Short Zen Quotes

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing. What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don’t force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don’t understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day.

[Y]ou are here to learn something. Don’t try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive.

If you fall into poverty, live that way without grumbling - then your poverty will not burden you. Likewise, if you are rich, live with your riches. All this is the functioning of Buddha-nature. In short, Buddha-nature has the quality of infinite adaptability.

leaves glow under a haze of sunlight, and hang still on a windless day

For ten years I wrote at least one short story a week, somehow guessing that a day would finally come when I truly got out of the way and let it happen.

Ultimately, it is through short-term victories that we achieve our long-term goals.

Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain.

Don't waste your life living out other people's expectations.

In short, zazen is seeing this world from the casket, without me.

Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a "short between the earphones," failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.

Decrease the complaining. Decrease the self-centeredness around it. Everybody has pain.  

I took my bottle and went to my bedroom. I undressed down to my shorts and went to bed. Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. I took my choice. I raised the fifth of vodka and drank it straight. The Russians knew something.

At first he found it amusing. He coined a law intended to have the humor of a Parkinson’s law that "The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite." It pleased him never to run out of hypotheses. Even when his experimental work seemed dead-end in every conceivable way, he knew that if he just sat down and muddled about it long enough, sure enough, another hypothesis would come along. And it always did. It was only months after he had coined the law that he began to have some doubts about the humor or benefits of it. If true, that law is not a minor flaw in scientific reasoning. The law is completely nihilistic. It is a catastrophic logical disproof of the general validity of all scientific method! If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge

The only way to learn sitting quietly is to do it.

Sitting quietly can teach you many ways to accept life, meet pain, age gracefully, and die without regret.

accept life, meet pain, age gracefully, and die without regret.

Everywhere you look in the literary cosmos, the great ones are busy loving and hating. Have you given up this primary business as obsolete in your own writing? What fun you are missing, then. The fun of anger and disillusion, the fun of loving and being loved, of moving and being moved by this masked ball which dances us from cradle to churchyard. Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain. But on the way, in your work, why not carry those two inflated pig-bladders labeled Zest and Gusto.

Because he’d given up, the surface of life was comfortable for him. He worked reasonably hard, was easy to get along with and, except for an occasional glimpse of inner emptiness shown in some short stories he wrote at the time, his days passed quite usually.

According to tradition, the originator of Taoism, Lao-tzu, was an older contemporary of Kung Fu-tzu, or Confucius, who died in 479 B.C.1 Lao-tzu is said to have been the author of the Tao Te Ching, a short book of aphorisms, setting forth the principles of the Tao and its power or virtue (Te e). But traditional Chinese philosophy ascribes both Taoism and Confucianism to a still earlier source, to a work which lies at the very foundation of Chinese thought and culture, dating anywhere from 3000 to 1200 B.C. This is the I Ching, or Book of Changes.

All my stories are cinematic. The Illustrated Man over at Warner Brothers a couple of years ago (1969) didn’t work because they didn’t read the short stories. I may be the most cinematic novelist in the country today. All of my short stories can be shot right off the page. Each paragraph is a shot.

That’s extremely important to understand. He had given up. Because he’d given up, the surface of life was comfortable for him. He worked reasonably hard, was easy to get along with and, except for an occasional glimpse of inner emptiness shown in some short stories he wrote at the time, his days passed quite usually.

There is a classic Zen saying that a wave cannot be separated from the ocean, nor can the ocean be separated from a wave.

You are where you need to be. Just breathe." -         Zen Proverb

Just sit quietly, connect with your breath, and pay attention to what happens. You will learn things.

You were given the gift of life.   Be grateful for this amazing gift.   Everything is a gift.   Be grateful for everything.   Enjoy living gratefully.

Follow your breath like ocean waves coming in and out.

Life is short, misery sure, mortality certain. But on the way, in your work, why not carry those two inflated pig-bladders labeled Zest and Gusto.

Listening gets you out of your self centered camp.   Listening is kindness.

In your mind there is a diamond sword. If you want to understand yourself, take it and cut off good and bad, long and short, coming and going, high and low, God and Buddha. Cut off all things.

Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, “I know what Zen is,” or “I have attained enlightenment.” This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.” - “When you are sitting in the middle of your own problem, which is more real to you: your problem or you yourself? The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact. ” - “Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment after moment, is the life of “form is form and emptiness is emptiness.” - “You may feel as if you are doing something special, but actually it is only the expression of your true nature; it is the activity which appeases your inmost desire. But as long as you think you are practicing zazen for the sake of something, that is not true practice.” - “The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture.

