Do not look for a chance to go out.

But if necessary, going out is permitted once a month.

People in the past lived in the remote mountains and practiced

far away in the forests. Not only were they free of all worldly affairs,

but they abandoned all relationships. You should learn the heart of their

covering brilliance and obscuring traces. Now is the time for the fire

on your head to be wiped out. Is it not sad if you waste this time,

concerning yourself with secular affairs? The impermanent

is unreliable. Nobody knows where or when this

dew-like existence will drop into the grass.

Not recognizing impermanence is

truly regrettable.

 

Dogen

 

 

The highest truth

cannot be put into words.

Therefore the greatest teacher has

nothing to say. He simply gives

himself in service, and

never worries.
 

Hua hu Ching, Chapter 23

 

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ramana maharshi

 

After offering a convincing response when Kaso later challenged the validity of his awakening, Ikkyu went on to admit that he had practiced for a decade “seething with anger” only to find that as the raucous cawing of a crow shattered the evening’s silence “an enlightened disciple of the Buddha suddenly surfaced” from within the mud of his emotional torment.

Ikkyu continued practicing under Kaso for another four years, earning the deep respect of his master as well as a reputation for eccentricity. According to a biography completed by Ikkyu’s disciples not long after his death, when Kaso offered Ikkyu a “seal” of his enlightenment (inka) — a document essential for anyone seeking advancement in the Rinzai hierarchy — Ikkyu refused to accept it. Later discovering that Kaso had given the document to a laywoman for safekeeping, Ikkyu took possession of the inka, tore it to shreds, and asked his disciples to burn it. 

On another occasion, when Kaso was hosting a memorial ceremony for his own master, Ikkyu spurned the custom of wearing ceremonial raiment and showed up in patched robes and grass sandals, drawing the considerable ire of the rest of the community. Questioned by Kaso about his behavior, Ikkyu said that he was dressed simply, as a monk should be, while everyone else was prancing about in sumptuous “shit covers”. At the end of the service, when Kaso who was asked who would be his Dharma successor, he reportedly surveyed the gathering and said, perhaps with some reluctance, “the crazy one”.

…Ikkyu had devoted himself to Kaso precisely because he carried the torch of Daito’s personification of a “true person of no rank” — a rigorously ascetic approach to Zen exemplified by Daito having tempered his own enlightenment by living under a bridge with beggars and other outcasts for five years.

 

Peter Hershock

 

Having

realized understanding

kindness and the excellent nature

of opportunities and dangers, one ably

breaks through the net of doubts snaring all

sentient beings. Departing from ‘is’ and ‘is not’,

and other such bondages…leaping over quantity and

calculation, one is without obstruction in whatever

one does. With penetrating understanding of the

present situation and its informing patterns,

one’s actions are like the sky giving rise

to clouds: suddenly they exist, and

then they don’t. Not leaving

behind any obstructing

traces, they are like

phrases written

on water.

 

Ikkyu

 

 

In the search

for enlightenment,

there is an ever-present

certainty that there is more to do,

someone else who holds the

secret, another state to

attain.
 

In the

finding of it,

there is the comical

revelation that not one

of those things was

ever true.
 

 

Wei wu Wei Ching, Chapter 55

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Anyone

who imagines that bliss

is normal in life is going to waste a lot

of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed.

The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children

grow up to be just people, most successful marriages require a high degree

of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise.

Life is like an old-time rail journey – delays, sidetracks, smoke,

dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally

with beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.

The trick is to thank God for letting

you have the ride.

 

Jenkin Lloyd Jones

 
 

Fall into

His arms with thanks

and you’ll weep like the sky;

refuse Him your thanks

and you’ll freeze like

the snow.

 

Rumi