Be aware of yourself without thinking or looking in the mirror

what is not true does not exist in this moment.

To think, or not to think…This is the true question.

Your actions create an “energy vortex” that draws in the necessary ingredients for your venture.

Consider this:1. Would you ride in a car whose driver was on the consciousness-expanding “entheogenic” drug LSD?And here’s a bonus question:2. Why does an “expanded consciousness” include the inability to operate a motor vehicle?

And what impels him to repeat this process at every single lesson, and, with the same remorseless insistence, to make his pupils copy it without the least alteration? He sticks to this traditional custom because...

Although you may have never sat down and defined what your philosophy is, it is fully operative and working in your life at all times. It deals with what you believe about the world in...

The prospect of future lives in remote heavens as a compensation for the inadequacy of our present lives is a bad tradeoff for losing out on the present.

We grow up to believe that we are supposed to somehow “become” who we are meant to be through the trial-by-fire that is life here on planet Earth.Reality is…there’s no “becoming”.It’s actually all an “un-becoming”,...

The mind’s best trick is the illusion that it exists.

It is as if I have entered what the Tibetans call the Bardo-literally, between-two-existences- a dreamlike hallucination that precedes reincarnation, not necessarily in human form…In case I should need them, instructions for passage through the...

Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can’t ever lose.

Life gives you exactly what you need to awaken.

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one’s heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find...

When it comes down to it, government is simply an abandonment of responsibility on the assumption that there are people, other than ourselves, who really know how to manage things. But the government, run ostensibly...

So, without telling any of my Zen-snob buddies, I liked to pretend everything was the Pure Land, that my life was already perfect as it was.

The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?

Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor...

What we can change is our perceptions, which have the effect of changing everything.

When angry, count to Zen.

Love always wins over hate

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

Có một thi sĩ làm thơ hô hào những nhà sáng tác, những ca sĩ từ bỏ lối sáng tác và ca hát đau thương đứt ruột. Ông ta viết những c u này, tôi...

Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called “mind-only,” or “essence of mind,” or “big mind,” After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as...

They asked a wise man: Why don’t we ever hear you backbiting and slandering?He said: I’m still not happy with myself to start with others.

re-living” the past in our minds, thus dishonouring the present moment. The young monk wasted hours distressing himself with judgment, speculation, anxiety, resentment and ultimately self-perpetuated unhappiness as a direct result of not being mindful.

Umasi kept walking, out of sight and into the glittering night. Meahwhile, Zen lay alone, defeated on the cold ground, knowing that he had truly been left behind. Then the memories returned, and for the...

Because even among contrarians, I’m a contrarian. But all of this is just words of bronze, third place rhetoric. What do I really mean when I say we want to shock society into awareness? Do...

Like vanishing dew,a passing apparitionor the sudden flashof lightning — already gone –thus should one regard one’s self.

For us life is a fact, no less, and, above all, no more.

A pity it is evening, yetI do love the water of this springseeing how clear it is, how clean;rays of sunset gleam on it,lighting up its ripples, making itone with those who travelthe roads; I...

We will be entering the beautiful world of a Zen master’s no-mind. Sosan is the third Zen Patriarch. Nothing much is known about him- this is as it should be, because history records only violence....

What you know can never be the beyond. Whatever you experience is not the beyond. If there is any beyond, this movement of ‘you’ is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond,...

What is personal death?Asking this question and pausing to look inward – isn’t personal death a concept? Isn’t there a thought-and-picture series going on in the brain? These scenes of personal ending take place solely...

Sharpen your sword daily , and let it serve your true master: YOU. You and the Master are one

The thinking brain influences the body’s responses and it makes a neat little loop.

He knows not where he’s going,For the ocean will decide,Its not the destination,It’s the glory of the ride

You can be happy if you are willing to let go of your past and leave yourself unencumbered so you can fly freely.

The Buddha is found in other people – even the ones we do not like very much.

Shigemori’s body of work is a compelling manifesto for continuous cultural renewal.

Every hour of your life that ticks by, there are numerous points and moments when you can choose to pause – and be aware of your mental and physical state. At any given point, you...

I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the...

What makes human life–which is inseparable from this moment–so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn’t last but that it never returns again.

There were so many beliefs which we had about the world, which then influenced everything, everything, about how we saw the world and interacted in the world and were with others. Everything. It was profound...

You know you have arrived when you have stopped caring about the destination

The brush must draw by itself. This cannot happen if one does not practice constantly. But neither can it happen if one makes an effort.

If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

Consider your own place in the universal oneness of which we are all a part, from which we all arise, and to which we all return.

Like wind– In it, with it, of it. Of it just like a sail, so light and strong that, even when it is bent flat, it gathers all the power of the wind without hampering...

The effects you will have on your students are infinite and currently unknown; you will possibly shape the way they proceed in their careers, the way they will vote, the way they will behave as...