The three pillars of Zen aren’t really the three pillars of Zen. They’re, rather, the three forces that motivate any serious sadhaka to realize atma svarupa.

These pillars are: great determination, great trust or faith, and great doubt.

If your spiritual temperament is marked by power or zeal, then you are to let great determination bring you home. If yours is, rather, given over to devotion, then let the love for your true nature be the principal animating force. And if your temperament is defined by the deepest inquisitiveness, then genuinely scrutinize “Who am I?” until there is no more scrutinizer, scrutinizing, or scrutinized.

In other words, you are to discover whether the warrior ethos (raja yoga), the lover ethos (bhakti yoga), or the philosophical ethos (jnana yoga) predominates, and only later will it be clear that zeal = love = knowledge.