November 9, 2016: When a candidate I can’t stand wins an election, I feel like Al Gore in 2000: I want to sit on the couch, drink beer, eat pizza, grow my beard, and wonder what the hell happened.
While it feels horrible now, Al Gore turned his lemon into lemonade. He works with Apple and Google, is pursuing his passion in environmental activism, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
All of which makes me think of this old Taoist story.
“Do not try to experience satori. Do not try to drive away illusion. Do not hate the thoughts that arise, and do not love them, either. Above all, do not entertain them. Just practice the great sitting, here and now. If you do not continue a thought, it will not come back of its own accord.”
From the book, The Way of True Zen,
by Taisen Deshimaru
“The light that shines upon me shines upon my neighbor as well. In this way everything is connected to everything else.”
~ Detective Charlie Crews, Life
I wasn’t able to take any pictures of them, but last week we had some beautiful full Moon sunsets over the Rocky Mountains. Then I just came across this photo of the Moon and some mountains, with this “true emptiness” quote by Zen Master Seung Sahn. (The image comes from this link.)
In Jason Quinn’s Inka Speech he describes “original nature” very clearly. When you find the mind before thinking, you find Zen.
For more information, see Zen Master Seung Sahn’s books. I highly recommend Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, and Only Don’t Know. They are both as clear as any Zen books you will ever read.
In meditation practice you come to a point where you have to “let go.” It’s easy for me to do this at night, I’m usually tired and there isn’t any resistance, but it’s 1,000 times harder during the day. I’ve done it a few times for brief periods and the experience is really remarkable, but I haven’t been able to sustain it yet. No telling what happens when I can sustain it.
~ a note from May 22, 2015
“When the ten thousand dharmas are without self, there are no delusion, no enlightenment, no buddhas, no creatures, and no death. The Buddha way transcends being and nonbeing.”
~ Zen Master Dogen (as seen on this page)
I really struggle with equanimity, so this is a nice discussion on equanimity vs indifference, by Jack Kornfield. It comes from this page on his website.
This lesson about “The Middle Way” is a favorite short story from the book, Zen Master Raven.
“If you want to understand all the Buddhas of the past, present and future, then you should view the nature of the universe as created by mind alone.”
I have often wondered how you should interpret this quote. This article titled, Created By Mind Alone, provides more hints on how to interpret it.
This is a poem by the seventeenth-century monk Yinyuan Longqi. I just saw it in this LionsRoar.com article about a Zen teacher who had a panic attack.
This is an interesting quote: “I practiced in the midst of a pounding heart, with crazy energy running through my body and a strong aversion to these feelings. In the midst of panic, I could feel that it was fundamentally a physical sensation of hyper-arousal and that if I allowed that energy to course, with attention and a minimum of aversion, something interesting happened.”
When my dog Zeus was alive, he'd join me while I was meditating. That's what this photo reminds me of.
(I’m sorry, I don’t know the original source of this image.)
I like this description of the proper mindfulness technique:
“Not judging what you see, not considering it good or bad, just seeing what you see, with interest ... staking out your inner experience, like a wildlife photographer in an exotic location, waiting for the moment to snap.”
I don’t know who the speaker is, but I heard that on a Buddhify recording.
~ a note from April 9, 2015
These days whenever my face itches when I’m out in public and I can no longer scratch it, it reminds me of the early days of trying to meditate at a Zen center. You’re sitting there with a group of people and it’s absolutely quiet, and you’re trying to meditate, with your legs crossed and your hands in the “cosmic mudra” in your lap, and then something somewhere on your body starts to itch. But you’re not allowed to scratch it, you’re not even supposed to move.
If the itch is on your face you might kinda look around a little bit to see if anyone is looking at you — especially the Zen master with the wooden board. If nobody is looking, you can try to contort your facial muscles in different ways to relieve the itch. One time I tried to curl my lips in a weird way to blow some air up onto my itchy cheek, but in a large, quiet room with a wooden floor, that was surprisingly loud.
So in general, you’re pretty hosed, you just have to sit there and suffer, hoping it will go away, just like when you get an itch on your face when you’re shopping now.
This image is part of a new Heart Sutra translation by Thich Nhat Hanh. “New” is a relative term, because it looks like this translation happened in 2014, but it was just released in 2020 by Plum Village. Here’s a link to the complete translation, and here’s a letter that describes why this translation was made. The first paragraph of the letter begins:
“Thay needs to make this new translation of the Heart Sutra because the patriarch who originally compiled the Heart Sutra was not sufficiently skilful enough with his use of language. This has resulted in much misunderstanding for almost 2,000 years.”
I don’t know many sutras, but the Heart Sutra is my favorite, so it’s interesting to see this new translation.
“Let me have your view as to the reason of birth and death.”
~ D.T. Suzuki
Although a small woman physically, Dipa Ma was a giant of a meditation teacher.
While reading a book about her, it’s neat to see that while people use different practices and words, those who “go deep” all come to the same conclusion. This is a quote from her in the book, Dipa Ma: The Life and Legacy of a Buddhist Master:
“At each stage of enlightenment the fetters (hindrances) are extinguished, until (one day) they are gone. The fetters are related to birth in the same way that oil feeds the light of a lamp. As the oil becomes less and less, the light from the wick becomes less and less. When the oil is gone, the light is gone. Similarly, once the fetters are extinguished, the cycle of rebirth ends. From this, you can understand that birth and rebirth are in your hands.”
Back when I was studying Zen, I ran across the television series, Life. The first episode is almost perfect; this is a 40-second clip from it:
These days it’s “wisdom consultant,” not “guru.”
I found this image on the Cambridge Zen twitter page, and it looks like the image originally comes from speedbump.com.
Nansen and Joshu teamed up for some of the best stories in Zen literature. I’ve seen this exchange many times, but this particular translation comes from the book, Making Zen Your Own.