Thomas Merton, of course, constitutes a special threat to Christians, because he presents himself as a contemplative Christian monk, and his work has already affected the vitals of Roman Catholicism, its monasticism. Shortly before his death, Father Merton wrote an appreciative introduction to a new translation of the Bhagavad Gita, which is the spiritual manual or “Bible” of all Hindus, and one of the foundation blocks of monism or Advaita Vedanta. The Gita, it must be remembered, opposes almost every important teaching of Christianity. His book on the Zen Masters, published posthumously, is also noteworthy, because the entire work is based on a treacherous mistake: the assumption that all the so-called “mystical experiences” in every religion are true. He should have known better.

The trick here was indifference, I decided as I took my sweet time coming down the stairs. Act cool. Detached. Something potent and violent boiled inside me and I strained every nerve in my body to keep it on its chain. I could do this. I just had to stay cool. Zen. No punching in the face. Punching would not be Zen. The stairs ended. I wished I knew the jackass who’d made the staircase so short. I’d throw him down the damn steps so he could count them with his head.

This is great. But what I’m grasping at is an idea about a subtler goal. This thinking owes a lot to conversations with Manjula Waldron of Ohio State University, an engineering professor who also happens to be a hospital chaplain. This feels embarrassingly Zen-ish for me to spout, being a short, hypomanic guy with a Brooklyn accent, but here goes: Maybe the goal isn’t to maximize the contrast between a low baseline and a high level of activation. Maybe the idea is to have both simultaneously. Huh? Maybe the goal would be for your baseline to be something more than the mere absence of activation, a mere default, but to instead be an energized calm, a proactive choice. And for the ceiling to consist of some sort of equilibrium and equanimity threading through the crazed arousal. I have felt this a few times playing soccer, inept as I am at it, where there’s a moment when, successful outcome or not, every physiological system is going like mad, and my body does something that my mind didn’t even dream of, and the two seconds when that happened seemed to take a lot longer than it should have. But this business about the calm amid the arousal isn’t just another way of talking about “good stress” (a stimulating challenge, as opposed to a threat). Even when the stressor is bad and your heart is racing in crisis, the goal should be to somehow make the fraction of a second between each heartbeat into an instant that expands in time and allows you to regroup. There, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I think there might be something important lurking there. Enough said.

Here’s the punch line: You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it. Once the mental grooves of habit have been carved into your brain, they are nearly impossible to remove entirely—even if they go unused for quite a while. And that means that simply resisting temptation is an ineffective strategy. It is hard to maintain a Zen attitude in a life filled with interruptions. It takes too much energy. In the short-run, you can choose to overpower temptation. In the long-run, we become a product of the environment that we live in. To put it bluntly, I have never seen someone consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment.

Don't waste your life trying to become somebody else.   Don't waste your life trying to live up to your performance expectations.   Don't waste your life imitating others.   Don't waste your life living out other people's expectations.   Don't waste your life envious of other people.   Be authentic. Be genuine. Be real. Be yourself.

He left the classroom, left India and gave up. He returned to his Midwest, picked up a practical degree in journalism, married, lived in Nevada and Mexico, did odd jobs, worked as a journalist, a science writer and an industrial-advertising writer. He fathered two children, bought a farm and a riding horse and two cars and was starting to put on middle-aged weight. His pursuit of what has been called the ghost of reason had been given up. That’s extremely important to understand. He had given up. Because he’d given up, the surface of life was comfortable for him. He worked reasonably hard, was easy to get along with and, except for an occasional glimpse of inner emptiness shown in some short stories he wrote at the time, his days passed quite usually.

Whether working in the yard or just going about the daily business of life, you are continually adjusting, trimming, touching, shaping, and tinkering with the wealth of things around you. It may be difficult for you to know when to stop. We are all torn between the extremes of taking care of things and leaving them alone, and we question whether many things could ever get along without us. We find ourselves with pruning shears in hand, snipping away at this or that, telling ourselves that we're only being helpful, redefining something else's space, removing that which is unappealing to us. It's not that we really want to change the world. We just want to fix it up slightly. We'd like to lose a few pounds or rid ourselves of some small habit. Maybe we'd like to help a friend improve his situation or repair a few loose ends in the lives of our children. All of this shaping and controlling can have an adverse affect. Unlike someone skilled in the art of bonsai gardening, we may *unintentionally* stunt much natural growth before it occurs. And our meddling may not be appreciated by others. Most things will get along superbly without our editing, fussing, and intervention. We can learn to just let them be. As a poem of long ago puts it, "In the landscape of spring, the flowering branches grow naturally, some are long, some are short.

