Zen Metaphors: Parents and Child
What if your entire sense of self was nothing more than two forces taking turns claiming ownership of your life?
Not metaphorically. Not poetically. But functionally.
In the teachings of Joshu Sasaki, this is exactly what’s happening.
He describes the “I am” self as the product of two naturally opposing activities—what we might call expansion and contraction. One says, “This is me. This is mine.” The other says, “This is not me. This is not mine.” And somewhere in between those two declarations, a self appears.
Not as a fixed entity. But as a rhythm.
We can think of these two activities as parents. Not because they nurture you in any comforting sense, but because they give birth to the experience of being someone. The expansion activity asserts. The contraction activity denies. And the “I am” self is what emerges as they alternate, back and forth, moment by moment.
This is the ordinary condition.
The self feels stable because the alternation is constant. Like breathing. Like a pendulum. Like a conversation that never quite ends.
But then something unusual happens.
Instead of alternating, these two activities meet at the same time. Expansion and contraction arrive simultaneously. The assertion and the denial cancel each other out. No push. No pull. No claim. No rejection.
And in that moment, the “I am” self disappears.
Not gradually. Not partially. Completely.
This is what Sasaki points to as the birth of the child—the Zero-self.
The Zero-self is not a better version of you. It is not a purified identity. It is not even an identity at all. It is the lived condition in which there is no longer a division between “me” and “not me.”
In the language of Zen, this is mu—nothingness.
In the language of koan practice, it is “the face before you were born.”
It is what remains when the parents—the opposing activities that generate the self—disappear.
But here’s where the metaphor refuses to settle into something comfortable.
The child does not remain.
From this condition of Zero, the parents return. Expansion and contraction reappear. The voice that says “I am this” comes back online. The voice that says “I am not that” follows closely behind. And once again, the self is born.
Not as a mistake. Not as a failure. But as a function.
The child gives birth to the parents.
And just like that, the cycle continues.
This is not a linear path from illusion to truth. It is not a one-way journey from self to no-self. It is a loop. A continuous exchange. Parents give birth to the child by disappearing. The child gives birth to the parents by splitting into opposition.
Neither comes first. Neither comes last. Neither is more real.
And that matters.
Because the common misunderstanding is to treat the Zero-self as a destination—to try to hold onto it, preserve it, or recreate it. But that misses the point entirely.
The point is not to eliminate the parents.
The point is to see them clearly.
To recognize that the sense of “I am” is not a fixed center, but the temporary result of two activities doing what they naturally do. And to recognize that when those activities cancel, what remains is not something you acquire, but something that was never absent.
When this is seen, something shifts.
The back-and-forth loses its urgency. The claims of expansion are less convincing. The rejections of contraction are less threatening. The disappearance of the self is no longer alarming. And its return is no longer taken so seriously.
The parents can argue. The child can appear. The parents can return.
And it all unfolds without the need to control it, fix it, or escape it.
Just this.
Moment by moment by moment.
