Abstract
Across centuries and continents, mystics and philosophers have pointed toward a single, ineffable truth: consciousness is both the witness and the witnessed—the universe perceiving itself. This essay explores how two luminous traditions—Sri Ramana Maharshi’s ātma-vichāra and Eihei Dōgen’s Sōtō Zen—arrive at the same horizon of nonduality through distinct experiential movements. By tracing these paths through the No-Gate Gateway, contemporary interpretations by Shunryu Suzuki and Reb Anderson, and modern resonances in cognitive science and philosophy, we see how the question “Who am I?” and the instruction “Just sit” converge upon the same silence—the self seeing itself. The universe swallows itself—digesting into nothingness, from which all things arise.
Introduction
In both Eastern and Western philosophy, the question of self-awareness has long served as a mirror through which existence examines its own nature. From Ramana Maharshi’s early-twentieth-century teachings in Tiruvannamalai to Dōgen’s thirteenth-century reflections in Kamakura Japan, two differing but ultimately convergent paths emerge. Ramana’s practice of asking “Who am I?” (Nan Yar?) directs awareness back upon itself until the inquirer and the inquiry dissolve into the Self. Dōgen’s path of shikantaza, or “just sitting,” opens awareness to the immediacy of the myriad things, dissolving separation in the act of complete presence.
Ramana Maharshi: The Inward Return
Sri Ramana Maharshi’s ātma-vichāra (self-inquiry) begins with an apparently simple question: Who am I? The question is not meant to be answered conceptually but to turn the mind inward until its movements cease. In his short treatise Nan Yar?, Ramana asserts that happiness and existence are not attained through pursuit but are the very nature of the Self (Maharshi, 1923/2000). He states, “Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that,” emphasizing that realization is not a matter of becoming but of returning.
Ramana Maharshi spoke within the vocabulary of Advaita Vedānta, where Ātman (the Self) is understood as the ultimate, undivided reality identical with Brahman. In Who Am I?, when he speaks of finding or realizing the Self, it can sound as if there is an individual self (ātman) distinct from the world, which must be discovered somewhere “inside.”
But Ramana clarified—especially in his dialogues (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 244, 1955)—that this Self is not personal, limited, or something one possesses. When asked, “Is the Self real?” he replied, “It alone is real. The world and the body appear and disappear, but the Self remains.”
Ramana’s compassion was expressed not only in silence but in the simplicity of his words. When asked how to attain realization, he would often say, “Be as you are” (Osborne, 1954; Godman, 1985). This phrase, both instruction and revelation, distilled his entire path of self-inquiry. As Osborne records, “Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that.” The teaching leaves nothing to pursue, only the recognition that when all effort ceases, being reveals itself as infinite presence.
Dōgen and the Myriad Things
“To carry yourself forward and illuminate the myriad things is delusion. That the myriad things come forth and illuminate the self is awakening.” (Dōgen, trans. Tanahashi, 2010, p. 29)
To be actualized by the myriad things, one must step aside and allow them to be—to let them teach us. As Matthew Gindin (2021) explains, this is “the Sabbath of awakening, where one stops creating and, in this rest, can begin to attune to the created.” By releasing the weaving of our human selves, we can see how they are woven from the confluence of all things.
Jay Garfield (2022) interprets Dōgen in a similar spirit, suggesting that to forget the self is not to erase subjectivity but to participate so completely that “the world lives through you.” In this light, Dōgen’s shikantaza—“just sitting”—is not passive but an act of cosmic participation. Awareness is not a mirror of the world but the world’s own act of self-expression.
“To study the way of enlightenment is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. When actualized by the myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.” (Dōgen, trans. Tanahashi, 2010, p. 30)
The Japanese term yutori—a sense of spacious composure—captures this inclusive ease. In shikantaza, one sits not to attain enlightenment but to express the enlightenment that already pervades all things. In Dōgen’s universe, even the most ordinary event—rain on leaves, a monk bowing, a kettle boiling—is the cosmos itself practicing Zen.