The first encounter with Chan/Zen took place in Japan, where Francis Xavier arrived in August 1549. Xavier's stay in Japan was relatively short, and he had to rely in the beginning on the poor information provided by the Japanese convert Yajirō, who spoke some Portuguese. In contrast to Ricci's, Xavier's judgment reflects the sociopolitical importance of Buddhism in Japanese society prior to the anti-Buddhist repression of 1571, as well as the strong impressions left by his first encounters with Zen masters. Although Xavier and his confreres were puzzled by the many similarities between Buddhism and Christianity and first interpreted them as proof of a past knowledge, obscured in time, of Christian teachings, they eventually attributed them to the work of the devil (Schurhammer 1982, 224).

Zen does not attempt to be intelligible – that is, capable of being understood by the intellect. The method of Zen is to baffle, excite, puzzle and exhaust the intellect until it is realized that intellection is only thinking about; it will provoke, irritate and again exhaust the emotions until it is realised that emotion is only feeling about, and then it contrives, when the disciple has been brought to an intellectual and emotional impasse, to bridge the gap between second-hand conceptual contact with reality, and first-hand experience. To effect this it calls into play a higher faculty of the mind, known as intuition or Buddhi, which is sometimes called the ‘Eye of the Spirit’. In short, the aim of Zen is to focus the attention on reality itself, instead of on our intellectual and emotional reactions to reality — reality being that ever-changing, ever-growing, indefinable something known as “life,” which will never stop for a moment for us to fit it satisfactorily into any rigid system of pigeon-holes and ideas.

Only then comes the fourth and last movement, the Adagio, the final farewell. It takes the form of a prayer, Mahler's last chorale, his closing hymn, so to speak; and it prays for the restoration of life, of tonality, of faith. This is tonality unashamed, presented in all aspects ranging from the diatonic simplicity of the hymn tune that opens it through every possible chromatic ambiguity. It's also a passionate prayer, moving from one climax to another, each more searing than the last. But there are no solutions. And between these surges of prayer there is intermittently a sudden coolness, a wide-spaced transparency, like an icy burning — a Zen-like immobility of pure meditation. This is a whole other world of prayer, of egoless acceptance. But again, there are no solutions. "Heftig ausbrechend!" he writes, as again the despairing chorale breaks out with greatly magnified intensity. This is the dual Mahler, flinging himself back into his burning Christian prayer, then again freezing into his Eastern one. This vacillation is his final duality. In the very last return of the hymn he is close to prostration; it is all he can give in prayer, a sobbing, sacrificial last try. But suddenly this climax fails, unachieved — the one that might have worked, that might have brought solutions. This last desperate reach falls short of its goal, subsides into a hint of resignation, then another hint, then into resignation itself. And so we come to the final incredible page. And this page, I think, is the closest we have ever come, in any work of art, to experiencing the very act of dying, of giving it all up. The slowness of this page is terrifying: Adagissimo, he writes, the slowest possible musical direction; and then langsam (slow), ersterbend (dying away), zögernd (hesitat-ing); and as if all those were not enough to indicate the near stoppage of time, he adds äusserst langsam (extremely slow) in the very last bars. It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate. We hold on to them, hovering between hope and submission. And one by one, these spidery strands connecting us to life melt away, vanish from our fingers even as we hold them. We cling to them as they dematerialize; we are holding two-then one. One, and suddenly none. For a petrifying moment there is only silence. Then again, a strand, a broken strand, two strands, one ... none. We are half in love with easeful death ... now more than ever seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain ... And in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything.

Now is all you've got.   The past is memory.   The future is wish.   Now is real.

Once at a workshop, the instruction was to walk mindfully over to the lunchtime food across the room. In that short walk across the room, I noticed how automatically I get ahead of myself—how I lose track of these miraculous feet on the ground and miss the space in between. And I’m beginning to suspect that most of life is “in between.

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. He introduces the insights that he learned from surviving imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp. He outlines methods to discover deep meaning and purpose in life. The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. His 81 Zen teachings are the foundation for the religion of Taoism, aimed at understanding “the way of virtues.” Lao Tzu’s depth of teachings are complicated to decode and provide foundations for wisdom. Mind Gym by Gary Mack is a book that strips down the esoteric nature of applied sport psychology. Gary introduces a variety of mindset training principles and makes them extremely easy to understand and practice. What purchase of $ 100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? A book for my son: Inch and Miles, written by coach John Wooden. We read it together on a regular basis. The joy that I get from hearing him understand Coach Wooden’s insights is fantastically rewarding.

The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential . . . in Business and in Life, Essential Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change, Briefly, and several other books.

