A simple fishing boat in the midst of the rippling waters is enough to awaken in the mind of the beholder a sense of vastness of the sea and at the same time of peace and contentment – the Zen sense oof the alone.
Unless we die to ourselves, we can never be alive again.
When I say that Zen is life, I mean that Zen is not to be confined within conceptualization, that Zen is what makes conceptualization possible.
Implicity, there should be something mysterious in every day.
We can see unmistakeably that there is an inner relationship between Zen and the warrior’s life.
That’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.
Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground.
Let the intellect alone, it has its usefulness in its proper sphere, but let it not interfere with the flowing of the life-stream.
Zen opens a man’s eyes to the greatest mystery as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden.
Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one’s own rules-this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.
The fighter is to be always single-minded with one object in view: to fight, looking neither backward nor sidewise. To go straight forward in order to crush the enemy is all that is necessary for him.
Copying is slavery. The letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped. Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need.
To live – is that not enough?
To be a good Zen Buddhist it is not enough to follow the teaching of its founder; we have to experience the Buddha’s experience.
I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of this desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring woods:-in all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No worldly discussion is necessary, or any explanation.
We do not realize that as soon as our thoughts cease and all attempts at forming ideas are forgotten the Buddha reveals himself before us.
The meaning of service is to do the work assigned ungrudgingly and without thought of personal reward material or moral.
Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.
Zen is the spirit of a man. Zen believes in his inner purity and goodness. Whatever is superadded or violently torn away, injures the wholesomeness of the spirit. Zen, therefore, is emphatically against all religious conventionalism.
Zen has no business with ideas.