Buddha Nature flows in our life. It is always there, exerting a gentle pressure in the background of our life, waiting for the opening in the self to come to the forefront and get in the “driver’s seat” of our life.

One of the most powerful experiences of really letting go happened early in my training. My wife and I divorced just before I began training, and I was devastated by this painful experience. My marriage had been a an important aspect of my identity and a strong attachment, and then it was taken away. It was so painful that I just shut it away and avoided facing it. About a year after I began training I went on an extended retreat at Shasta Abbey. As I sat in meditation during one meditation period the pain came knocking. I tried to shove it back down but it came popping back up again. I was finally just exhausted by it and internally said, “If not now, than when? If not here, than where? So…COME ON!!” And it did. A sense of dark, palpable energy rapidly grew in my center and then went swirling up my body and finally went shooting out the top of my head. It was simultaneously painful and a huge release, and I just broke down on my cushion. I still had some processing to do, but this experience took me a long way.

That is the thing about letting go: it can be painful, and at the same time there is a sense of, “At last, I am dealing with this.” And letting go of what we are clinging to, or rejecting and avoiding, creates the space for our Buddha Nature to emerge. And that is joy.

Note to Readers

After the January issue, the Newsletter will be switching to a bi-monthly publication schedule in 2026.