Posts in the “zen” category

“Meditation is to bring the complex consciousness to simplicity and innocence without pride and arrogance.”

B.K.S. Itengar, The Tree of Yoga

“Even when I was just three years old, I could recall many previous lives. But to many people this sort of thinking isn’t acceptable, so now when I’m asked what I can remember, I just say ‘I remember when I was three years old.’”

~ a monk

I found this poem, titled “Snow Man,” in a Zen book I bought a few weeks ago.

To me, a lot of Buddhist teachings are based on logic. Today I particularly like this quote from this LionsRoar.com article titled, Silencing the Inner Critic: “The judging mind is optional; it can be understood and released.”

“True self appears when we actively practice in the present moment, not waiting for enlightenment to appear in some special way.”

~ Les Kaye, Zen at Work

If you’re interested in a simple introduction to mindfulness meditation, search the Internet for a free, 25-page PDF booklet named, “Buddha in Blue Jeans,” by Tai Sheridan. Despite that name, the booklet has good, non-denominational tips about meditating and mindfulness (and only mentions the name “Buddha” twice in the main text).

Here’s a favorite quote: “Be like a cat purring. Follow your breath like ocean waves coming in and out.”

“If we close our eyes (during zazen), the darkness may provide us some relief from visual distraction and give us a feeling of peace and calm. But in zazen, we keep our eyes open. If we want to close our eyes because we feel distracted by what our eyes see, we need to understand that it is our minds that are distracted, not our eyes.”

Zen Master Bon Haeng talks about feeling the pressure of being a Zen Master.

From this NY Post story about Joakim Noah and Phil Jackson:

Noah told a bizarre story about journeying to Montana five years ago to pay an unannounced visit to the then-retired Zen Master at his lakehouse retreat. Noah’s dentist was a Jackson friend and once had put the two together on the phone briefly. Still, Jackson was stunned by Noah arriving at his doorstep.

“I took a plane, went to Montana and I knocked on his door,’’ Noah said. “We started talking. ‘Why are you here?’ [he asked]. I said, ‘I don’t know.’ It was a great couple of days — an opportunity to meet one of the legends and spend time with him. Life works in mysterious ways and now we’re here.”

I saw this quote by Naval Ravikant:

“The fundamental delusion - there is something out there that will make me happy and fulfilled forever.”

and it reminded me of this quote by Zen Master Yasutani Roshi:

“The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.”

When I first sit down to meditate, my mind is often too busy to get into it well, so one thing I’ve learned to do is to try to meditate for about eight minutes, then get up, stretch a little bit (a few yoga stretches), then sit back down to meditate normally. My second attempt is usually significantly better than my first attempt. There are other things you can do to calm the mind, but this works well for me.

Another thing I was reminded of again today is that the quality of meditation often changes over time. Today there was something new, and I thought, “Cool ... this is different,” before getting back to the meditation at hand. For me that happens a lot, so I assume it happens for other people as well.

Here’s yet another article that helps demonstrate that mindfulness meditation helps to reduce stress.

A quote from this LionsRoar.com article:

“You know who said it best? Leonard Cohen. He meditated all those years at Mt. Baldy Zen Center, often for twelve hours at a time. In an interview, he said his storyline just wore itself out. He got so bored with his dramatic storyline. And then he made the comment, ‘The less there was of me, the happier I got.’”

“The power of karma is strong in everyone, stupid or clever. When that force is broken, it becomes possible to understand Zen.”

From the book, The Way of True Zen, by Taisen Deshimaru (pictured).

(A lot of Buddhist quotes remind me of Star Wars, and vice-versa.)

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“There’s a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.”

Morpheus, in The Matrix

I’ll be joining a new yoga class soon, and I was just thinking about what I might say, or not say, to the other students in the class about the things I’ve experienced when practicing yoga very seriously. In an open discussion during a previous yoga class I told other students that I was able to feel various things when we did the “corpse pose” at the end of the session. I didn’t go into great detail, but I did tell them that I could feel my blood flowing in my body, how I could feel “vibration” sensations on my skin, and a few other things.

“The path I have followed has been dangerous, destabilizing more than calm, excruciating more than pleasant, and hard to integrate (into ‘normal’ everyday life). It has also been profound, amazing, and glorious. Surfing the ragged edges of reality has been easier than slowing the thing down.”

~ A quote from the book, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, by Daniel Ingram.

I’m not 100% sure, but this style of writing looks an awful lot like it comes from Daniel Ingram’s book, Mastering The Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book. (I posted this on Facebook back in early 2014, so I can’t remember for sure.)

The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground.

~ Chögyam Trungpa