There are about forty thousand Chinese characters in the total Chinese language. Nobody, of course, can possibly know them all, but they exist. Of course, the Bodhisattvas in China know them all; and the Devil knows them all too! He’s been around, and he’s got these forty thousand off — or he thinks he has!
Shodo Harada Roshi, the head of the Rinzai Zen monastery of Sogenji, Okayama, Japan, giving a demonstration of Zen Calligraphy. 7 mins.
Listening is much less connected with organising or pushing things round in our minds, and in fact listening and the listened-to are much more linked than actor and acted-upon. Listening also tends to be more emotionally neutral.
The modern world seems driven to extinguish silence, as if it were a threat…
True peace is found only in the dharma. When we practise meditation and our hearts attain to the dharma of letting go, or non-attachment to all moods, feelings and emotions, when we do not incline towards or attach to any mood whatsoever, then we will escape the repetitious cycle of birth and death; then we will escape Samsara…
There are many ways of practising metta, loving kindness.
With Season’s Greetings to you from everyone at Buddhism Now and Buddhist Publishing Group…
We can get very angry if we become attached to silence and stillness and sensory deprivation; it is so pleasant not to have things impinging on the senses once we get used to it. And if we attach to the silence out of ignorance, out of greed, then when it is disrupted we can feel very angry.
Have posted this in memory of my old friend Oscar Yerburgh who died on 29 October 2011.
Buddhism now 