Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

We have to kill off any notion we have that there is something to attain, something to hold on to, something special we can become once and for all. Enlightenment is not a “thing” we “get” from practice. Anything we think we’ve gotten—even if it’s made of gold—can only get in the way. Only when there is nothing and nobody left to obstruct it will t

When we first experience true ordinariness, it is something very extraordinarily ordinary, so much so that we would say that mountains are not mountains anymore or streams streams anymore, because we see them as so ordinary, so precise, so “as they are.” This extraordinariness derives from the experience of discovery. But eventually this super-ordi

transcendental liberating truth, we come back to our life as it is. Perhaps only when we forget our aspiration to become Buddhas can we really enjoy our lives as ordinary human beings. Let others decide whether we’re acting like a buddha or not. Abandoning self-improvement we exert ourselves fully and naturally as birds who enjoy frolicking in the

—Alan Watts, The Way of Zen