Once Zen Master To An was visiting another temple. He wasn't wearing his Zen Master clothes, only the clothes of a wandering monk. He began a conversation with one of the monks at the temple, who did not recognize that he was a Zen Master. Soon the monk began to talk about his Master. “Every day he does one thousand prostrations. He eats only once a day. He hasn't left the temple for thirty years. He is always sitting Zen. He is the greatest Zen Master in all of China.” To An said, “Well well, he sounds like an extraordinary man. I can't do any of these things. I can't bow a thousand times a day; but my mind is never lazy. I can't eat only once a day; but I never desire food. I can't stay in a temple for more than a short time; but wherever I go I have no hindrance. I can't sit Zen for very long; but I never give rise to thinking.” The monk said, “I don't understand.” To An said, “Go ask your Master to explain.” The monk bowed and went into the temple. Soon the Zen Master came running out to To An and prostrated himself three times in front of him. “You are a great Zen Master,” he said. “Please let me become your disciple. I have been very attached to hard training. But now that I have heard your kind words, my mind is clear.” To An laughed and said, “No no, I can't be your teacher. You are already a great Zen Master. All you need to do is to keep the mind you had when you were bowing to me. Already you are a free man. Before, you were bowing, sitting, and eating only for yourself. Now it is for all people.” At these words, the Zen Master began to weep with joy. He bowed again to To An and said, simply, “Thank you.

1. Fire them (in a nice way) Give them plenty of notice, and recommend other people that can do your job. Keep it short and sweet. You don’t have to justify why you made this decision, but you can add that it doesn’t fit into your business model at this time. It can go something like this… Tactful Client Dismissal Letter: Mr. Jones, I have decided it would be best if we did not renew your contract for next year. While I appreciate the opportunity to work with you, my business is moving towards a more automated model. I will not be able to handle your account the way you want or expect. Therefore, to ensure accounts success, I will be recommending three people who can replace me. Kind Regards, Liesha Petrovich 2.

Kindly ask for what you want. Respect everybody's right to say yes or no to your needs.

Learn To Laugh It Off Taking things too seriously is one of the easiest ways to lose happiness in your life. Whether it’s your own personal growth or how your life develops, learn to let things unfold and know that everything truly does happen for a reason. The more serious you are about the things that are happening in your life, the easier it is to miss out on all of the fun that you could be having by simply enjoying the process. Whatever it is that you are trying to accomplish in life, learn to have a laugh every now and then. Don’t ever let life become too serious. It’s way too short to not smile and laugh on a regular basis. What

The moon appears standing still when you look at her only a few moments. In like manner she seems to be free from change when you look at her in your short span of life.

When the above-mentioned four doctrines are compared with one another in the order of succession, each is more profound than the preceding. They are called the superficial, provided that the follower, learning them a short while, knows them by himself to be imperfect; (but) if he adheres to them as perfect, these same (doctrines) are called incomplete. They are (thus) said to be superficial and incomplete with regard to the follower. CHAPTER

Similarly, the mountain is not high nor low; the river is not deep nor shallow; the house is not large nor small; the day is not long nor short; but they seem so through comparison.

Yang Shan (Kyo-zan) asked Wei Shan (I-san): 'What shall we do when hundreds, thousands, and millions of things beset us all at once?' 'The blue are not the yellow,' replied Wei Shan, 'the long are not the short. Everything is in its own place. It has no business with you.' Wei Shan was a great Zen master. He did not teach the unreality of all things. Who can say that Zen is nihilistic?" [FN#202]

If all (these elements) be taken as Atman, there must be eight Atmans (for each person). More than that! There are many different things, even in the element of earth. Now, there are three hundred and sixty bones, each one distinct from the other. No one is the same as any other, either of the skin, hair, muscles, the liver, the heart, the spleen, and the kidneys. Furthermore, there are a great many mental qualities each different from the others. Sight is different from hearing. Joy is not the same as anger. If we enumerate them, in short, one after another, there are eighty thousand passions.[FN#349] [FN#349] Eighty thousand simply means a great many. As things are thus so innumerable, none can tell which of these (without mistake) is to be taken as the Atman. In case all be taken as the Atman, there must be hundreds and thousands of Atmans, among which there would be as many conflicts and disturbances as there are masters living in the one (house of) body. As there exists no body nor mind separated from these things, one can never find the Atman, even if he seeks for it over and over again. Hereupon anyone understands that this life (of ours) is no more than the temporary union of numerous elements (mental and physical). Originally there is no Atman to distinguish one being from another.

