Posts Tagged → meditation

calmness & activity are not different

suzuki roshi

 

Dogen Zen-ji says,

“Even though it is midnight, dawn is here.

Even though dawn comes, it is nighttime.” This kind

of statement conveys the understanding transmitted from

Buddha to the Patriarchs, and from the Patriarchs to Dogen,

and to us. Nighttime and daytime are not different.

The same thing is sometimes called nighttime,

sometimes called daytime. Nighttime

and daytime are one thing.

 

Zazen practice and

everyday activity are one thing.

We call zazen everyday life, and everyday life zazen.

But usually we think, “Now zazen is over, and now we

will go about our everyday activity.” But this is not the

right understanding.  They are the same thing. We

have nowhere to escape. So in activity there

should be calmness, and in calmness

there should be activity. So

calmness and activity

are not different.

 

Shunryu Suzuki

 

tunneling into secret depths

the singular victo ngai

 
With greatest respect and reverence, I encourage all you superior seekers in the secret depths to devote yourselves to penetrating and clarifying the self as earnestly as you would put out a fire on the top of your head. I urge you to keep boring your way through as assiduously as you would seek a lost article of incalculable worth.

I enjoin you to regard the teachings left by the Buddha-patriarchs with the same spirit of hostility you would show toward a person who had murdered both your parents. Anyone who belongs to the school of Zen and does not engage in the doubting and introspection of koan must be considered a deadbeat rascal of the lowest kind, someone who would throw aside his greatest asset. As a teacher of the past said, “At the bottom of great doubt lies great enlightenment … From a full measure of doubt comes a full measure of enlightenment.”

Don’t think the commitments and pressing duties of secular life leave you no time to go about forming a ball of doubt. Don’t think your mind is so crowded with confused thoughts you are incapable of devoting yourself singlemindedly to Zen practice. Suppose a man was in a busy market place, pushing his way through the dense crowd, and some gold coins dropped out of his pocket into the dirt. Do you think he would just leave them there forget about them and continue on his way because of where he was?

Do you think someone would leave the gold pieces behind because he was in a crowded place or because the coins were lying in the dirt? Of course not. He would be down there frantically pushing and shoving with tears in his eyes trying to find them. His mind wouldn’t rest until he had recovered them. Yet what are a few pieces of gold when set against that priceless jewel found in the headdresses of kings — the way of inconceivable being that exists within your own mind? Could a jewel of such worth be attained easily, without effort?
 

Hakuin Ekaku

mas hakuin

 

butter pill that removes all ills

a brief biography of hakuin ekaku

 

One part of

“the real aspect of things,”

one part each of “the self and all things”

and “the realization that these are false,” three parts

of “the immediate realization of nirvana”, two parts of

“without desires,” two or three parts of “the non-duality of

activity and quietude,” one and a half parts of sponge-gourd skin

and one part of “the discarding of all delusion”. Steep these

ingredients in the juice of patience for one night, dry in

the shade and then mash. Season with a dash of

prajna-paramita, then shape everything

into a ball the size of a duck’s egg

and set it securely on

your head.

 

Hakuin Ekaku

more hakuin

 

welcoming flies at the picnic


mighty joe henry

 

I don’t call

any song finished if I don’t

think that it somehow is vibrating with

the awareness of how we live in spite of the inevitable.

Which is what all spirituality is, is how do we come into being,

how do we live fully in the constant, conscious knowledge

that we won’t always? How do you invest in the idea

of any real commitment in the face of

everything being finite?

 

…We’re sort of

seduced into thinking that here’s life,

and there’s these bad things that can happen,

obstacles that just fall into your road, as if the obstacle

is not the road. You know? We want to think that all things

being equal, we should be content all the time, and would

be, except for these pesky flies that want to ruin

every picnic. As if that isn’t what

the picnic is.

 

Joe Henry

 

❤️

have a listen to

Welcoming Flies at the Picnic,

it will gladden your

💜

 

beginner’s mind, beginner’s heart


 

To achieve

what the zen buddhists

call “beginner’s mind,” you dispense

with all preconceptions and enter

each situation as if seeing it

for the first time.

 

“In the

beginner’s mind there

are many possibilities,” wrote

Shunryu Suzuki in his book Zen Mind,

Beginner’s Mind, “but in the

expert’s there are few.”

 

As much

as I love beginner’s

mind, though, I advocate an

additional discipline: cultivating a

beginner’s heart. That means approaching

every encounter imbued with a freshly

invoked wave of love that is as pure

as if you’re feeling it for

the first time.

 

Rob Brezsny