The water of the mind,
How clear it is!
Gazing at it,
The boundaries are invisible.
But as soon as even
A slight thought arises,
Ten thousand images crowd it.
Attach to them,
And they become real.
Be carried by them,
And it will be difficult to return.
How painful to see a person
Trapped in the ten-fold
delusions.
Those
who do not feel this
love pulling them like a river,
those who do not drink dawn like a cup
of springwater or take in sunset
like supper, those who do not
want to change, let
them sleep.
This love
is beyond the study
of theology, that old trickery
and hypocrisy. If you want
to improve your mind
that way, sleep
on.
I have
given up on my brain.
I have torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away. If you are not
completely naked, wrap your
beautiful robe of words
around you, and
sleep.
Zen is not something to get excited about. Some people start to practice Zen just out of curiosity, and they only make themselves busier. If your practice makes you worse, it is ridiculous. I think that if you try to do zazen once a week, that will make you busy enough. Do not be too interested in Zen. When young people get excited about Zen they often give up schooling and go to some mountain or forest in order to sit. That kind of interest is not true interest.
Just continue in your calm, ordinary pratice and your character will be built up. If your mind is always busy, there will be no time to build, and you will not be successful, particularly if you work too hard on it. Building character is like making bread — you have to mix it little by little, step by step, and moderate temperature is needed. You know yourself quite well, and you know how much temperature you need. You know exactly what you need. But if you get too excited, you will forget how much temperature is good for you, and you will lose your own way. This is very dangerous.
Buddha said the same thing about the good ox-driver. The driver knows how much load the ox can carry, and he keeps the ox from being overloaded. You know your way and your state of mind. Do not carry too much! Buddha also said that building character is like building a dam. You should be very careful in making the bank. If you try to do it all at once, water will leak from it. Make the bank carefully and you will end up with a find dam for the reservoir.
Our unexciting way of practice appears to be very negative. This is not so. It is a wise and effective way to work on ourselves. It is just very plain. I find this point very difficult for people, especially young people, to understand. On the other hand it may seem as if I am speaking about gradual attainment. This is not so either. In fact, this is the sudden way, because when your practice is calm and ordinary, everyday life itself is enlightenment.
Severing entanglements
means detachmeht from entanglements
in contrived mundane concerns. Relinquish concerns
and your body will not be under a strain,
contrive nothing and your mind will
naturally be calm.
As serenity and simplicity
develop day by day, worldly defilement
lessens day by day. As your behavior departs further
and further from the mundane, your mind
becomes closer and closer
to the Way.
…As long as we do not
initiate anything, others will naturally
not get involved; even if others initiate something,
we do not get involved. As past entangelments gradually
stop, do not form new involvements. Ritual socializing
and opportunistic intercourse naturally become
remote, and you become unburdened
and at peace. Only then can you
practice the Way.
Treatise on Sitting Forgetting
If
the Way
were about being
a student of something,
it wouldn’t be alive in the world.
It lives because certain people say to
themselves, “All this teaching is
just for me. I am the living
expression of
this.”
This
isn’t arrogant.
This is humbly keeping the
buddhas, Lao Tzu, Lalla, Rumi, Suzuki,
Bahauddin, Yuanwu, all of them, alive in the
world. Only you can accomplish this.
You are the only
one.
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Wei wu Wei Ching as part of a
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