Sublime

The students ask for a fish, I hand them a worm. They may not be thrilled with a worm, but that’s the only way it’s going to work. On this path you fight for every step. No one goes with you and no one can do it for you. It cannot be otherwise.

Shu Ha Ri, a cycle of learning where first you learn the basics, then you question them, and finally you find your own path.

The division of the text into thirty-two chapters was the work of Prince Chao-ming (501-531), who was the eldest son of Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty. This was the same Emperor Wu who asked a visiting Indian monk named Bodhidharma what merit he acquired as a result of all his religious philanthropy. The Zen patriarch told him, “None.” Ironically,

Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

In this final chapter, the Buddha sums up this teaching that combines wisdom and compassion: not only is it grasped without grasping, it is explained without explaining. Whoever explains this teaching like this does what a buddha does. This is why the Buddha gets up in the morning and goes to town. This is the way to buddhahood and the way of buddh

Living close to the earth one sees the wisdom of not interfering with the course of life, and of letting things go their way. This is the wisdom that also tells us not to get in our own way, and to paddle with the current, split wood along the grain, and seek to understand the inner workings of our nature instead of trying to change

This attitude of “acting as a Buddha” is particularly stressed in the Soto School, where both za-zen and the round of daily activities are not at all seen as means to an end but as the actual realization of Buddhahood.