Sublime

if you continue to study the works of the great calligraphers, you will reach a point where the true strength of your practice will be actualized. Before you are conscious of it, you will master calligraphy. And then your hand will move naturally.

Buddhist teachings are skillful means to cure our ignorance, craving, and anger, as well as our habit of seeking things outside and not having confidence in ourselves.

In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao [Way], every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

If you think Zen is something lofty and esoteric, the master will give you a shout or slap for an answer. If you think it is abstract, you’ll be told it’s three pounds of flax or the oak tree in the garden. If you think it is beyond words and abstractions, the master may quote the sutras or a poem by Han Shan. If you think Zen is nothing but our ev

If you think there is some other way to accept the eternal truth that everything changes, that is your delusion.

to become a Buddha it is only necessary to have the faith that one is a Buddha already.

So the question is no longer, how do I get from here to there? The question is: How do I get from here to here? How do I experience the fact that, instead of having to get there for something, it’s right here and now? This is it; this is the other shore. In Buddhism we sometimes call it the Pure Land.

Our usual understanding of life is dualistic: you and I, this and that, good and bad. But actually these discriminations are themselves the awareness of the universal existence. “You” means to be aware of the universe in the form of you, and “I” means to be aware of it in the form of I. You and I are just swinging doors. This kind of understanding