"This kind of reality has also its place in the Eastern vision. They call it appearance, moment to moment changing. There is a time to be born and there is a time to die. The seasons will come again, and the flowers will blossom again. It is the round trip of existence in which – except your being, your center – everything goes on changing. This changing world is a relative reality.

"And then there are other realities – like dreams. You know they are not, but still you see them. Not only do you see them, they affect you. If you have a nightmare and you wake up, you will see your heart is beating harder, your breath is changed by the nightmare. You may be even perspiring out of fear. You cannot say that the nightmare is not there; otherwise from where has this perspiration come, and this changed heartbeat and breathing?

"Eastern mysticism accepts this third layer of reality: the dream, the horizon that you see all around, which exists nowherebut you can see it from anywhere.

"Before I explain Dogen to you, let this be the introduction, because this is what he is trying to say: that everything passes and yet there is something that never passes; that everything is born and dies and yet there is something that is never born and never dies. And unless you get centered into that eternal source you will not find peace, you will not find serenity, you will not find blissfulness, you will not find contentment. You will not feel at home, at ease in the universe. You will remain just an accident, you will never become essential.

"And the whole effort of Zen, or any meditative method, is to bring you closer to that which never changes, that which is always. It knows no time. If there is no change, how can there be past, future, present? The world that knows past, future and present can only be relatively real – today it is there, tomorrow it is gone. The body you had believed in so much one day dies. The mind you had believed in so much does not follow you, it dies with the body."