the world of appearances is valueless, as it is limited, short-lived, imperfect, painful, sinful, hopeless, and miserable; while the realm of reality is to be aspired for, as it is eternal, perfect, comfortable, full of hope, joy, and peace-hence the eternal divorce of appearance and reality. Such a view of life tends to make one minimize the value of man, to neglect the present existence, and to yearn after the future. Some

the flowers of the morning glory. They bloom and smile every morning, fade and die in a few hours. How fleeting and ephemeral their lives are! But it is that short life itself that makes them frail, delicate, and lovely. They come forth all at once as bright and beautiful as a rainbow or as the Northern light, and disappear like dreams. This is the best condition for them, because, if they last for days together, the morning glory shall no longer be the morning glory. It is so with the cherry-tree that puts forth the loveliest flowers and bears bitter fruits. It is so with the apple-tree, which bears the sweetest of fruits and has ugly blossoms. It is so with animals and men. Each of them is placed in the condition best for his appointed mission. The

A Chinese Zen master[FN#230] tells us that the method of instruction adopted by Zen may aptly be compared with that of an old burglar who taught his son the art of burglary. The burglar one evening said to his little son, whom he desired to instruct in the secret of his trade: "Would you not, my dear boy, be a great burglar like myself?" "Yes, father," replied the promising young man." "Come with me, then. I will teach you the art." So saying, the man went out, followed by his son. Finding a rich mansion in a certain village, the veteran burglar made a hole in the wall that surrounded it. Through that hole they crept into the yard, and opening a window with complete ease broke into the house, where they found a huge box firmly locked up as if its contents were very valuable articles. The old man clapped his hands at the lock, which, strange to tell, unfastened itself. Then he removed the cover and told his son to get into it and pick up treasures as fast as he could. No sooner had the boy entered the box than the father replaced the cover and locked it up. He then exclaimed at the top of his voice: "Thief! thief! thief! thief!" Thus, having aroused the inmates, he went out without taking anything. All the house was in utter confusion for a while; but finding nothing stolen, they went to bed again. The boy sat holding his breath a short while; but making up his mind to get out of his narrow prison, began to scratch the bottom of the box with his finger-nails. The servant of the house, listening to the noise, supposed it to be a mouse gnawing at the inside of the box; so she came out, lamp in hand, and unlocked it. On removing the cover, she was greatly surprised to find the boy instead of a little mouse, and gave alarm. In the meantime the boy got out of the box and went down into the yard, hotly pursued by the people. He ran as fast as possible toward the well, picked up a large stone, threw it down into it, and hid himself among the bushes. The pursuers, thinking the thief fell into the well, assembled around it, and were looking into it, while the boy crept out unnoticed through the hole and went home in safety. Thus the burglar taught his son how to rid himself of overwhelming difficulties by his own efforts; so also Zen teachers teach their pupils how to overcome difficulties that beset them on all sides and work out salvation by themselves. [FN#230]

The first step in the mental training is to become the master of external things. He who is addicted to worldly pleasures, however learned or ignorant he may be, however high or low his social position may be, is a servant to mere things. He cannot adapt the external world to his own end, but he adapts himself to it. He is constantly employed, ordered, driven by sensual objects. Instead of taking possession of wealth, he is possessed by wealth. Instead of drinking liquors, he is swallowed up by his liquors. Balls and music bid him to run mad. Games and shows order him not to stay at home. Houses, furniture, pictures, watches, chains, hats, bonnets, rings, bracelets, shoes—in short, everything has a word to command him. How can such a person be the master of things? To Ju (Na-kae) says: "There is a great jail, not a jail for criminals, that contains the world in it. Fame, gain, pride, and bigotry form its four walls. Those who are confined in it fall a prey to sorrow and sigh for ever." To

Enjoy breathing. Feel your breath. Watch your breath. Become your breath. Be like a cat purring.

In short, all this should emphasize the concentration of power in the whole body by simultaneously placing strength in the tanden and by infusing the whole body with energy moving away from the tanden. Thus, by means of the equilibrium of the centrifugal and the centripetal force, the whole body is brought to a state of zero and spiritual power will pervade the whole body intensely.

Makyo is, in short, our attachment to favorable conditions that we ourselves approve of. It is possible to subdue them by ignoring them and eliminating them, as testified by the words of ancients.

