All that is required is all at once to cease leaving your Self in search of something external. When this is done you will find your Self no different from the Buddha or the patriarch. Do you want to know who the Buddha or patriarch is? He is no other than the one who is, at this moment, right in front of me, listening to my talk on the Dharma. You have no faith in him and therefore you are in quest of someone else somewhere outside. And what will you find? Nothing but words and names, however excellent. You will never reach the moving spirit in the Buddha or patriarch.
~ Zen Master Lin Chi
Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at
birth, the traces of
his six years of upright sitting can yet be
seen. As for
Bodhidharma, although he had received the
mind-seal, his nine years
of facing a wall is celebrated still. If even
the ancient sages
were like this, how can we today dispense with
wholehearted
practice?
Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice
of investigating
words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the
backward step that
turns the light and shines it inward. Body and
mind of themselves
will drop away, and your original face will
manifest. If you want
such a thing, get to work on such a thing
immediately.
~ Zen Master Dogen
"The desire for happiness is the disease of attachment; one can be happy only when free of desires. Realization is not achieved by striving for it; it arises spontaneously when one abides in the natural state without seeking anything. So remain in the natural state without seeking, without concepts! Even though the name "enlightenment" is used for the real nature, this does not mean that "enlightenment" concretely exists. If someone believes the opposite, [let them go ahead and try to find] enlightenment: apart from the dimension of fundamental reality, they will find nothing at all. So, instead of aiming for enlightenment, one has to understand the nature of one's mind beyond action. On examining one's mind, one finds nothing, yet at the same time there is clarity that is ever present. It does not manifest concretely, yet its essence is all pervading: this is the way its nature presents itself."
~ The Supreme Source
Originally posted by An Eternal Now:When the Bodhisattva, Shakyamuni, was borned, he displayed the 32 marks designating a Great man and a Universal Victor, and immediately he stands on his feet, surveys the directions, takes seven steps to the north (N.B. not on lotus flowers) and in a lordly voice says, "I am the chief of the world. I am the best in the world. I am the first in the world. This is my last birth. There is now no existence again."
After speaking, he then fell silent and, like other infants, neither walked nor talked.
how come a bit different from siddharta?
Originally posted by Zeezee:
how come a bit different from siddharta?
What difference?
It is a dualistic fixation, the tension between "me" -- as self --
and "my thoughts" -- as other -- that makes
thinking problematic, tormenting, "sticky," like
the tarbaby to which Brer Rabbit becomes
affixed by trying to push it away. Thoughts become thick, solid,
and heavy only when we react to them. Each reaction
triggers further thought, so that the thoughts
become chained together in what appears to be a
continuous mind-state. These thought-chains are
like a relay race, where each new thought picks up the baton
from the previous thought and runs with it for a moment,
passing it on again to a subsequent thought. But
if the meditator can maintain presence in the
middle of thinking, free of grasping or rejecting,
then the thought has nothing to pass the baton on to, and naturally
subsides. Although this sounds simple, it is
advanced practice, usually requiring much
preliminary training and commitment.
When one can rest in
presence even in the midst of thoughts,
perceptions, or intense emotions, these become an ongoing part of
one's contemplative practice, as opportunities to
discover a pervasive quality of even awareness
in all one's activities.
~ Dr. John Welwood, Reflection and Presence: The Dialectic of Awakening
“All exists,” Kaccayana, this is one extreme, “All does not exist,” this is the other extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes the Tathagata teaches the dhamma by the middle way.
—Samyutta Nikaya 12.15
“Existence” is the grasping at permanence; “non-existence” is the view of annihilation. Therefore, the wise do not dwell in existence or non-existence.
—Mulamadyamakakarika 14.10
Act, speak, with full awareness and then you will find a tremendous change in you. The very fact that you are aware changes your acts. Then you cannot commit sin. Not that you have to control yourself, no! Control is a poor substitute for awareness, a very poor substitute; it doesn't help much. If you are aware, you need not control anger; in awareness, anger never arises. They cannot exist together; there is no coexistence for them. In awareness, jealousy never arises. In awareness, many things simply disappear - all the things that are negative.
It is just like a light. When the light is in your house, how can darkness exist there? It simply escapes. When your house is lighted, how can you stumble? How can you knock at the wall? The light is there, you know the door, you simply reach the door, you get out or in. When there is darkness, you grope, you stumble, you fall. Anger is nothing but stumbling; jealousy is nothing but groping in the dark. All that is wrong is wrong, not because of itself but because you are living in darkness.
If Jesus wants to be angry, he can be; he can use it. You cannot use it - you are being used by it. If Jesus feels that it will be good and helpful, he can use anything - he is a master. Jesus can be angry without being angry. Many people worked with Gurdjieff, and he was a terrible man. When he was angry, he would be terribly angry, he would look like a murderer! But that was just a game, just a situation to help somebody. And immediately, not a single moment's gap would be there, he would look again at the same person toward whom he had been angry, and he would be angry and terrible looking.
