Don’t have your dealings with the clouds. Have your dealings with the sky. The clouds are the sky frowning, so to speak…
Chan / Seon / Zen
Zazen is Buddha
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?
CLACK! by Trevor Leggett
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…
Little by Little, by Maezumi Roshi
Whether we know it or not, this life is an abundant treasure house.
Final Lesson, by Arthur Braverman
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…
The Heart Sutra, Harada Sekkei Roshi
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…
Land of the Disappearing Buddha
This is an old film about Buddhism in Japan, but well worth watching.
Something in the training, by Trevor Leggett
The man wants the bath water to be calm so he smacks down the waves as they come up. The teacher said, ‘That’s like trying to smack down your thoughts as they arise. But that will just create new ones! If, instead, you simply keep still and watch the waves, they will die down of themselves.’