things half-glimpsed
flinging the air with particles at the height of its breathless unroll;
it is the live water and light that bears from undisclosed sources
the freshest news, renewed and renewing,
world without end."
- Annie Dillard
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
- Jalaluddin Rumi
The Buddha listened patiently to the man as he laid out all his difficulties and worries, and then waited for the Buddha to say the words that would put everything right for him.
The Buddha said, "I can't help you."
"What do you mean?" said the man.
"Everybody's got problems," said the Buddha. "In fact, we've all got eighty-three problems, each one of us. Eighty-three problems, and there's nothing you can do about it. If you work really hard on one of them, maybe you can fix it - but if you do, another one will pop right into its place."
The man was furious. "I thought you were a great teacher! I thought you could help me!"
The Buddha said, "Well, maybe it will help you with the eighty-fourth problem."
"The eighty-fourth problem?" said the man. "What's the eighty-fourth problem?"
The Buddha said, "You want to not have any problems."
- Steve Hagen
Buddhism Plain and Simple
that time passes;
in actual fact,
it stays where it is.
This idea of passing may be called time,
but it is an incorrect idea,
for since one sees it only as passing,
one cannot understand that it stays just where it is."
- Dogen Zenji
with its intangible walls.
We fall with the centuries, the years, the minutes.
Is time only a falling, only a wall?
For a moment, sometimes, we see
not with our eyes but with our thoughts
time resting in a pause.
The world half-opens and we glimpse
the immaculate kingdom,
the pure forms, presences
unmoving, floating
on the hour, a river stopped:
truth, beauty, numbers, ideas
and goodness, a word buried
in our century.
A moment without weight or duration,
a moment outside the moment:
thought sees, our eyes think.
- Octavio Paz
"To live content with small means. To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion. To be worthy not respectable, and wealthy not rich. To listen to stars and birds and babes and sages with an open heart. To study hard, think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions. Hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, the unbidden and the unconscious rise up through the common. This is my symphony."
- William Henry Channing
You never stay still.
You never stay.
You never are.
How can I say you,
when you are always other?
How can I speak to you?
You remain in flux,
never congealing or solidifying.
What will make that current flow into words?
It is multiple, devoid of causes, meanings, simple qualities.
Yet it cannot be decomposed.
These movements cannot be described
as the passage from a beginning to an end.
These rivers flow into no single, definitive sea.
These streams are without fixed banks,
this body without fixed boundaries.
This unceasing mobility.
This life- which will perhaps
be called our restlessness, whims, pretenses, or lies.
All this remains very strange
to anyone claiming to stand on solid ground."
- Luce Irigaray
"Once, there was a fellow who wanted out of the Zen monastery where he was living. In Zen monasteries you must pay constant attention to what you're doing, what you're experiencing from moment to moment. After a time, this can get to you, which is precisely what happened to this fellow.
He went to see the master and said, "I can't take this anymore. I want out."
The master said, "Okay, then leave."
He started for the door, and the master said, "That's not your door."
"Oh. Sorry." The fellow looked around and spotted another door. As he headed for it, the master said, "That's not your door."
"Oh!" He looked around for another door, and as he headed for that one, the master said, "That's not your door!"
Bewildered and exasperated, the poor fellow said, "What do you mean? There's no other door. You told me I could leave, but there's no door I can leave by."
"If there's no door you can leave by," said the master, "then sit down."
We can only be here. We can't leave. We're always here. Examine your life and you'll see. The master's "sit down" means to start paying attention to what's actually going on, instead of running away from it. This is how it is with us. Because we ignore our true situation, we're never satisfied."
- Steve Hagen
- Alan Watts
There is a dish to hold the sea,
A brazier to contain the sun,
A compass for the galaxy,
A voice to wake the dead and done!
That minister of ministers,
Imagination, gathers up
The undiscovered Universe,
Like jewels in a jasper cup.
Its flame can mingle north and south;
Its accent with the thunder strive;
The ruddy sentence of its mouth
Can make the ancient dead alive.
The mart of power, the fount of will,
The form and mold of every star,
The source and bound of good and ill,
The key of all the things that are,
Imagination, new and strange
In every age, can turn the year;
Can shift the poles and lightly change
The mood of men, the world's career.
- John Davidson
- Peter De Vries
"There are Zen stories about a mountain named Egolessness. On this mountain there is a wonderful tree named Great Enlightenment. When you eat the fruit of this tree, you experience great spiritual excitement. People are very interested in such stories because they want to have some great, spiritual experience.
Unfortunately, these people have no idea where this tree is. They don't even know where the mountain is. So they start checking every tree they come to, eating the fruit of each. They work very hard searching for the fruit of their dreams.
