203. In vowing to save all beings, what do you mean by 'save'?
Saturday, 31 March 2018
Thursday, 29 March 2018
202. ZEN REMARKS
202. Is your zazen haunted by some ghost from the past? ('Though the many beings are numberless, I vow to save them all'). Are you taunted by ghosts of the present? ('Though delusive passions and thoughts rise endlessly, I vow to turn them around'). Are you frustrated at not being able to stop the ghost like chatter in your head? ('Thought after thought arises in the heart-mind, thought after thought not separate from heart-mind'). Remain open to all that presents itself, acknowledge and accept it while you stay grounded here and now in breath awareness, body awareness. Remember that 'Nirvana is right here before your eyes: this very place is the Lotus Land; this very body the Buddha!'
Wednesday, 28 March 2018
201. ZEN REMARKS
201. Zazen is an embodied practice. Ghosts, by definition, are disembodied. How then would you save a hungry ghost? Pay careful attention in your zazen practice and the effective saving act will issue forth of its own accord.
Monday, 26 March 2018
200. ZEN REMARKS
200. 'Though the many beings are numberless, I vow to save them all.' Even ghosts? Yes, even ghosts, and especially hungry ghosts.
Sunday, 25 March 2018
199. ZEN REMARKS
199. The koan challenges you to 'save a hungry ghost'. You protest 'I don't believe in ghosts'. So you don't believe in ghosts? Try zazen for half-an-hour. After that, if you can persist in your non belief, it's because you weren't paying attention.
Saturday, 24 March 2018
Monday, 12 March 2018
197. ZEN REMARKS
197. One day Master Nansen pointed to a flower and said, 'People nowadays see this flower as in a dream'. We might ask, 'What is this dream?' And we might answer, 'It is the dream of separateness'. Zen would have us wake from this dream. And waking from the dream we come to vividly realise that the heavens, the earth, and ourselves are, as an ancient worthy put it, 'of the same root'.
Friday, 9 March 2018
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)