Illness can be of many kinds. There are the bodily illnesses that effect our physical health, the cancers and bad hearts we sometimes face. There are mental illnesses like depression, PTSD and addictions. There are also illnesses in society and the world: What we are doing to the climate and environment is an illness of excess consumption and wastefulness. War is an illness of hate and violence. Severe poverty and hunger are illnesses of humanity's lack of caring.
Some of these illnesses we can do something about, but for others, we can do little it seems. We can take our medicine, seek other therapy, try to change society as best we can. Sometimes we might succeed, and sometimes not.
However, all such illnesses have some part which is illusion in a Buddhist sense, the "I"gnorance of our mind's "I" at work. I don't mean that we are just imagining our cancer or the terrible war in the news. Nor do I mean that simply changing our thoughts will cause them to vanish magically, like a bad dream we awake from. Oh, I certainly believe that the mind has an influence on the body. Zazen is certainly beneficial to physical and mental health in some ways, and some say that its stress reducing properties might be good for the heart and to slow aging. The peace it brings to practitioners certainly can prevent some of the social strife we see so many places. However, I'm sorry to say that, if you have a heart problem, Zazen is not going to fix it. You had best see a cardiologist, not a Zen master. If you have other problems in life, such as mounting bills to pay, a leaky roof, a bad marriage, Zazen will not fix those either. Zazen will not return your lost loved ones. Sadly, our hours of Zazen cannot stop the terrible wars in the news.
On the other hand, our mental reactions to each of those situations are within our control and, sometimes, are the cause of the problem itself. For example, Zazen may not fix your heart, but it will allow you to profoundly accept your illness, embrace the condition, even as you head to the doctor. Zen practice will allow us to accept events, including our sometime fears and sadness, avoiding the harmful excesses of each even as we somedays shake and tears roll down our eyes. Zazen will not pay the bills or fix the roof, but will aid us in calmly, resolutely, working hard to remedy the situation, and to accept our circumstances even as we labor to change them. A calm heart will reduce tensions at home and, if it comes to that, allow us to flow with change and move forward when relationships end. Zen Wisdom allows our embrace of this world's constant life and loss, coming and going, and even allows us to welcome the fact that sometimes we must grieve and fear. The flood of excess desire, disappointment, frustration, anger, clinging attachments, unreasonable fear and destructive degrees of sadness about all such events are the Dukkha which may drown us, and which Zen Practice can so effectively treat.
No, Zazen will not stop the ugly wars, nor fix the environment, nor feed the hungry children around the world tonight, fueled by the ignorance of greed, anger and like divided thinking. The aggressors fighting wars are under the illusion that they must be enemies, cannot live together. We are under the illusion that we must consume as much as we do, and cannot be content with less. We suffer from societal systems built on the illusion that some must have plenty, and some not. But if the Buddhist messages of peace, caring, moderation in desires, simplicity in lifestyle, forgiveness, mutual tolerance, giving and kindness were truly known in all hearts, there would be no wars or dying oceans or hungry children in this world tonight. Maybe, someday, those messages will be more widely spread. I am hopeful.
However, the true power of Zazen does not stop there, not at all, and is the Illumination, the Light which thoroughly sweeps away all such problems and difficulties. It may be hard to imagine when first heard, it may be necessary to take on trust until experienced, but I assure you that it is so. If you undertake this practice for awhile, I promise that almost anyone can have a taste of this: For the ultimate power of Zazen is a liberation in seeing, in knowing, in realizing an illumination in which this world of fighting and greed, birth and death, ugliness and sickness is all shown to have another faceless face, like two sides of a no sided coin, that is somehow free of all that. There is no birth, there is no death here, for nothing comes and goes even as the river flows. There is no trace, yet there shines forth a subtle Goodness and Beauty. There is no sickness, fighting, war, nor other frictions or lack from this other perspective. In fact, "perspective" does not really fit, for here there is no "perceiver" apart from some other "perceived," thus no "seer" separate from "seen" in the seeing, a knowing undivided as "knower" and "known," leaping free of small human categories like "to be" or "not to be."
Now, please do not misunderstand: I am sorry to say that, as the other face of the faceless coin, this planet of sickness, fighting, war, hunger, lack and loss will still so painfully remain. No realization on our part will cure your cancer, silence the bombs, bring back our loved one, feed the starving of this world.
But this is a wholeness so whole as to be wholly all the broken pieces, separate persons, things, changes and moments of time of this complicated world too. A light shines through (and as) all of it, which I might compare to knowing the open page on which life's story is written, the canvas on which the world's painting is painted, a light projected as if a film fantasy of our human existence. This is an opera with its scenes of birth and death, peace and war coming about upon the stage.
Many religious traditions, particularly in the east, teach as much. There is some reality beyond, yet which also is, all this. One particular wisdom of Zen Buddhism, however, our particular insight, is that we do not stop complacent in realizing the paper, finding the canvas always present, seeing the show and the light, as if the goal were simply to erase the words on the page, wipe away all the painted images from the canvas, stop the show, shut off the film's turning, leaving only bare light and a silenced theatre. Some think that only the totally open and blank place is Truth, God, Buddha or whatever you want to call it. Instead, we know that the story is the fruition of the page, the painting is the canvas come to life, the movie is the purpose of the flickering light, the stage is bare without its arias. The whole is lights, camera, action, the meaning of an opera is to sing our song. Oh, when the scenes get too scary, too sad or confusing, we can turn the light inward, see beyond, see through it all. However, at other times, we should just live it, and live it well. Our task is, as best we can, to write our part of the story skillfully, paint a beautiful life, make this epic a tale of love and goodness rather than war, violence and horror. We are each one writer, an artist, a composer, a dancer and singer, a director, a spectator and an actor in this drama. The Illumination shines in, through and as this world.
Thus, drop away the "I" and Illuminate, even as the Illness and Illusion and "I" remain.
I hope that is not too ... Ill-ogical. 
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