forget all about yourself

kodo sawaki roshi

 

Concentration is not

to try hard to watch something.

In zazen, if you try to look at one spot,

you will be tired in about five minutes. This is

not concentration. Concentration means freedom.

So, your effort should be directed at nothing. You should

be concentrated on nothing. In zazen practice we say that

your mind should be concentrated on your breathing,

but the way to keep your mind concentrated

on your breathing is to forget all about

yourself and just to sit and feel

your breathing.

 

…If you

continue this practice,

eventually you will experience the

true existence which comes

from emptiness.

 

Shunryu Suzuki

 

a cool pile of ashes in the corner

nps

 

The present

moment is the source of

everything. As long as you have

resentments about the past or ideas

about the future, you cannot

genuinely be in the

present.

 

You owe it

to your future self, and

to the rest of us, to be completely

absorbed here and now. Make all

notions of past and future a

cool pile of ashes in

the corner.

 

Wei wu Wei Ching, Chapter 30

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all the myriad things make one whole

it’s gonna be okay honey bunny

 

All the myriad things

are neither opposed to nor contrary

to your true self. Directly pass through to

freedom and they make one whole.

It has been this way from time

without beginning.

 

The only problem

is when people put themselves

in opposition to it and spurn it and impose

orientations of grasping or rejecting, creating a

concern where there is none. This is

precisely why they are not

joyfully alive.

 

Yuanwu

zen letters