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

196. ZEN REMARKS

196.           home from India
                  on a single bed of pain -
                  my koan right here.