“If your mind is on your opponent, you are his guest. If your mind abides nowhere, you are the host.” - Takuan Sōhō

“When the host meets the host, they do not greet each other. When the guest meets the guest, they do not recognize each other.” - Yunmen

In this lump of red flesh there is a true person of no rank, who is always going in and out of the gates of your face. Those who have not yet testified to this, look! Look!

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood and the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are all made of star-stuff.” - Carl Sagan

"What Zen values is not the trance-like Samadhi, but the functional Samadhi" Meido Moore Roshi

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” C.G.Jung

POV after morning Zazen.

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Recent science shows that life may have not started in the primordial soup, but in the crevices and cracks of the primordial ocean's coast. When I listen to my inhales and exhales, I wonder if our breathing function was shaped by the coming and going of the waves that crashed into these places.

"A physicist is a hydrogen atom’s way of learning about hydrogen atoms." - Carl Sagan

- Judy Lief

"When sitting in Zazen, I become nothing, and everything becomes nothing. That is to say, I and everything melt into one. So when I see a flower, the flower is I. When I see the moon, the moon is I. All things become I. There is no greater love than this." - Yamada Mumon Roshi

"The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow" William Blake

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate. They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream. - Ernest Dowson

"In the same way a dam prevents the leakage of water, samadhi prevents the leakage if wisdom" Dogen

The four Brahma Viharas: Metta (loving kindness) Karuna (empathy and compassion) Mudita (sympathetic joy) Upeka (open-hearted equanimity) If each of us can practice each one of these even just once a day, the world will be a better place.

Practice doesn’t mean that you have to manifest continuity like a string connecting beads — you just have to become each bead, in each moment.

All beings are primarily Buddhas, Like water and ice, There is no ice apart from water, There are no Buddhas apart from beings. - Hakuin Ekaku, Song of Zazen

A monk once told his master: I want happiness. The master said: First get rid of 'I'. Then get rid of 'want'. Then you have hapiness.

"All of us are originally endowed with our own fertile Buddha natures, from which we are temporarily alienated in our unenlightenment. Kensho, therefore, means nothing other than the rediscovery of our temporarily concealed Buddha natures" - Omori Sogen

A nun winnows rice at Fuxing An Nunnery, on the trail down from Tiantai Temple on Jiuhua Shan. This reflects the monastic rule of the Tang Dynasty monk Baizhang Huaihai (Japanese Hyakujo Ekai) who said, "One day not work, one day not eat."

When you're not thinking of anything good and anything bad, at that moment, what is your original face? Huangbo, Chuanhsin Fayao

How is that I am only today realizing the striking similarity between the words Confucian and Confusion ?

"The Niō (Vajrapani) is a menacing God. He wields the kongōsho (vajra) and he can crush your enemies. Depend on him, pray to him that he will protect you as he protects the Buddha. He vibrates with energy and spiritual power which you can absorb from him in times of need." Suzuki Shosan

In training in Zen in recent years many people seem to have forgotten that Zen includes a great spirit of bravery and great strength … 1/2

Shenxiu's poem: The body is the Bodhi tree, The mind is like a bright mirror's stand, at all times, we must strive to polish it and let no dust alight. Huineng‘s answer: Bodhi originally had no tree The bright mirror has no stand There is not a single thing Where could the dust alight?

Good Morning, friends. Enjoy your coffee like it is the first and last time you will ever have coffee.

"Zen without the accompanying physical realization is empty discussion." - Omori Sogen Roshi

Not today, Nansen! Not today.

Good Morning my friends, and never forget the beauty of this truth: Every moment can be practice. And if you see your entire life as practice, you will always be okay.

"It goes without saying that the method of melting the ice of our egos into water, as they originally are, lies in samadhi." Omori Sogen Roshi

"A single drop of lion milk from the Tathagatas enlightened mind, put into a sea filled with boundless delusions, will destroy them all" Flower Garland Sutra, ch. 78

The great matter is achieved in the same way that a red-finned carp butting its way upstream plunges through the hundred leagues of black-cloud barriers blocking off the Dragon Gate* to become a dragon. - Hakuin, in a letter to priest Rempo of Keirin-ji * Longmen waterfalls of the Yellow River

Every breath is an opportunity to slow down, release tension and change one’s state of mind. What is your breath practice?

A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself. - Dogen

The day you were born, you were in the Buddha’s starter pack. It’s the only starter pack you need to be in.

"While living, be a dead man, be thoroughly dead – whatever you do, then, will always be good." - Shido Bunan

Falling off of the Zazen wagon is not an obstruction. It’s literally part of the practice. Onwards! Every moment is new. And every moment has the potential to be the most important moment of your practice.

Just set aside your body and mind, forget about them, and throw them into the house of the buddha; then all is done by the buddha. - Dogen

Nothingness lacks nothing.

Live always with the mind of total nothingness, and the evils that come to you will dissipate completely. - Shido Bunan

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on earth. - Linchi (618-907)

There is no special principle in the study of the way; it's only necessary to see and hear directly. Directly seeing, there is no seeing; directly hearing, there is no hearing. You must fuse inside and outside into one solid, thoroughly peaceful state before you can do this. Shido Bunan

Fudo Myo-o, one of the five Lords of Light, holds the Sword of Wisdom in one hand and the Rope of Discipline in the other, well equipped to guide the spiritual traveler past temptation on the path to enlightenment.

While deluded, one is used by this body; when enlightened, one uses this body. Shido Bunan

Which mudra were you taught to use in Zazen? The "dhyana mudra" seen in the Hakuin artwork below, or the "thumb in fist" mudra attributed to Bodhidharma.