All of us are interested in looking for the enlightenment tree. Our problem is that we don't look for it on the mountain of egolessness. What we don't understand is that self-awakening must coincide with other-awakening. In other words, if we would awaken, we must help others to awaken."
"We believe everything is out there.
We often act as if we understand everything. This is very egoistic. When we see the world only in terms of ourselves, we lack a broad perspective.
We think that all is as we see it. We are unaware of our ignorance. We want to have an idea we can hold on to. We want to know.
The real world consists of both a conceptual world and a nonconceptual world. But we ignore the world we cannot get in our hands. When you cannot understand it, you reject it. But reality is not just the reality you understand. Even before you create any ideas or concepts about it, it is already present. It consists of the merging of what can be thought of and what cannot be thought of. Words cannot touch it.
This place, where nothing can be pinned down, is where we actually live moment to moment. If you think you can understand your life with just your ideas, you are ignoring where and how you actually exist.
All things - good and bad, right and wrong - are manifestations of the real world. You cannot understand the world just in terms of your own views. You must open to what you don't understand as well as what you do understand."
"Usually we live our lives only in terms of the world we can see. When we do, we emphasize ourselves. We place the I first. Even when we take up the spiritual life, we place the I first. In other words, we pull everything down to the level of our personal views and feelings. We never forget ourselves.
What we tend to ignore is the world that sees us. This is not the world you think you see or hear. It is actually the world as it is before you are conscious of it - before you form some idea about it. If you emphasize yourself, you will completely forget this world.
If you want to practice compassion, you must accept simultaneously the world you see and the world that sees you. You can't judge your life just in terms of what you can see - that is, from your ego-centered perspective."
- Dainin Katagiri
"Conceptualization is important, of course. It is a kind of blueprint of the world that we draw upon. We can't live without a blueprint. But neither can we live inside a blueprint.
We become onlookers in the world of concepts. We look and think and imagine, and though we study our blueprints, we don't understand just what it is that we are imagining.
When you burn paper, you probably think that the paper is something other than the fire. This is the world of conceptualization. But actually, there is no separation. Paper is fire. Fire is paper. In reality, things are not separate in the way they are in language. The paper is fire. I am life, I am death. There is no gap between them. But we get used to understanding the world through the concepts we use to describe it. This is why, no matter how long we discuss this problem, we don't get it. We have to just see it."
"There is really no gap between ourselves and others. But we imagine that there is. This gap is intellectual space, philosophical space, psychological space, cultural space, emotional space, time space, spatial space, and on and on. Our minds create many kinds of gaps, and then, in accordance with this, we put names on what we think, see, or feel. But there is no gap between you and what you see or think or feel.
This is delusion, and because of our delusion, we don't understand things correctly. We have lots of misunderstandings. This would not be such a problem if we did not believe our understanding is really correct. We attach to our understanding and apply it to our experiences, our memories, our life. But the total picture of the world is more than our deluded thoughts and misunderstandings."
"We don't know how to deal with birth and death. We don't know how to deal with a person who is going to die. We don't know how to deal with our own mortality. Yet we must all face the reality of impermanence.
There are three points to look at here. The first is that we have to understand human suffering deeply. Suffering and pain are always with us. Even if you attain enlightenment - even if you become a buddha, a bodhisattva, or a saint - pain and suffering never leave you. The more deeply you see, the more you feel even the minute vibrations of suffering coming up from the depths of your heart.
You may have ideas about how to die or about what a happy death is, but when you are actually faced with death, there are no guarantees about what will happen. When you face death, there is no space to look at death as an object. You are right there. Even in the face of death, you have to understand how to live from moment to moment.
Those who are about to die experience many complicated emotions - feelings of despair, sentimentality, and anger. This is very natural. But finally, they reach a stage where they completely give up. They realize that there is no solution and there is nothing to grasp. Within the realm of resignation, their consciousness still vibrates minutely with deep human suffering.
The point is, however we view death, when we face it we must be present right there in the middle of the vast universe, which is completely beyond our speculations of good or bad, right or wrong. All we have to do is just be there in the last moment. But the last moment is very quick. When you are in the last moment exactly, you don't know it.
Real death can only be faced directly. To do this we have to come into this moment. Death is not an idea. This is why real death makes us suffer, particularly when it is at a little distance. Seeing someone die scares us, because it is not really another's death. It is our death."
- Dainin Katagiri
"Just as a man shudders with horror when he steps upon a serpent, but laughs when he looks down and sees that it is only a rope, so I discovered one day that what I was calling "I" cannot be found, and all fear and anxiety vanished with my mistake."
- The Buddha
"You are judging a buddha to be an ordinary person, but even though you make every possible effort to become a buddha, you cannot do it - because an ordinary person is an ordinary person, and a buddha is a buddha. The essential quality of existence is completely beyond judgment and evaluation. No matter how long we try to become something else, it is impossible.
