Soft spring rain-

                   since when

                   have I been called a monk

                           Soen Nakagawa

 

Huang Po

The pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection. But the people of the world do not awake to it, regarding only that which sees, hears, feels, and knows as mind. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing, they do not perceive the spiritual brilliance of the source-substance.

If they would only eliminate all conceptual thought in a flash, that source-substance would manifest itself like the sun ascending through the void and illuminating the whole universe without hindrance or bounds. 

-The Zen Teachings of Huang Po. Translated by John Blofeld

 

Blue Cliff Record, Case 86

Yun-men’s Bright Light

Yunmen gave instruction, saying, “Everyone has his own light. If you want to see it, you can’t. The darkness is dark, dark.  Now, what is your light?”

He himself answered, “The storeroom. The gate.”

Again he said, “It would be better to have nothing than something good.”

“If you want to see it, you can’t. The darkness is dark, dark.”

Eka stood in the snow, cut off his arm and said to Bodhidharma, “My mind has no peace as yet. I beg you master, please put it to rest.” Bodhidharma said, “Bring me your mind and I will put it to rest.” Eka said, “I have searched for my mind, but I cannot find it.”

“Now, what is your light?” He himself answered, “The storeroom. The gate.”

Can you paraphrase Unmon’s words? – Put yourself in the position of Unmon here now. What is your light?

The bird sound.

What else?

The candle, the cup.

Yes, That is your light.

“It would be better to have nothing than something good.”  What is that?  What’s he talking about?

I don’t know!

Achaan Cha said: Don't try to get anywhere in the practise. Desire to be free or enlightened will be the very desire that prevents your freedom. Try as hard as you wish, practise ardently, night and day, but if it is still with the desire to achieve in mind, you will never find peace. The energy from this desire will be the cause for doubt and restlessness. No matter how long and hard you practise, wisdom will not arise from desire. So, simply let go. Watch the mind and body mindfully? But don't try to achieve anything. Stop. What's the mind and body mindfully, but don't try to achieve anything. Don't cling even to the practise or to enlightenment.

THE EVENING MESSAGE
(Called out from just outside the do-jo- during the ceremony at the end of each day of Sesshin.)

I beg to urge you everyone:
life and death is a grave matter;
all things pass quickly away.
Each of you must be completely alert;
never neglectful, never indulgent.

 

 Hafez

"I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew. The Truth has shared so much of Itself with me that I can no longer call myself a man, a woman, an angel, or even a pure Soul. Love has befriended me so completely it has turned to ash and freed me of every concept and image my mind has ever known."

Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī  (1325-1389). Known by his pen name Hafez.

Philip Kapleau Roshi

Question yourself day and night with the yearning to know and the conviction that you can know. Learn to live the way a fish swims or a bird flies – unself-consciously. Be aware and responsive. In whatever your right hand finds to do involve also your left. Avoid unnecessary judgments. Be modest and unassuming; offer your opinion only when it is asked for. Forget your good deeds and confess your bad ones. And never fail to relate every effect to the cause that produced it.

From  Zen: Merging of East and West  by Philip Kapleau Roshi

   Brother Lawrence

‘The first time I saw Brother Lawrence was upon the 3rd of August, 1666. He told me that God had done him a singular favour in his conversion at the age of eighteen.

During that winter, upon seeing a tree stripped of its leaves and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed and after that the flowers and fruit appear, Brother Lawrence received a high view of the Providence and Power of God which has never since been effaced from his soul.

This view had perfectly set him loose from the world and kindled in him such a love for God, that he could not tell whether it had increased in the forty years that he had lived since.’

(Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, 1693, p1)

St. Romuald's Brief Rule For Camaldolese Monks

Sit in your cell as in paradise.
Put the whole world behind you and forget it.
Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish,
The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it.

If you have just come to the monastery,
and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want,
take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart
and to understand them with your mind.

And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up;
hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.

Realize above all that you are in God's presence,
and stand there with the attitude of one who stands
before the emperor.

Empty yourself completely and sit waiting,
content with the grace of God,
like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing
but what his mother brings him.

Ryokan

Too lazy to be ambitious, I let the world take care of itself. Ten days' worth of rice in my bag; a bundle of twigs by the fireplace. Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment? Listening to the night rain on my roof, I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

From "The Zen Poems of Ryokan."

 THOMAS MERTON ON WHAT ZEN IS NOT:

“Zen is not a systematic explanation of life, it is not an ideology, it is not a world view, it is not a theology of revelation and salvation, it is not a mystique, it is not a way of ascetic perfection, it is not mysticism as it is understood in the West; in fact it fits no convenient category of ours. Hence all our attempts to tag it and dispose of it with labels like pantheism, quietism, illuminism, Pelagianism, must be completely incongruous....But the chief characteristic of Zen is that it rejects all systematic elaborations in order to get back as far as possible to the pure, unarticulated and unexplained ground of direct experience. The direct experience of what? Life itself.”

 

Emptiness means to be full of everything, but empty of a separate existence. 

Thich Nhat Hanh (The Art of Living).