Recalling a talk that he gave when he was Maezumi Roshi’s student, Nyogen Roshi tells us he said he wanted to practice “blue-collar Zen”–it had to work in the grim places where he often found himself as a social worker specializing in child protective services. Cultivating that kind of practice isn’t easy, Roshi says, mainly because “we are incapable of experiencing the here and now.” How do we remedy that? “Rid yourself of conceptual thought, and you will have accomplished everything.”
