Zen: why all the fuss?

I was sitting zazen the other day, and an image came to mind. Actually, it was more like a whole story, but it only lasted a second, I swear! :-)

Anyway, I was thinking of a piano player who’d been playing by ear for years, and doing fine. She’d created beautiful music by listening to and studying much more serious musicians (like Beethoven, Scott Joplin and Billy Joel). Then, after a few decades of this, she realized that something was missing, that maybe she had something really *important* yet to learn. And that day, she started doing scales, for the first time in her life.

That’s what I thought. It’s like doing scales. Boring, and vital.