Excuse my lengthy exposition, but in short what I mean to say is that we should regard everything that appears to us during our meditation as makyo. Even if Buddha appears, even if glorious light shines, even if the ash of the incense stick is heard as it falls six feet away, and even if the absolute nothingness reveals itself, they all belong to makyo regardless of whether they are good or bad, as long as they occur to us during our meditation. When we come face to face with makyo, we should brace up mind and body and become courageous so that we may smash them all into pieces paying no attention to them. We find the following passage in Kaian Kokugo,37 “If you want to maintain your life, cut the thoughts of protecting your life. It is only when you cut everything that you will be secure for the first time.” HOW TO GET TO YOUR FEET AFTER SITTING When we sit for the duration of one incense stick, that is for thirty or forty minutes at a time, it is not necessary to pay any attention to the problem of getting to our feet after meditation. However,

Excuse my lengthy exposition, but in short what I mean to say is that we should regard everything that appears to us during our meditation as makyo. Even if Buddha appears, even if glorious light shines, even if the ash of the incense stick is heard as it falls six feet away, and even if the absolute nothingness reveals itself, they all belong to makyo regardless of whether they are good or bad, as long as they occur to us during our meditation. When we come face to face with makyo, we should brace up mind and body and become courageous so that we may smash them all into pieces paying no attention to them. We find the following passage in Kaian Kokugo,37 “If you want to maintain your life, cut the thoughts of protecting your life. It is only when you cut everything that you will be secure for the first time.

This operating power of our minds is called joriki. It is, in short, the operation of no-self. Master Sogaku writes about it as follows, “The right mind operates at each time and in each place to make you take the right attitude and act properly without deviating from the Way.

You won the lottery, you were born. You won the lottery, you are you.

But when we break through that delusion, the illusion caused by selfish desires and doubt, and come into contact with the Absolute for a fraction of a second, we realize our original True Self. This experience is called satori or kensho.12 In short, this is awakening to one’s True Self. It may be said that the aim of Zen is to have that kind of experience.

When you fill your tanden with power and with attention, what physiologic effects can be found?” The first effect he discusses suggests that, when the tanden is filled with energy and pressure, blood previously stored in the liver and the spleen is pushed into the capillaries. The physiological effect is such that one could say that the tanden acts like a secondary heart. Fresh blood, rich in red blood cells, is sent up to the cerebral center through the cervical plexus. As a result, the respiratory center is influenced in such a way that respiration is tranquilized. The second phenomena in this circulation is the neutralizing regulation of adrenaline by the cholinergic nerves of the parasympathetic nervous system when they are stimulated by pressure on the tanden. In short, a new world, completely different from the one in which the body used to breathe with chest and abdomen, comes into being through the pressure applied to the area in and around the tanden. It is indeed a “revolution of the living body.

After the passage of a given length of time, the jikijitsu again rings his bell once and claps his clappers twice. Then comes a short break of about ten minutes. Sometimes during this break kinhin (meditative walking) takes place in the meditation hall.

Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment after moment, is the life of "form is form and emptiness is emptiness.

The spirit of the place is not not friendly. Meals begin in silence; once everyone is seated, someone slaps the wooden clackers and leads a little chant. The food is often amazingly good, and despite the growing number of vegans in the ranks, heaps of delicious cheese are often melted and sprinkled and layered into the hot things that come out of the kitchen. At breakfast, watch the very senior people deal with rice gruel, and you'll know enough to spike yours with brown sugar and stir in some whole milk or cream, and you could do much worse on a morning in March. ("You can't change your karma, but you can sweeten your cereal," whispered an elderly priest when I nobly and foolishly added nothing to that blob in my bowl during my first stay at the farm.) Once eating is under way, the common dining room looks rather like a high school cafeteria; there are insider and outsider tables, and it is often easy to spot the new students and short-term guests—they're a few minutes late because they haven't memorized the schedule; they're smiling bravely, wielding their dinner trays like steering wheels, weaving around, desperately looking for a public parking space, hoping someone will wave or smile or otherwise signal them to safety I asked a practice leader about this, and she said she knew it was hard but people have to get over their self consciousness; for some newcomers, she said, that's zazen, that's their meditative practice. I think that's what I mean by not not friendly

