Zen

[vladimir]

Before you begin meditation take several slow, deep breaths. Hold your body erect, allowing your breathing to become normal again. Many thoughts will crowd into your mind, ignore them, letting them go. If they persist be aware of them with the awareness, which does not think. In other words, think non-thinking.

-Zen Master Dogen, "Fukanzazengi"

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Love & Light

Vladimir

[vladimir]

Ch'eng-t'ien was asked, "How should I apply my mind twenty-four hours a day?" He replied, "When chickens are cold, they roost in trees; when ducks are cold, they plunge into water." The questioner said, "Then I don’t need cultivated realization, and won't pursue Buddhahood or Zen mastery." Ch’eng-t'ien responded, "You've saved half my effort."


From "The Pocket Zen Reader," edited by Thomas Cleary,
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Love & Light

Vladimir

[vladimir]

A petty officer often thinks of the rules; a seasoned general doesn't talk of soldiering.

-Zen proverb

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Love & Light

Vladimir

[vladimir]

Erroneous views keep us in defilement
While right views remove us from it,
But when we are in a position to discard both of them
We are then absolutely pure.

-The Sutra of Hui Neng

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Love & Light

Vladimir

[georgy]

Love is the greatest zen koan. It is painful, but don't avoid it. If you avoid it you will have avoided the greatest opportunity to grow. Go into it, suffer love, because through the suffering comes great ecstasy. Yes, there is agony, but out of the agony ecstasy is born. Yes, you will have to die as an ego, but if you can die as an ego, you will be born as a God, as a Buddha.

-Osho

[vladimir]

From this point on you really know. This is called the pinnacle of Zen, the sovereignty of Zen. It is also called knowledge of what is knowable; it produces all the various states of meditation, and anoints the heads of all spiritual princes. In all fields of form, sound, fragrance, flavor, feeling, and phenomena, you realize complete perfect enlightenment. Inside and outside are in complete communion, without any obstruction at all.

-Pai-chang, "The Sphere of the Enlightened"

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Love & Light

Vladimir

[vladimir]

Nothing is born, nothing is destroyed. Away with your dualism, your likes and dislikes. Every single thing is just the One Mind. When you have perceived this, you will have mounted the Chariot of the Buddhas.

-Huang Po, "Zen Teaching of Huang Po"

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Love & Light

Vladimir

[georgy]

Zen goes beyond Buddha and beyond Lao Tzu. It is a culmination, a transcendence, both of the Indian genius and of the Chinese genius. The meeting...the essence of Buddha's teaching and the essence of Lao Tzu's teaching merged into one stream so deeply that no separation is possible now. Out of that meeting Zen was born. Zen is neither Buddhist nor Taoist and yet both.

The future of Humanity will go closer to the Zen approach - because the meeting of the East and West is possible only through something like Zen, which is earthly and yet unearthly. The miracle is that Zen is neither interested in the past, nor the future. Zen lives in the present. Its whole teaching is just to be rooted, centered in that which - "is"

Zen is Zen. There is nothing comparable to it. It is unique - unique in the sense that is the most ordinary and yet the most extraordinary phenomenon that has ever happened to human consciousness. It is the most ordinary because it does not believe in knowledge, it does not believe in the mind. It is not a philosophy, not a religion either. It is the total acceptance of ordinary existence. It has not interest in any esoteric nonsense, no interest in metaphysics at all. It does not hanker for the other shore; this shore is more than enough. Its acceptance of this shore is so tremendous that through that very acceptance it transforms this shore - and this very shore becomes the other shore.

This very body the Buddha.

This very Earth the lotus paradise.

- OSHO

[healingnow4u]

Dear Brother's and Sister's,

Letting go of the non-thinking gives us the "relaxing into the allowing of letting IT be". This enables us to BE IN OUR NOW. Allowing us to BE in our Well Being, that is YOU, that is "I AM".

[vladimir]

If you can only rid yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything.

-Huang Po, "Zen Teaching of Huang Po"

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Love & Light

Vladimir