Every difficult or unpleasant situation can be used as further training for our aversion, anger and hatred or as training in our dharma practise. Any pleasant situation can be used to further our training in attachment, fantasising and possessiveness or to kindle attention and exercise our capacity to open up and let go…
Don’t have your dealings with the clouds. Have your dealings with the sky. The clouds are the sky frowning, so to speak…
My teacher said that I should go to Eiheiji, you realize that it is nothing special — ‘This is all it is?’ Then you can relax and get down to practising. That’s the reality, isn’t it?
The Abbot set Kyogen the Koan riddle: “What is your true face before your father and mother were born?” Baffled and furious Kyogen left the monastery but the riddle haunted him…
Whether we know it or not, this life is an abundant treasure house.
And he [Uchiyama Kôshô Roshi] told us ‘to look at zazen and not at him as our teacher’. It’s almost as if he knew some of us would become disappointed in him and he didn’t want our disappointment to carry over into our zazen…
Our purpose for living is to become No-mind/No-self, and a person who has become No-mind/No-self is called a Buddha. Each action we make is completely Empty, it is Nothingness, and if we express this using words, this is the ‘Buddha-dharma’. It is not possible for the ego to intervene in the Dharma…
This is an old film about Buddhism in Japan, but well worth watching.
Buddhism now 