Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well.
Shunryu Suzuki
Category: Zen
The Zen Mind
Nothing Exists
Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.
Desiring to show his attainment, he said: “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is Emptiness. There is no realisation, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received”.
Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.
“If nothing exists”, inquired Dokuon, “where did this anger come from?”
Reality
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
A Mirror
The world is like a mirror, you see? Smile, and your friends smile back.
Japanese Zen saying
The grass grows by itself
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
The I
If you think, “I breathe,” the “I” is extra. There is no you to say “I.” What we call “I” is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no “I,” no world, no mind nor body: just a swinging door.
Shunryu Suzuki
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Mountains and Rivers
Mountains and rivers at this very moment are the actualization of the world of the ancient Buddhas. Each, abiding in its phenomenal expression, realizes completeness.
Dogen Zenji
Turn clear and transparent
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
Mountain
The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.