We can't do it.
But just what is an ordinary person? Emptiness. And so, in reality, we can actually be free from the identity 'ordinary person'. But we always handle 'ordinary person' as though it were an object. We control and manipulate it as an object. In fact, we handle everything in this way - even spiritual things - and it all thus becomes the conceptual world of things and ideas.
The true nature of an ordinary person is completely beyond material or spiritual forms and explanations. All concepts must drop off if we would truly see the ordinary person. It is necessary that we see the ordinary person not as an ordinary person. We must ennoble, enhance, or raise each person and all things in the material world to their highest spiritual capacity.
We don't understand how sublime the ordinary person is."
"If you want to understand yourself correctly, you should understand others, instead of always emphasizing yourself. This is the practice of egolessness. The practice of giving is the practice of egolessness. It is the giving of yourself.
The fundamental structure of consciousness consists of two aspects: one is self-assertion, the other is self-abandonment, or egolessness. It is to forget the self, as Dogen said. To forget the self, however, is to study the self, not to destroy the self. It is to help, enrich, and enhance others by completely going through yourself to touch the lives of others."
- Dainin Katagiri
"It is difficult to say something about Truth, because the moment you say something it is no longer Truth. But if you don't say anything, you can't help others to understand. So you have to say something.
There is no way to communicate Truth. There is no place to bite into. This is the total picture of Truth, the total picture of the universe. Truth is perfectly clear, tranquil, and serene. It is completely without form. It has no flavor, no color, no smell. There is nothing we can say about it. We may have ideas about Truth, but Truth itself has absolutely no attributes. There is no place to bite into. There is nothing to touch.
If you throw a pebble into a very calm lake, you will create a ring of water. But the ring doesn't stay still. It expands and eventually melts away into the lake. This is similar to the way Truth manifests in our life. If we try to explain Truth completely, we will become entangled in our words."
- Dainin Katagiri
- Dainin Katagiri
Teachings on spiritual cultivation
"The construction of who we believe we are, what the world is like, and how we should behave is an ongoing exercise that we are undertaking all the time. We are not spectators who have simply been thrown into a world that is pre-made or pre-given. We are participants in a continuous project of constructing and reconstructing the world in which we live."
- Traleg Rinpoche
"As soon as you notice the slightest sign of indifference, the moment you become aware of the loss of a certain seriousness, of longing, of enthusiasm and zest, take it as a warning. You should realize your soul suffers if you live superficially."
- Albert Schweitzer
"If you study Buddhism, you will hear a lot about the idea of reincarnation. I don't say that you should ignore it, but you shouldn't attach to it either. We easily become attached to ideas of reincarnation, karma, enlightenment, nirvana, and a lot of other fancy religious notions. We become greedy. We might want a peek at heaven, but then we'll be caught by heaven.
We all have our own peculiarities, our own uniqueness. No one can really imitate another. Usually, however, we take a very egoistic view. We don't know how to nurture our actual life. This is why we attach to the idea of reincarnation. But if you attach to the idea of reincarnation, you will never find perfect freedom.
Only you can live your life. So our practice is to be genuine, not an imitation of someone else. Look at your life. In Truth you can't put any kind of label on it. Are you stupid? No. Are you great? No. Are you completely average? No. We think we have to supply answers to these kinds of questions, that we have to pin down who we are. But we only have to live our life, day by day. And only you can live yours.
But what are you? If you really study yourself, you will hear a strange sound. There's a cry. It's the sound of the world, the sound of everyone. It comes from inside you. Inside yourself you will hear the quiet cries of the world. To hear this sound means you really want to know how to live.
Should we emphasize the teaching of reincarnation? The more you think about it, the more you create a gap. Your body is here, but your mind is far away - gone into the past, into the future, lost in imagining a world after death, imagining heaven and hell. This is more or less what we all do. That's why, when we closely observe the world in this present moment, we hear screaming. If you look at yourself with a true heart, very naturally you will hear the cry of the world.
We have to go beyond notions of reincarnation, karma, nirvana, and enlightenment. This means to come back to yourself and how you are living now.
Beyond our likes and dislikes, we have to pay attention to how we actually live. Right in the middle of good and bad, right and wrong, our lives go on constantly.
Whatever kind of label you put on your life, or the lives of others - good, bad, or neutral - there is always a cry. If you become happy, right in the middle of happiness there's a cry. If you become unhappy, there's still a cry. Even if you say, "I don't care," right in the middle of your not caring, there's a cry. Whatever you do, there's always a cry.
