We are free, every one of us. We are born free, and the bondage, restrictions, and limits that we find in our life are self-created. The edges we perceive have been placed there by the way we use our minds. There are fundamentally no edges, no boundaries. But this practice has nothing to do with believing. We don’t have Zen believers. It also has nothing to do with understanding. Understanding implies a separation between the knower and the thing that the knower knows. It has to do with direct and intimate experience itself. Your experience. Not Shakyamuni Buddha’s, not mine—yours. Only you can make yourself free. No one can do it for you. The only one with the power to do it is you yourself. “Only a Buddha can realize Buddha”—and it is nowhere to be found other than on top of the seat that you’re sitting on. –John Dido Loori