I feel you need to have a daily sitting practice.  If you don't already have one, then you really need to take one on.  And if you're going to go anywhere with the practice, it probably needs to be at least one hour a day, but ideally a minimum one hour, up to a couple, two, three hours.  What you have time for.

Now, I think a lot of us make the excuse we don't have time.  I question that attitude.  We always have time, we just have to take it from something else.  It’s where we put our priorities.  And our priorities, I think, should be at the core of our life.  The core of our life is what we call Zen — that is Zen — the core of our life, the heart of our life.

Maezumi Roshi used to say very often, it's like having an apple.  If it has a rotten spot or two, even three or four, you cut them out.  But if the core is rotten, you have to throw the whole apple out.  And it's the same with our life.

It's crude to put it this way, but it's that important, to realize the core of our life is our spiritual practice.  And everything emanates from the core.

The core of our life is our reality.  That is the oneness we're all really coming from.  Like aspen trees, above the ground they appear to be different, independent trees.  But of course, at the root, it's all one tree, one aspen tree. It's one tree.

We're one Mind.  And to facilitate that and understand that you need to sit as the one Mind.  And the more you sit as the one Mind, the more empowered you are to actually share it with others.  Without sharing it with others, you actually do not learn the skills that you need both for your own practice, but also as a teacher or a coach or a counselor or just as someone who wants to help others.

So I feel it's very important to have a sitting practice.

-- from a talk for the Big Mind Facilitation Training, April 2023