Sublime

In many talks, the Buddha spoke about the Threefold Training of precepts, concentration, and insight. The practice of the precepts (shila) is the practice of Right Mindfulness. If we don’t practice the precepts, we aren’t practicing mindfulness. I know some Zen students who think that they can practice meditation without practicing precepts, but th

The Buddha’s advice in the Lankavatara is for us to drink that cup of tea and not to concern ourselves with where that experience fits into some previously constructed matrix of the mind.

All these arts focus on stripping away unnecessary elements, retaining only what is salient and fundamental.

What is meant by aimlessness is that we do not seek after an object outside of ourselves. In Mahayana Buddhism, the teaching of non-attainment is the highest expression of the oneness of true mind and deluded mind.

In the art of sho, spirituality and physical activities have to coincide, therefore breathing control is of utmost importance.

With his Zen sense of restraint he pushed the focus of the tea ceremony away from ostentatious shows of wealth and toward the spiritual communion of two or more people who, in a state of calm and controlled abandon, could meditate on the beauty and transience of life. Although Sen no Rikyu is often credited with being the father of the tea ceremony

Ma-tsu had another notable disciple in Po-chang (720–814), who is said to have organized the first purely Zen community of monks and to have laid down its regulations on the principle that “a day of no working is a day of no eating.” Since his time a strong emphasis on manual work and some degree of self-support has been characteristic of Zen commu

In studying ourselves, we find the harmony that is our total existence. We do not make harmony. We do not achieve it or gain it. It is there all the time. Here we are, in the midst of this perfect way, and our practice is simply to realize it and then to actualize it in our everyday life. Maezumi Roshi