If you use one iota of strength to make the slightest effort to attain enlightenment, you will never get it. If you make such an effort, you are trying to grasp space with your hands, which is useless and a waste of your time!

-From: Discourses of Master Tsung Kao, The Practice of Zen, by Garma C. C. Chang

If you read widely in poetry, philosophy, Buddhist studies, contemporary self-help material, and many other fields, you are bound to come upon phrases, paragraphs, and whole pages that seem, somehow, related to Zen. So, what should be the relationship of your Zen practise to your reading? You will get all sorts of advice on this topic and I will offer mine.

Before you have had a genuine opening, the words you read to try to gain an understanding of the great matter birth and death, even if they are from a master like Dogen or Hakuin, may be inspiring but, at the same time, confusing. If you persist in trying to “make sense” of them, there is a risk. You could gain an intellectual grasp of their intent and think, mistakenly, “I understand about form and emptiness” or “All beings are inherently enlightened so that so nothing needs to be done.” If you adopt such views it is as if you picked up heavy planks to add to and reinforce the structure, the fortress, of the self.

- Don Stoddard