‘Everybody knows that seeking your own peaceful spirit is up to your own practice, and it’s a way to learn how to live, which means you accept yourself totally as you are. Everybody wishes to be a truly satisfactory person, satisfactory to yourself, but this doesn’t happen by hearing somebody say how well you do […]
‘Delusion means mortality. And awareness means buddhahood. They’re not the same. And they’re not different. It’s just that people distinguish delusion from awareness. When we’re deluded there’s a world to escape. When we’re aware, there’s nothing to escape. Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own […]
‘As long as you identify yourself with the projection of separateness, you will continue to deny that you are the Source of all projections. When you truly and absolutely awaken to this fact, and comprehend the overwhelming implications inherent within this awakening, you will continually experience that all apparently personal relationships are in truth nothing […]
I think it is typical that people who practise non-residentially, and for whom attending a retreat is often the highlight of their practice year, are concerned about how to take the settled mind of retreat back out into the busier world. This week I realised that this is pretty much the first time in my […]
A person doesn’t know what he’s doing, Lets it all happen naturally. All the sages in history can’t explain it, And ordinary people don’t understand it either.
‘No matter how much we have we always want more. This greedy love that always wants more but will not let go of what it already has, all of this attachment, has to be cut, otherwise our lives are painful. Once we cut this need for attachment we can know peace of mind for the […]
‘There are many interesting things to do in the human world. To do as much as possible keeps you busy making lots of sounds. That’s fine, but you have to understand that these sounds come from no-sound. If you always understand sound as coming from sound, you become confused and lose the direction in which […]
‘It is only due to our concepts that we feel separate from the world. We are isolated by ideas of inadequacy, ideas of danger, ideas of loneliness, and ideas of rejection. While we may indeed face external difficulties, our thoughts can amplify them – or even create them, leading us deeper into delusion. If we […]
‘A monk asked Joshu, “What is my essence?” Joshu said, “The tree sways, the bird flies about, the fish leaps, the water is muddy.”‘ What is your essence right now? Can you hear the tree and the bird?
‘With one phrase that expresses the essence, a block of ice melts and a tile breaks. With one phrase a ditch is filled and a valley is dammed. Within this one phrase, all the buddhas of the three times and the six generations of Chinese ancestors are born in heaven and descend from heaven, enter […]
