zen-buddhism

Belief is at best an educated, informed conjecture about Reality.

Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called "mind-only," or "essence of mind," or "big mind," After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life.

The only way we can be free in each moment is to become what each moment is.

[A] view of the world is nothing more than a set of beliefs, a way to freeze the world in our mind. _ [T]his can never match Reality, _ because the world isn't frozen.

It is both dangerous and absurd for our world to be a group of communions mutually excommunicate.

[F]ocus not on ourselves as a force in charge of the manipulation of others, but on how our lives interpenetrate those of others _ and _ all creatures of a dynamic universe.

Truth is not _ something to believe or disbelieve. The things we believe are always less than Truth[.]

The Zen Monk Ky_ Has Changed His Name to Mujū D_ryū. I Wrote This Verse to Celebrate The Great Prospects That Lie Before HimUnwillingness to remain in the ruts of former Buddha patriarchs Unsurpassed aspiration and fierce passion to achieve the Way These are precisely the qualities found in a true Zen monk Attained the very moment you "have been there and back.

Life gives you exactly what you need to awaken.

There were so many beliefs which we had about the world, which then influenced everything, everything, about how we saw the world and interacted in the world and were with others. Everything. It was profound to me, amazing, the ramifications, the implications, the far-reaching impact that one__ beliefs could have on the world. It was actually mind-blowing for me. Figuratively speaking. Like, it was just, holy shit. Look at that. And nobody, hardly anybody sees it. They__e just ideas. Ideas. And yet, I__ believed them for so long, and still, was still shirking free of them. How was it that we believed in them, so readily, so easily?

When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do.

So, without telling any of my Zen-snob buddies, I liked to pretend everything was the Pure Land, that my life was already perfect as it was.

The buddha-dharma _ is about directly seeing Truth, prior to forming any ideas about it. It is about responding to each particular situation as it comes _ , not according to some _ program of dos and don'ts.

The impossibility of arriving at Truth by giving up your own authority and following the lights of others. Such a path will only lead to an opinion.

Zen has a pronounced iconoclastic tendency, and regards the study of texts, doctrines, and dogmas as a potential hindrance to spiritual awakening, relying instead on humour, spontaneity, unconventionality, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression to communicate the idea of enlightenment

[T]here is really nothing 'out there' to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete.

Question everything, even the question mark, that shepherd's crook floating in the air above that small round rockIf you - stubbornly - still wish to be unhappy,maybe you can grasp it.

[I]mpermanence [is] the very thing that makes [life] vibrant, wonderful, and alive.