no longer bound

by what I thought I owned

no longer living in another person’s life

I am whatever I will let myself become

last night I dreamed a flying turtle

wolves inside a mountain     burning arrow

at the bottom of a lake

oracle of the turtle

Buddha’s

teaching cannot be

attained by having ideas

or not having ideas. Only when

the mind of pure practice coincides

with the way will body and mind be calm.

If body and mind are not yet calm, they

will not be at ease. When body and

mind are not at ease, thorns

grow on the path of

realization.

So that

pure practice and

the way coincide, how should

we proceed? Proceed with the mind which

neither grasps nor rejects, the mind unconcerned

with name or gain. Do not practice buddha-dharma with the

thought that it is to benefit others…Do not practice buddha-dharma

for your own sake. Do not practice buddha-dharma for name and

gain. Do not practice buddha-dharma to attain blissful reward.

Do not practice buddha-dharma to attain miraculous

effects. Practice buddha-dharma solely for

the sake of buddha-dharma.

This is the way.

Dogen

eddie o’bryan

Tao is beyond words 

and beyond understanding. 

Words may be used to speak of

it, but they cannot

contain it. 

Tao existed before

words and names, before heaven and earth,

before the ten thousand things. It is the unlimited

father and mother of all limited things. Therefore, to see

beyond all boundaries to the subtle heart of things, 

dispense with names, with concepts,

with expectations and ambitions

and differences. 

Tao and its many manifestations

arise from the same source: subtle wonder

within mysterious darkness. This

is the beginning of all

understanding. 

from The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,

Chapter 1

🦋

This reality

cannot be covered by the skies

or held up by the earth. Space cannot contain it.

It abides within all sentient beings and is the support

on which all of them rest. It has always been

clean and naked. There is nowhere

it does not pervade.

Yuanwu

🐞

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All that’s

important is concentrated

focus, purity, and stillness. Even when

you are engaged in doing things, this is not something

external. Take hold of them and return them to yourself —

this is what wondrous function is. The eighty thousand

sensory afflictions are immediately transformed

into eighty thousand means of transcendence,

and there is no more need to make

a special point of studying

with teachers.

Yuanwu

Wisdom brings a wholeness

which understands its own ignorance.

Someone with a little knowledge denies this,

but those who study their lives long and

diligently know that they do not

know anything.

Bahauddin, father of Rumi