The teacher said that people today, and always, sell themselves cheap. Somebody who is always saying, ‘I’m no good,’ won’t try at anything because, ‘Things always go wrong for me. And if I do happen to succeed in something, it’s never appreciated; it always goes badly. And is life worth living anyway?’ Such people are selling themselves cheap. They have a treasure in them…
There are two trains of instruction, which sometimes people notice. One is that in the highest consciousness, the highest awareness, there is no effort. And the other is, ‘You have to put your whole heart and soul into this.’ And some people will say, as one does when one wants to get out of something, ‘You’re told these things are effortless and you’re trying to attain them by making tremendous efforts. Isn’t it absolutely ridiculous? It’s a self-contradiction.’ So these people either go in for a type of meditation which practically is falling asleep, or else they go in for a furious sort of meditation, and never attain any calm at all.
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!
Don’t have your dealings with the clouds. Have your dealings with the sky. The clouds are the sky frowning, so to speak…
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…
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.’
This comes again and again. There is something hidden even in the terrible experiences we have, which ― if we have spiritual sight and discrimination ― we can find. There is a treasure in our own house which we often don’t see. We can say, ‘Well, how can there be?’…
Mindfulness in words — trying to make an internal commentary of what one is doing — is just a kind of illusion.
Buddhism now 