Remember, what
is important in practice
is perseverance and
consistency.
Posts Tagged → awakening
let the teaching flow out from your own breast
were snowed in on Tortoise Mountain.
Day after day, Yantou slept while Xuefeng sat up
and meditated. On the third day, Yantou sat up
too and said, “Get some sleep. What do you
think you are — a roadside shrine?”
Xuefeng touched his chest and
said, “My heart isn’t at peace.
I can’t fool myself.”
Yantou grave a great yell.
“Don’t you know the family treasure doesn’t
come in through the gate?” he said. “Let the teaching
flow out from your own breast to cover
the sky and the earth.”
Xuefeng was suddenly enlightened
and cried out, “Today Tortoise Mountain
has finally awakened!”
what I meant is things as it is
One day while
editing a transcription of
Suzuki Roshi’s first lecture on the Sandokai,
I came upon the phrase “things as it is.” I asked him
if perhaps he had not meant to say “things
as they are,” which I thought to be
proper syntax.
“No,” he said,
“what I meant is ‘things
as it is.'”
To Shine One Corner of the World
die without sorrow or regret
Even if, bright as
a flash of lightning, death
were to strike you today, be prepared
to die without sorrow or regret, giving up
attachment to what you are leaving behind.
Without ever ceasing to recognize
the authentic view of the real,
leave this life like the eagle
that soars into the
blue sky.
complete and perfect of itself
studying texts and stiff meditation
Some people,
not knowing the essential emptiness
of good and evil, think practical cultivation of mind
means to sit rigidly immobile, subduing mind
and body, like a rock placed on
top of grass.
This is ludicrous.
That is why it is said that followers
cut off confusion in every state of mind,
yet the mind that does the cutting
off is a brigand.
…People who practice
the Way should not seek externally.
The essence of mind has no defilement; it is originally
complete and perfect of itself. Just detach from
illusory objects, and it is enlightened
to suchness as is.