In yesterday’s post, I wrote about inattentional blindness, how we often fail to see what’s right before us because our brains filter reality through expectation. A driver doesn’t expect to see a motorcycle, so they literally don’t see it. A person glances over a clover patch and never finds a four-leaf clover, not because it isn’t there, but because their perception has already decided it’s unlikely.
We live surrounded by these filters. They’re not flaws in the system; they are the system. The mind edits, curates, discards. It has to. Without this compression, we’d drown in sensory input. But what if we could sometimes see through those filters — catch a glimpse of Reality as it is, not as our minds think it should be?
That’s where zazen comes in.
Zazen (“just sitting”) isn’t about relaxation or transcendence. It’s not even about “emptying the mind”. It’s about seeing. Not metaphorically, but directly. Sitting quietly, upright, breathing, letting thoughts pass without grabbing them, we begin to notice the flicker of perception itself. We start to see the mind at work: the little judgments, narratives, and expectations arising and fading like sparks in a dark room.
At first, this awareness is subtle. You might realize how quickly you label things: sound of a bird → “birdsong” → “pleasant” → “I like that.” That whole cascade happens before a second passes. In zazen, you start catching it midstream. You begin to see through the cracks, moments when thought pauses and the raw world shines through unfiltered.
When that happens, even briefly, it’s startling. It’s as if someone cleaned the smudges off your inner lens. The color of the floorboards, the hum of the refrigerator, the weight of your own breath. All stand revealed as neither mundane nor special, but simply real.
And then, of course, the mind rushes back in with commentary: “Ah, this is enlightenment!” — which is precisely when the moment collapses. You’re back inside the filter. But at least you had it for one brief moment.
This process mirrors Dr. Andrew Weil’s discovery with clovers, which I talked about yesterday. Once he learned to truly look, his expectation changed, and so did his world. Zazen does something similar, but deeper. Instead of training the eyes, it trains the mind’s lens itself. You begin to notice how much of what you call “reality” is merely projection. It’s reality, not Reality.
The tao that one speaks of is not the eternal Tao.
You notice how thoughts label sensations, how emotions color perception, how habit makes the extraordinary seem invisible.
That’s the quiet revolution of zazen. It doesn’t promise bliss or visions. It promises… well, nothing. As Zen masters like to say “Zazen is good for nothing”. In that nothing, however, it just might give some clarity, some ability to peek behind the curtain, help in the gradual erosion of the filters that keep us from seeing what’s already there.
So when a Zen master says that practice reveals “things as they are”, this isn’t mystical fluff. It’s a neurological and existential truth. You start catching Reality in those split seconds between thought — those narrow cracks where the world shows itself before you’ve had time to name it.
And in those moments, you might understand why the old masters laughed so much.
Next time you sit, try noticing what your mind expects to see. Then notice what’s actually there. If the two don’t quite match, congratulations. You’ve just seen through a crack.
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David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Bluesky. |
Fascinating concept of zazen... I've never heard of it before but have experienced it before while clearing my mind many times in the past. Our reality truly is clouded by our filters, what a cool concept. I rarely try to clear my mind as much anymore since I developed tinnitus, it's very distracting when you notice that the world is constantly ringing, when I normally filter it out! The joys of aging and spending too many years around loud noises!