Beginnings do not exist.

In all traditions, lay, religious, sporting or of whatever kind the idea of beginning, of commencement is always present. The first step, the first year, birthdays, the first salary etc are all moments that we remember more or less with pleasure. We need to have stable points to which we can refer. Yet, the beginning from which we depart, to which we refer and of which we are really in need is a different one.

I keep a calligraphy of Master Mumon's which says: "At the beginning there's nothing". Finding this beginning that we could call empty, that's the mission of the real person without attachments of whom Lin- chi talks:the Mind without any point to which to attach, talked about in the Diamond Sutra is our real work. These are the real beginnings we must master and realize.

Now we can read, hear, talk, welcome the exhortations of the teachers to be unattached to things, be really we ourselves the ones who feel and realize that we are the Buddha, who are committed to saving all beings but whatever things are being said, even the most diverse in themselves, the fundamental point always remains the same:realize that eerything that we see around us is a drama in progress, and we participate in it like actors, with the same dignity and the same importance as any other actor we can see around us.

We ourselves are the actors as well as the drama or the comedy that is in progress, we ourselves are the stage and the audience, the authors of the plot and the lines. This understanding brings us to the end of fear. As we recite in the Prajna Paramita "The Bodhisattva has no fear."

Engaku Taino.