“Help yourself to tea.”

Now, Here

When you examine yourself, you find that something is missing. Or even if you feel fulfilled now, you are anxious that this contentment will be snatched away. You feel that you just have to find something more stable. At this time, buddha’s existence cannot help but be revealed to you.

Although buddha mind is variously revealed through each individual’s own talents and gifts, buddha is now, here. But where is ‘here’? One master answered this question saying, “Help yourself to tea.” Another pointed ‘here’ when he commented, “What fine weather today.”

That which we most deeply yearn for is the thing that is already most fully present, already the very closest to us. Thus our ancestral teachers, according to their own circumstances at hand, have always shown that buddha is now, here. So we place our focus now, here.

While what you seek is really now and here, you habitually think of it as somewhere out there, outside yourself, so you search and search in vain. What you are looking for is already wholly and completely yours. There is nothing miserly about it; it knows no limits. You are the master of this life. When you sincerely take refuge (‘namu’) now and here, you will find yourself in what is most secure, in that which the heart most ardently yearns for – in pure, essential buddha nature.

- Tangen Harada Roshi