Posts in the “zen” category

I like these Zen dog garden sculptures and I’d buy them for friends, but I learned a few years ago not to give gifts that might be construed as being religious. The same company also has cats, frogs, and turtles.

For a long time I thought it was enough to know about something spiritual, but it wasn’t necessary to feel it. For instance, I’ve known about impermanence on an intellectual level, but to experience it in your bones, that’s the difference between a finger pointing at the Moon and the Moon itself. Robin Williams spoke eloquently about this difference on the park bench in Good Will Hunting.

Another topic is desire. There’s a Buddhist monk vow that says, “Desires are endless, I vow to conquer them all.” I’m not a Buddhist monk — I dropped out of monk school because of things like cookies, margaritas, sex, and love (not to mention pain) — but recently I had the very direct feeling of desire, and it finally occurred to me that if I don’t get past it, it will still be affecting my life in 2020, 2024, and if you believe in multiple lifetimes, I’ll still be dealing with it then.

It blew me away that this feeling is thousands of miles beyond simply knowing that I have that desire. For me it’s like the distance between (a) knowing that there are glaciers in Alaska vs (b) being right there and seeing and hearing the calving.

Editor’s note: “Desire” can be cookies, margaritas, etc. — anything where there is “want” with attachment.

“All things that appear in this world are illusion. If you view all appearance as nonappearance, you will see your true nature.”

~ From the Diamond Sutra, via
Wanting Enlightenment is a Big Mistake

When I first studied Zen, I had a very hard time with this concept. I tried to focus very hard on the present moment, and also on being kind, and as a result, I didn’t always do what was really best for the situation. Over time, you figure out how to respond properly.

“When you are able to stay perfectly clear by cutting off all thinking and yet not falling into a trance-like sleep, this is sitting.

When inside and outside become one, and no circumstances can hinder you, this is Zen.”

~ Zen Master Seung Sahn (image from the Kwan Um School of Zen Twitter account)

I got to spend some more quality time in the hospital last week, and the CT scan results are almost comical: scar tissue where 99.9% of people won’t have scar tissue, body parts have been removed, four of my internal organs are enlarged, etc. Today I saw that I posted this on Facebook a year ago and I thought, well, it’s good to know that at some point my body will no longer be a problem. :)

(I don’t remember which book I found this page in, but I’ll update this post when I figure it out.)

This is from a collection of photos from Korean Zen monasteries.

“Originally, nothing. Who made past, present, and future? If you don’t make anything, you will see and hear clearly. Then everything is your original face.”

~ Zen Master Seung Sahn, kwanumzen.org

“You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.”

~ Taisen Deshimaru, Questions to a Zen Master

“During Zazen the ego-subject can look at the ego-object, and vice-versa. We can realize that we are not so wonderful, sometimes we’re even worse than other people, because in deep zazen our true desires are revealed and we can see them fully.”

~ Taisen Deshimaru, in the book, Questions to a Zen Master

“Some people say, ‘Listen, listen!’ And they talk. I say nothing, it’s better. People’s opinions are the product of their karma. ‘I saw it with my own eyes, I heard it with my own ears.’ But those eyes and ears are not a reliable reflection of absolute truth. They are the eyes and ears of karma. And that’s the problem.”

~ The Way of True Zen, Taisen Deshimaru

From the book, Questions to a Zen Master, by Taisen Deshimaru:

In zazen, concentrate on your posture and let everything else go by. After a while, what is in the subconscious rises to the surface, because when conscious thinking stops, the subconscious mind can be expressed.

Freud and Jung wrote about it. Jung was a profound psychologist. He studied Zen, which he knew through the books of D.T. Suzuki. But he had no experience of zazen, and it is impossible to understand if one does not practice.

If you practice zazen you can understand the subconscious coming back to the surface. You must let it come up, and in the end it wears itself out: one year ago, five years ago, when you were a baby. And you get back to what is original, to complete purity. That is satori. Not a special state, not a condition of transcendent consciousness.

During zazen you must let everything go by; but willing yourself not to think is also thinking. Let your thoughts go, do not follow them.

“Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.”

I keep running into various versions of this quote (from sources like the Tao, Ram Dass, and Zen books), so I thought I’d share it here. All sayings like this mean that if you become like a clear mirror and view the world exactly as it is — not how your desires (and fears) want it to be — you’ll see the truth.

The Kwan Um Zen school has this fun Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson story.

And I had never heard of the saying, “It’s easy to see a flea on the nose of a person one mile away, but very difficult to see an elephant standing on your own nose,” but it’s way too true, and I like it.

“More important than Buddhism, or Zen, or anything, is waking up. The Buddha was not a Buddhist. He was a ‘wake up’ person and what he woke up to is something everybody already has. Buddhism is not going to help you. Waking up is going to help the whole world.”

~ Zen Master Dae Kwang (from KwanUmZen.org)

“The way is not difficult. 
Only there must be no wanting, 
or not-wanting.”

~ Chao-chou (Joshu)

If you’re interested in meditating but can’t quite seem to do it without getting distracted, I recommend making a game of it. One game I use is, “How long can I take to count to five full breaths?”

The game itself is simple: Just before you begin to meditate, start a stopwatch on your phone. Then breathe in, and as you do so, internally say “one.” Then breathe out and internally (or externally) say “two.” Try to take these breaths as slowly as you can, with all of your focus on the current breath and current number. Keep doing this until you breathe out and say “ten,” and when that breath is finished, stop the stopwatch and see how long it took. The game is to make this time as long as possible.

Tricycle has a good article titled, Goodnight Metta: A bedtime meditation for children.

There are many nice cartoons/illustrations in Eckhart Tolle’s book Guardians of Being: Spiritual Teachings from Our Dogs and Cats, and this “Shtop Thinking” cartoon is one of my current favorites. (The book is a collaborative effort between Mr. Tolle and Patrick McDonnell, artist/illustrator/cartoonist who may be most well known for his “Mutts” cartoons.)

In “Eat, Pray, Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert describes what meditation can be like. :)