No question, no answer

Old Amida in sitting-zen

In my limited experience, zazen exhausts both questions and answers, or if you wish, the need, the urge to be given a map to go and live. When ? and ! are dropped, we are taken back home, which is exactly here and now, a place we never leave. Then our being-time -here-and- now is a living question-answer. Action takes place and arises in this dynamic reality which is not anymore perceived or grasped through fears or hopes. Eating, we eat. Living, we live. Sleeping, we sleep. Or, if I put it another way, zazen is a way to redirect the flow of questions to the very source of our being-time, you actualize the fact that the answers are not anymore over there in books, traditions, teachings but that you are the answer to all the questions you ask. Questions do not beg for an answer but are seen and experienced as a way to wake up to this reality without necessarily putting your paws on any definite answer. A way to wonder, not to wander. It is true that then the whole universe, from toilets to kitchen, work and family and friends and things become the living questions put to us.