“What’s recorded here is something extraordinary and rare: a completely new way to think about enlightened consciousness. Sasaki Rōshi describes the experience of Zen adepts in terms of spontaneous, effortless expansion and contraction in both perception (what you see, hear, and feel) and expression (how you think, speak, and move). He presents this as a grand theory of everything, a point of view that connects consciousness and human relationships to the nature of nature itself. That’s a big claim. But this much I can say with confidence: pedagogically speaking, Sasaki’s paradigm of expansion and contraction solves several problems that commonly come up for students. Specifically, it helps students get over the perception of a fixated meditator doing an observing practice. Also, it provides a precise and tangible way to talk about the oneness of form and void. On a more speculative note, the Zen concept of Original Mind (aka your Buddha nature) may correspond to what a neuroscientist would call early sensory-motor processing. Early sensory-motor processing likely arises through a free energy change. And free energy change is part of the way science defines ‘spontaneity.’ So it’s possible that the practice of Zen, which can sometimes seem a bit mystical, is in fact deeply connected to some sharply defined and fundamental notions in the physical sciences.”