There are two methods of delivering a blow. First is a boxing-like movement, and the second is the traditional karate strike. While equal in force, the boxing-style strike has a greater range and is easier to execute. The boxing-style strike uses gravity and shift of weight to support the strike, while the traditional karate-style strike uses a sudden tightening of your body’s muscles to deliver a short blow. The longer range of the boxing blow facilitates greater acceleration to a higher speed and is more efficient in creating a knockout effect. The traditional karate-style strike is more suitable for breaking boards of wood, but the composition of wood fibers is quite different from the human body's protective tissues. The traditional straight karate strike takes longer to execute and requires slight preparation. Since even a split second is of the essence and the force used is more efficient with the boxing style, it has won popularity in the martial arts field. From the split second you decide to move your body and deliver the strike, all you need is to aim at the opponent’s chin. You then need to accelerate your arm to maximum speed, and maintain that speed as your fist lodges in your opponent’s face. The opponent’s skull will then shake the brain and nerves to a concussion. The ancient Olympics had fighting sports. Sparta is believed to have had boxing around 500 BC. Spartans used boxing to strengthen their fighters’ resilience. Boxing matches were not held since Spartans feared that it would lead to internal competitions, which could reduce the morale of the losers. Sparta did not want low morale on the battlefield. For many years the question of Bodhidharma’s existence has been a matter of controversy among historians. A legend prevails that the evolution of karate began around 5 BC when Bodhidharma arrived to the Shaolin temple in China from India, and taught Zen Buddhism. He introduced a set of exercises designed to strengthen the mind and body. This marked the roots of Shaolin-style temple boxing. This type of Chinese boxing, also called kung fu, concentrates on full-body energy blows and improving acrobatic level. Indian breathing techniques are incorporated, providing control of the muscles of the whole body while striking. This promotes self-resistance that helps achieve balance and force when striking and kicking. Krav Maga shows that it is not the most efficient approach. It is certainly forceful, but cannot be mastered quickly enough, and also does not promote a natural and fast reach to the opponent's pressure points, nor does it adhere to the principle of reaction time.

The Japanese word zen in fact means "meditation" or "state of meditative concentration." In Chinese, zen is pronounced chan. Chan is short for channa, which is how the CHinese pronounced dhyana, the Sanskrit word used in India for practices or rarified states of meditative concentration.

I recommend that you begin with short ten-minute meditation periods, once or twice a day, and over several weeks gradually lengthen your meditation periods to twenty-five minutes, even if you can only find time to do this once a day. Even for an experienced meditator, it often takes ten or fifteen minutes to really settle into a meditative state, and so it is not surprising that the minimum length of time for a meditation period in temples and monasteries is usually twenty-five minutes.

Monks are, in short, perfectly ordinary people. If they are extraordinary at all, it is only because of the way of life they have chosen to pursue.

Life is short; it must not be spent in endless metaphysical speculations which will not be able to bring us the Truth.

Mind is skin, flesh, bones, and marrow. Mind is taking up a flower and smiling. There is having mind and having no mind. There is mind with a body and mind with no body. . . . Blue, yellow, red, and white are mind. Long, short, square, and round are mind. The coming and going of birth and death are mind. Year, month, day, and hour are mind. Dream, phantom, and empty flower are mind. Water, foam, splash, and flame are mind. Spring flowers and autumn moon are mind. All things that arise and fall are mind.

You cannot do it ", explained the Master, `because you do not breathe right. Press your breath down gently after breathing in, so that the abdominal wall is tightly stretched, and hold it there for a while. Then breathe out as slowly and evenly as possible, and, after a short pause, draw a quick breath of air again − out and in continually, in a rhythm that will gradually settle

book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. Zen and time management come together in Paul Loomans’s Time Surfing: The Zen Approach to Keeping Time on Your Side, which contains a remarkable amount of wisdom for such a short book;

Your thoughts are just your thoughts.   They are not your life. They are your thoughts.

Live gratefully You were given the gift of life.   Be grateful for this amazing gift.   Everything is a gift.   Be grateful for everything.   Enjoy living gratefully.   You will learn this sitting quietly.

Give Thoughts Room Your thoughts are just your thoughts.   They are not your life. They are your thoughts. Make a room as big as the sky in your mind. Your thoughts can be clouds that float through.  

Accept Your Feelings Your feelings are your heart and gut response to the world.   Everything you feel is okay. Feelings can be difficult. Accept your feelings.   Sometimes you can trust them as honest responses to people and events. Sometimes you can't trust them, they are reactions to people and events. Keep sorting this out.   Your feelings will tell you what you really need. Learn to be gracious with your unmet needs.   Kindly ask for what you want. Respect everybody's right to say yes or no to your needs.   Give up self centeredness as much as possible.   Please enjoy your feelings!   You will learn this sitting quietly.

Listen to the words. Listen to the experience behind the words.

My hope and intent is to provide a wide range of resources and ideas that provoke real questions and considerations under the surface of common dialogue. With a definite thrust toward clues for moving beyond limiting patterns that restrict our personal and communal evolution and experience of, as well as effectiveness in, life. Part of that is about giving different angles of insight into the why and how of developing skills, whatever they may be. I think the larger discussion, or maybe the more relevant one surrounding skills development, involves what quality of fuel is being used to run the skill. Inevitably, and very quickly, this enters into considerations of how much of oneself one brings to the show. For example, anyone can learn a sophisticated skill in an extremely short period of time, once they’re completely convinced of the need, benefit and value of doing so and find enough full-bodied conviction to engage it accordingly (“You never hear anyone practicing a language; they simply listen and then begin to speak.” — Wade Davis).

