Sesshin

One might wonder why I would want to sit for 15 hours per day, for five days. Perhaps it is better to ask why you would want to do something else for those 15 hours. What is it that you think you can achieve aside from sitting? You can acquire wealth, beauty, possibly fame. However, when you die, you can take none of that with you.

When I die, I cannot take my Zazen with me. That is why I sit zazen. It is in this posture that I have learned how to deal with my mind. To see how habitual thought patterns cause me to harmfully interact with other persons. Although I am nowhere near perfect, sitting zazen has better enabled me to restrain from harming others through body, speech, and mind.

Even so... being able to properly interact with other sentient beings (like a bodhisattva) is not the purpose of zazen. The only purpose of zazen is to sit. Practice for the sake of practicing. You just sit, and let your life unfold before you.

I would like to write more about this, but I have to wake up in 6 hours to start this sesshin, so I will leave you with a great quote about zazen and continue with my story in 6 days.

From Dogen's Zanmai O Zanmai:

Abruptly transcending all realms, to be greatly honored within the quarters of the buddhas and ancestors—this is sitting with legs crossed...the buddhas and ancestors engage in it, without any further task...It is rare to have clarified that sitting is the buddha dharma, that the buddha dharma is sitting. Even if [some] realize sitting as the buddha dharma, they have not understood sitting as sitting — let alone maintained the buddha dharma as the buddha dharma... The Buddha Śākyamuni addressed the great assembly, saying,

When sitting with legs crossed,
Body and mind realizing samādhi,
One’s majesty, the multitudes respect,
Like the sun illumining the world.
Removed, the lethargy clouding the mind,
The body light, without pain or fatigue;
The awareness similarly light and easy,
One sits calmly, like the dragon coiled.
King Māra is startled and fearful
On seeing depicted [one] sitting with legs crossed,
How much more [on seeing] one who realizes the way,
Sitting calmly without stirring...

Therefore, [the Buddha] sits with legs crossed...The World Honored One always maintains sitting with legs crossed; and to the disciples he correctly transmits sitting with legs crossed; and to the humans and gods he teaches sitting with legs crossed. The mind seal correctly transmitted by the seven buddhas is this...This is precisely the time when beings attain buddhahood