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In your practice you should accept everything as it is, giving to each thing the same respect given to a Buddha. Then Buddha bows to Buddha, and you bow to yourself. This is the true bow.
"Authority means influence and power. So where does spiritual authority come from? Can a teacher give spiritual authority to their successors? Not on your life. You can spiritually empower a successor, but you can't give them spiritual authority. There is only one person who can grant spiritual authority to the teacher, new or old, and that is the student. Most students, when they begin to study with a teacher, don't realize that they're granting spiritual authority. But it is critically important to know when you are extending such authority. Otherwise you can unknowingly get seduced into giving away your power. Real teachers won't accept your power. This Dharma is about your empowerment, not about giving your power away. In Zen, we have teachers who can point the way. They don't tell you how to live your life. That choice only you can make."
In deep self-acceptance grows a compassionate understanding. As one Zen master said when I asked if he ever gets angry, 'Of course I get angry, but then a few minutes later I say to myself, 'What's the use of this,' and I let it go.'
If your practice is good, you may become proud of it. What you do is good, but something more is added to it. Pride is extra. Right effort is to get rid of something extra.
Make your whole life unceasing gratitude. What is Zen? Simple, simple, so simple. Infinite gratitude toward all things past; infinite service to all things present; infinite responsibility to all things future.
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion
or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any
origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.
Zen's greatest contribution is to give you an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world, the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man. Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children.
Philosophy is speculation, Zen is participation. Participate in the night leaving, participate in the evening coming, participate in the stars and participate in the clouds; make participation your lifestyle and the whole existence becomes such a joy, such an ecstasy. You could not have dreamed of a better universe.
When an ordinary man attains knowledge, he is a sage; when a sage attains understanding, he is an ordinary man.
The Transformation of Formless is Infinite Consciousness
Koan: Why DID the chicken cross the road?
Zen: the sound of the ax chopping. Chopping logic.
Do not just memorize sayings, recite words, and discuss Zen
and the way based on books.The Zen way is not in books.
Even if you can recite the teachings of the whole canon and
all the masters and philosophers, they are just useless words
of no avail when you are facing death.
"Don't toast to my health, toast to my fuck!"
"But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the Buddha, they attain the understanding of a Buddha without using the mind." - Bodhidharma
To see what isn't true is easy. But to see what is true will take some doing.
I had a discussion with a great master in Japan... and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, "That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation."
Not two.
Not two.
Just think not two.
Inherent within the dilemma is a solution.
It is not freedom from, but rather freedom within, freedom to.
Gradual awakening means that change and healing happen gradually as a result of the accumulation of causes. This is more the common way that healing is understood to occur. As a result of doing this and that a person gradually gets better.
attend to experience simply without giving it meaning, feel it, and receive it
All of you think it's better to be a man than a woman, you think it's better to be a priest than a layperson, and you think it's better to be Japanese than American. But I will always be a woman, and I will always be a layperson, and I will always be an American, and here I am.
Knowledge is learning something every day.
Wisdom is letting go of something every day.
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