392. ZEN REMARKS

392. Master  Gettan said to a monk: 'Keichu made a cart with a hundred wheels. If he removed the wheels and the axles, what would he make clear about the cart?' 

     A good koan to become intimate with in this time of pandemic. 

391. ZEN REMARKS

391. An old Chinese master put the question, 'Why has the foreigner from the West no beard?' Surely an odd question given that 'the foreigner from the West', that is, Bodhidharma, is always depicted with a big bushy beard. What is going on here? 

390. ZEN REMARKS

390. Thirty of us in a twenty-one day lockdown in a mountain zendo: time and opportunity to become ever more intimate with that mystery in which we live and move and have our being. 

389. ZEN REMARKS

389. Some questions to ponder in the silence and solitude of a zendo deep in the mountains: What is your calling in life? Are you aware of being called? Alternatively, are you pursuing a project of your own devising? What is life asking of you? What are you asking  (demanding?) of life?

388. ZEN REMARKS

388. Settle into the stillness of your silent sitting. Follow your breath down into your hara. Just be in this breathing moment and the sheer wonder of it. 

387. ZEN REMARKS

387. Sitting straight, silent, still. Be one with this sitting. Be fully aware of just this moment of silent sitting. 

386. ZEN REMARKS

386. The ordinary character of the Ordinary Heart-Mind involves nothing extraordinary, and this is so even for monastics like Nansen and Joshu. Rinzai, the great ninth century master, was at pains to spell this out for his monks, when he said to them: 'O Brethren in the Way, you must know that there is in the reality of Buddhism nothing extraordinary for you to perform. You just live as usual  . . . attending to your natural wants, putting on clothes, eating meals and lying down if you feel tired'.