In a powerful talk that touches on the six perfections in Buddhism as well as Dogen’s writing on samsara and nirvana, Nyogen Roshi exhorts us to cultivate selfless awareness through our practice. This, he tells us, is the only way to realize the perfections or experience the reality of nirvana in the very place we find ourselves. “Experience is synonymous with mind,” Roshi tells us. “You only have one experience–that’s the experience of now. You’re not going to experience great enlightenment unless you forget the self.”
