You Are IT

Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to dharma see no dharma in everyday actions. They have not yet discovered that there are no everyday actions outside of dharma.

– Dogen Zenji

If a man carries too many worldly burdens, his body will soon wear out. If he worries about too many worldly problems, his mind will soon collapse. To be so occupied with material things is a dangerous way to live, a foolish waste of energy. A man ought to simplify his needs and use his strength to attain spiritual goals. Nobody ever ruined his mind or body by exercising self-restraint.

– Han Shan, Journey to Dreamland

If only you could hear

The sound of snow

Falling late at night

From the trees

Of the old temple.

~ Hakuin Ekaku, 1685-1768

Sit altogether in meditation. Become peacefully calm and quiet, without motion, without stillness, without birth, without destruction, with no judgements of right or wrong, neither staying nor going. This, then, is the Great way.

~ Hui-neng

It is one’s own readiness that makes an experience exoteric or esoteric.

The secret isn’t that you’re not being told.

The secret is that you’re not able to hear.

~ Richard Alpert (Ram Dass)

We become compassionate not from altruism which denies the self for the sake of the other, but from the insight that sees and feels one IS the other.

~ Huston Smith

Sometimes there is a hum or low rumble in our environment, like a refrigerator or heater unit. When it stops, there is a kind of open, spacious quality and a sense of relief. Meditation is like that. Basically we sit and think and think and think; then occasionally that noisy mind stops for a moment and we experience a kind of open, spacious quality and a sense of relief. We can’t manufacture it and we can’t hold onto it. In Shambhala we call it “suddenly free from fixed mind.”

~ David Nichtern