Reading about Zen is not Zen. Only the act of being Zen is Zen. In fact, giving Zen the label Zen makes it not Zen. OK, now that we got that fun stuff out of the way, let's get down to business.

I really enjoy reading about Zen. Stories of folks that put in countless hours of meditation and were then able to identify and address their ego suffering really gets my brain a tingling. And then I want more.

Furthermore, I'm quite the book worm, having read hundreds of thousands of pages through the years. Since I've a deeply rooted habit in reading as my way of understanding, one of the biggest challenges I faced was seeing the value in the action of Zen as opposed to the idea's of Zen. In other words, I was much more interested in reading about Zen than doing Zen. This is not to say that I was lazy about doing Zen. It's just that doing did not speak to me like reading did.