At the Zen Buddhist Temple in Toronto we have been reading together David Hinton's Existence: A Story.
"... meditation returns us to the generative source of things, a fact already recognized at the earliest levels of Taoist thought, as in a tale from Chuang Tzu where Confucius asks Lao Tzu what happens when he sits still, and Lao Tzu replies: "I wander mind at the beginning of things." This is a return the elemental mystery of creation; and at the same time, it reveals consciousness as an integral part of the cosmological tissue: thought, memory, identity, all moving with the same dynamic energy at the Cosmos itself."
"In this mirror-deep empty mind, the ancient experienced perception as nothing less than Absence itself mirroring Presence. At this level, meditation is essentially a formalized practice that returns us to this beginning place, this moment where we open our eyes and Absence itself gazes into Presence. It is a return to our original nature, for in that mirror-deep perception, consciousness is nothing other than the Cosmos gazing out at the Cosmos it has magically generated."