It is possible. When you are aware, you can use everything. Even poison becomes elixir when you are aware. And when you are asleep, even elixir becomes poison - because the whole thing depends on your being alert or not. Acts don't mean anything. Acts do not matter - you, your awareness, your being conscious, mindful, is what matters. What you do is not the concern.
~ "Awareness", Osho
Shunryu Suzuki wrote in his first book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind,
I have discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color - something which exists before all forms and colors appear. This is a very important point.
................
Or, as the ninth-century Chinese Zen teacher Huang Po put it, "The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see."
................
Instead of putting faith in what we believe, think, explain, justify, or otherwise construct in our minds, we can learn to put our trust and confidence in immediate, direct experience, before all forms and colors appear. Religion, in its most essential expression, can help us do this.
This is faith in its purest form: trust in actual experience before we make anything of it - before beliefs, thoughts, signs, explanations, justifications, and other constructions of our minds take form.
- Steve Hagen
If you students of t he Way do not awake to this Mind, you will overlay Mind with conceptual thought. You will seek Buddha outside yourselves, and you will remain attached to forms, pious practices and so on - all of which are harmful and not at all the way to supreme Knowledge.
~ Zen Master Huang Po
"You can be called a Zen student only when you perceive before signs appear, before falling into thought, before ideas sprout."
"Zen practice requires nonattachment to thought."
~ Zen Master Foyan
"We cannot (and do not) experience Reality through signs. Reality occurs prior to our falling into thought, prior to our getting ideas, prior to our coming up with explanations. Reality is before things form in our minds as crystallized objects, one thing distinguished from another."
~ Zen teacher Steve Hagen
"You can only be nonattached to thought only if you realize that your thought objects are not Real - that they're little more than objects in a dream.
Foyan reminds us that the thoughts and signs we conjure up are not the Real world. They're only models of the world and cannot substitute for reality. Thus he's pointing out that our mind objects, including our sense of self and our sense of "the world, out there," are precisely what are not Real."
~ Zen teacher Steve Hagen
Zen practice is not merely about learning to let go of this discontented, noisy, complaining, kicking, screaming mind. it's about learning to forget about it. Whether such a mind lingers or not, we don't worry about it. We just let it go. We turn our attention from the entanglements we conjure up in our mind to what's actually going on, right here, right now, in this moment.
~ Zen teacher Steve Hagen
I may say that there is nothing to be changed but the revolutionary teachers come and tell us that there is something there in which you have to bring about a radical revolution then we assume there is such a thing as soul, spirit or the self. What I assert all the time is that I haven't found anything like the self or soul there. This question haunted me all my life and suddenly it hit me, “There is no self to realize. What the hell have I been doing all this time?” You see, that hits you like lightning. Once that hits you, the whole mechanism of the body that is controlled by this thought is shattered. What is left is the tremendous living organism with an intelligence of its own. What you are left with is the pulse, the beat and the throb of life.
~ U.G. Krishnamurti
Do not rely upon the individual, but rely upon the teaching.
As far as the teachings go, do not rely upon the words alone, but rely upon the
meaning that underlies them.
Regarding the meaning, do not rely upon the provisional meaning alone, but rely
upon the definitive meaning.
And regarding the definitive meaning, do not rely upon ordinary consciousness,
but rely upon wisdom awareness.
..........
O bhiksus and wise men,
Just as a goldsmith would test his gold
By burning, cutting, and rubbing it,
So you must examine my words and accept them,
But not merely out of reverence for me.
~ Buddha
Do you think that when Rembrandt was painting, he stood there with a brush in his hand thinking, "Okay, I wonder what my next brushstroke is going to be. If I put it there then it may clash with that. I'm not quite sure, but maybe two more centimeters to the right, let's measure it. It might look better over . . ." Creativity arises out of the state of thoughtless presence in which you are much more awake than when you are engrossed in thinking.
~ Eckhart Tolle
"Luminous is this mind, brightly shining, but it is colored by the attachments that visit it. This unlearned people do not really understand, and so do not cultivate the mind. Luminous is this mind."
— Shakyamuni Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya
There is nothing much to realize. There is a self-affirming clarity beyond all thoughts. However this clarity does not really exist. Thats it LOL.
~ AlwaysOn
Training is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice DEEP LOOKING directed toward the other person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love. That is the message of the Buddha. [True Love. A Practice for Awakening the Heart.]
Thich Nhat Hanh
"Hearing the dharma but not believing is still cause for the fruition of the seed of Buddhahood. Training on the Buddhist path but not completing it is still merit surpassing that of men and gods."
~ Secrets on Mind-Only
His last words to his disciples. all conditioned things are subject to changes, strive on with diligence.
- forwarded -