Back in my room, which even at midday was rather dark, I lighted a red votive candle and began idly glancing through the pages of the old gentleman’s gift. It proved to be a reprint of an eighth-century (T’ang dynasty) text composed by the Ch’an Master Hui Hai, together with a selection of his dialogues with his disciples…
With regard to religion, we tend to think of it as belief in something outside of ourselves. But please understand and accept that in Buddhism, the person who conveys the teaching as well as the person who hears and listens to the teaching are both you…
Zen Poem: In front of the Patriarch’s room the road is smooth…
It is a sermon not by exhortation, reasoning or threats but by example…
The habit of dividing the essential nature of oneness into self and other, life and death, pain and pleasure, rising and falling, and so on, is the source of all delusion and anxiety…
These intensive meditation retreats, though somewhat mechanical themselves, seem to be designed to awaken you from mechanical, unaware existence. Long and consecutive days of intensive zazen require new ways of dealing with physical and mental pain, boredom, and fear…
So we have to do zazen. It’s the most important thing in the life of a human being.
What I want to say is that an ordinary person should truly be an ordinary person, completely giving up seeking mind and practice, and then just to be truly ordinary. That is enough…
Buddhism now 