Shunryu Suzuki expressed this beautifully: “Just to be yourself is enough” (Suzuki, 1970, p. 97). His warmth communicates the living pulse of Zen, reminding us that emptiness is not sterile but radiant with intimacy. Reb Anderson extends this sentiment: “When we sit, we are expressing love that does not depend on an object. It includes everything” (Anderson, 2008, p. 42).
The No-Gate Gateway: Awakening in Motion
David Hinton’s (2018) translation of The No-Gate Gateway recounts a brief moment in Case 26: Two Monks Raise Blinds that distills the spirit of realization:
Asked by the monks, Vast Dharma-Eye of Lucid-Chill Mountain took his place at the front of the meditation hall, ready to give instruction. Eye pointed at the blinds, still down for meditation. Two monks immediately went and raised the blinds. Eye said: “One did. One didn’t.”
In the same case, the corresponding gāthā encourages us to see that this is not about the blinds but about recognizing that reality itself moves as awakening:
To raise blinds is to fathom empty skies of illumination, skies
vast and empty and still not our source-ancestral inheritance,
still nothing like tearing down those empty-expanse blinds,
leaving intimacy so full wind’s distances open past knowing.
No subject or object remains; the act of perception is the act of realization itself. This moment resonates with both Ramana’s reflexive inquiry and Dōgen’s stillness in shikantaza.
Reflexivity and the Self-Seeing Cosmos
Douglas Hofstadter (2007), in I Am a Strange Loop (pp. 101–103), describes consciousness as a self-referential pattern—an “I” that arises when the mind turns upon itself. This recursion parallels Ramana’s inquiry and Dōgen’s meditation: both are methods through which awareness becomes aware of awareness. When the loop stabilizes, the illusion of separation dissolves. The universe recognizes itself as the movement of self-reflection.
In Zen language, this is mu—the ungraspable absence or non-being that allows all presence, a negation that is not nihilism but the fertile void from which form arises. David Hinton (2020) describes it as “the generative dark enigma” from which the myriad things emerge. Dōgen and Ramana stand on the shores of this same sea: one gazing inward into the darkness, the other letting the darkness breathe outward as form. The apparent difference is only one of gesture; the essence is one.
The Human Warmth of Emptiness
Western interpretations of Zen often mistake this emptiness for nihilism. Yet, as Suzuki and Anderson remind us, the heart of practice is tender. When Suzuki laughs softly during his dharma talks, or when Anderson speaks of “love that includes everything,” they reveal the human face of nonduality. The stillness they point to is not sterile but compassionate.
Ramana, too, embodied this warmth in his silence. His eyes, witnesses reported, held “an infinite gentleness.” Ramana’s clarity and Dōgen’s expansiveness converge not only in ontology but in feeling: both invite the practitioner home. Whether the journey turns inward to the Self or outward to the world, it ends in the same quiet joy—a belonging that precedes individuality.
Conclusion: The Simple Permission to Be
When asked how to attain realization, Sri Ramana Maharshi often replied, “Be as you are” (Osborne, 1954; Godman, 1985). When a student asked Shunryu Suzuki what enlightenment was, he smiled and said, “Just to be yourself is enough” (Suzuki, 1970, p. 97).
Ramana and Suzuki both point to a presence before striving—a return to the ordinary so complete it cannot be improved upon. In the final balance, both voices dissolve the boundary between subject and object. The self that seeks vanishes, and what remains is the world seeing itself, breathing itself, loving itself. This is not abstraction but intimacy—what Suzuki called “beginner’s mind,” what Ramana called “being.” The myriad things, including this thought and this reader, are already the light looking at itself.
Zen calls this isshō, “life as such.” Ramana might call it sat-chit-ānanda, “being-consciousness-bliss.”
The loop closes not as an end but as a circle of belonging—
the self seeing the self, seeing.
References
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https://tricycle.org/article/nature-and-mind/
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Author’s Note
This essay was developed collaboratively by Primitive Joe in dialogue with OpenAI’s ChatGPT (GPT-5).
The model served as a reflective partner for research synthesis, stylistic refinement, and editing.
All interpretations, philosophical positions, and final editorial decisions are the author’s own.
Primitive Joe 
