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?

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…

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.’