Your life is dynamic. It never forms into anything particular, such as being enlightened or being the reincarnation of Buddha. Nevertheless, if you pay attention to your life as it is, you will discover that right in the middle of "nothing particular to do," there is something you must do. Right in the middle of "nothing particular to say," you have to say something."
- Dainin Katagiri
You Have to Say Something
I sit in a mood of reverie.
I've brought to Art desires and sensations:
things half-glimpsed,
faces or lines, certain indistinct memories
of unfulfilled love affairs.
Let me submit to Art:
Art knows how to shape forms of Beauty,
almost imperceptibly completing life,
blending impressions, blending day with day.
- Constantine P. Cavafy
- Wendell Berry
You cannot touch me
For look, between us
I have thrown
this barrier of words
And the further I write
the farther I go away from you
And the further you read
the farther you go away from me
Stop reading
put this away
Go out
find a person
anywhere
in a street car
on a corner
in a room
Learn him
Experience him
Know him
Words will never teach you anything
Words can never give you anything
Only people."
- anonymous
"At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Mindfulness in a way is the opposite of grasping, or attachment, or identification. And it can go very, very deep when we allow ourselves, because what we start to see - if we slow down a little bit and pay attention - is how it is a kind of conditioned phenomenon, like a machine, the mind spins this stuff out in a very orderly way by habit - thoughts, fantasies and memories. The world works in certain conditioned patterns, and that's it's nature, and it's all impermanent and quite ungraspable. Where is yesterday? What happened to your weekend? Where is it? What happened to 1984, your 20's, or whatever it was - where did they go? They all disappeared, gone. Isn't that an amazing thing?
It's a very profound thing to start to be aware of life coming out of nothing and disappearing into nothing. A day appears for awhile, and then it's gone. It can't be grasped, it's like a bird flying. You cannot hold time and fundamentally you can't hold yourself."
- Jack Kornfield
"It is essential to learn to confront the less pleasant aspects of existence. Our job as meditators is to learn to be patient with ourselves, to see ourselves in an unbiased way, complete with all our sorrows and inadequacies. We have to learn to be kind to ourselves. In the long run, avoiding unpleasantness is a very unkind thing to do to yourself. Paradoxically, kindness entails confronting unpleasantness when it arises. One popular human strategy for dealing with difficulty is autosuggestion: when something nasty pops up, you convince yourself it is pleasant rather than unpleasant. The Buddha's tactic is quite the reverse. Rather than hide it or disguise it, the Buddha's teaching urges you to examine it to death. Buddhism advises you not to implant feelings that you don't really have or avoid feelings that you do have. If you are miserable you are miserable; this is the reality, that is what is happening, so confront that. Look it square in the eye without flinching. When you are having a bad time, examine the badness, observe it mindfully, study the phenomenon and learn its mechanics. The way out of a trap is to study the trap itself, learn how it is built. You do this by taking the thing apart piece by piece. The trap can't trap you if it has been taken to pieces. The result is freedom.
This point is essential, but it is one of the least understood aspects of Buddhist philosophy. Those who have studied Buddhism superficially are quick to conclude that it is a pessimistic set of teachings, always harping on unpleasant things like suffering, always urging us to confront the uncomfortable realities of pain, death and illness. Buddhist thinkers do not regard themselves as pessimists - quite the opposite, actually. Pain exists in the universe; some measure of it is unavoidable. Learning to deal with it is not pessimism, but a very pragmatic form of optimism. How would you deal with the death of your spouse? How would you feel if you lost your mother tomorrow? Or your sister or your closest friend? Suppose you lost your job, your savings, and the use of your legs, on the same day; could you face the prospect of spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair? How are you going to cope with the pain of terminal cancer if you contract it, and how will you deal with your own death, when that approaches? You may escape most of these misfortunes, but you won't escape all of them. Most of us lose friends and relatives at some time during our lives; all of us get sick now and then; at the very least you are going to die someday. You can suffer through things like that or you can face them openly - the choice is yours.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is not. Pain and suffering are two different animals. If any of these tragedies strike you in your present state of mind, you will suffer. The habit patterns that presently control your mind will lock you into that suffering and there will be no escape. A bit of time spent in learning alternatives to those habit patterns is time well-invested. Most human beings spend all their energies devising ways to increase their pleasure and decrease their pain. Buddhism does not advise that you cease this activity altogether. Money and security are fine. Pain should be avoided where possible. Nobody is telling you to give away all your possessions or seek out needless pain, but Buddhism does advise you to invest some of your time and energy in learning to deal with unpleasantness, because some pain is unavoidable.
When you see a truck bearing down on you, by all means jump out of the way. But spend some time in meditation, too. Learning to deal with discomfort is the only way you'll be ready to handle the truck you didn't see."
- the Venerable Henepola Gunaratana
Mindfulness in Plain English
chapter 10
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