An open mind isn't attached to thinking or belief.  

You are Buddha in Blue Jeans.

Learn to be gracious with your unmet needs.   Kindly ask for what you want. Respect everybody's right to say yes or no to your needs.   Give up self centeredness as much as possible.

They are not your life. They are your thoughts. Make a room as big as the sky in your mind. Your thoughts can be clouds that float through.

Be authentic. Be genuine.

Now is real.

Live Each Moment Well Now is all you've got.   The past is memory.   The future is wish.   Now is real.   Keep bringing yourself back to now.   Get connected to your body now.   Get connected to the earth now.   Get connected to this place now.   Get connected to people now.   Get connected to whatever is in front of you now.   Enjoy living each moment well!   You will learn this sitting quietly.

Give advice only when asked and keep it short!

Be Who You Are Don't waste your life trying to become somebody else.   Don't waste your life trying to live up to your performance expectations.   Don't waste your life imitating others.   Don't waste your life living out other people's expectations.   Don't waste your life envious of other people.   Be authentic. Be genuine. Be real. Be yourself.   You won the lottery, you were born. You won the lottery, you are you.   You

Zen has a pronounced iconoclastic tendency, and regards the study of texts, doctrines, and dogmas as a potential hindrance to spiritual awakening, relying instead on humour, spontaneity, unconventionality, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression to communicate the idea of enlightenment

Renunciation simply means a state of un-attachment. A big house and a new car should be enjoyed to their fullest so long as we accept them as things that can and will go away. We never really own anything; we hold title, rent, lease, use, and borrow things during our short visit here. Impermanence is just another name for perfection.

To some persons nowadays, mindfulness might seem to be just another short course. After auditing it for only a few weeks, they could thereafter meditate casually, whenever … This isn’t where Living Zen Remindfully is coming from. Authentic Zen training means committing oneself to a process of regular, ongoing daily life practice. This preparation enables one to unlearn old unfruitful habits, retrain more wholesome ones, and lead a more genuinely creative life. Currently,

Briefly, this doctrine is that man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep for ever things which are essentially impermanent. Chief among these things is his own person, for this is his means of isolating himself from the rest of life, his castle into which he can retreat and from which he can assert himself against external forces. He believes that this fortified and isolated position is the best means of obtaining happiness; it enables him to fight against change, to strive to keep pleasing things for himself, to shut out suffering and to shape circumstances as he wills. In short, it is his means of resisting life. The

Pain is Natural Pain is a natural part of life. Learn to accept it. Learn to take care of it as best you can.   Decrease the complaining. Decrease the self-centeredness around it. Everybody has pain.   Breathe and relax into the pain as best you can.   Please accept natural pain!   You will learn this sitting quietly.  

Everything you feel is okay. Feelings can be difficult. Accept your feelings.   Sometimes you can trust them as honest responses to people and events. Sometimes you can't trust them, they are reactions to people and events. Keep sorting this out.  

Your thoughts are just your thoughts.   They are not your life. They are your thoughts. Make a room as big as the sky in your mind. Your thoughts can be clouds that float through.   Some of your thoughts are clear. Some of your thoughts are muddy. Belief is just thought.   An open mind isn't attached to thinking or belief.

Sit Quietly This is the most important Zen practice.   It is the classroom for living a wise and kind life.   Sit anywhere and be quiet: on a couch, a bed, a bench, inside, outside, leaning against a tree, by a lake, at the ocean, in a garden, on an airplane, in your office chair, on the floor, in your car. Meditation cushions are okay too.   Sit at any time: morning, night, one minute, three years.   Wear what you've got on. Loosen your waist so that your belly can move with your breath.   Sit as relaxed as possible. Relax your muscles when starting and during sitting.   Sit with your back straight but not stiff. Keep your head upright with your ears level.   Respect all medical conditions. Only take a posture you can. All postures are okay.   Do what you can do.   Keep your eyes slightly opened and out of focus. Closing them will make you sleepy and sometimes busy. Opening them wide will keep you busy.   Breathe naturally through your nose. Enjoy breathing. Feel your breath. Watch your breath. Become your breath.   Be like a cat purring. Follow your breath like ocean waves coming in and out.   When you get distracted, come back to the simplest and most basic experience of being alive, your breathing.   That's it. No belief. No program. No dogma.   You do not have to be Buddhist. You can be of any faith, religion, race, nationality, gender, relationship status, or capacity.   Just sit quietly, connect with your breath, and pay attention to what happens. You will learn things.   Do it when you want. You decide how much is enough for you. If you do it daily, it will get into your bones.   Please enjoy sitting quietly!   The only way to learn sitting quietly is to do it.