It was a pleasure to have you in my class!

 

Dear ones, it was a pleasure to share these weeks together. You can always stay in touch here (and become a friend too!). 

Merry Christmas!

Koans by Dogen Zenji

Koan: A puzzling, often paradoxical statement or story, used in Zen Buddhism as an aid to meditation and a means of gaining spiritual awakening.

_____

The true person is
Not anyone in particular
But
Like the limitless deep blue sky,
It is everywhere, and everyone in the world.

***
In the stream,
Rushing past
To the dusty world,
My fleeting form

Casts no reflection.

****
Because the mind is free --Listening to the rain
Dripping from the eaves,
The drops become
One with me.

****
"Mind itself is buddha" -- difficult to practice, but easy to explain;
"No mind, no buddha" -- difficult to explain, but easy to practice.

****
I won't even stopat the valley's brook
for fear that
my shadow
may flow into the world.

****
Midnight,
No waves,
no wind, the empty boat
is flooded with moonlight.

****
Water birds
going and coming
their traces disappear
but they never forget their path.

****
The World? Moonlit
Drops shaken
From the crane’s bill

****
To study the buddha way is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.

****
What is the old buddha mind?" The master answered, "Fences, walls, tiles, and pebbles."

****
What is the old buddha mind?"
The master answered, "The world collapses in ruins."
The monk asked, "Why does the world collapse in ruins?"
The master answered, "Better without my body."

****
Following the Buddha Way really means following yourself.

****
Make no use of incense or bowing or chanting or ceremonies or scriptures.

****
Remembering is time, forgetting is time.
Black lines of scripture are time,
Great and small doubts are time,
Hungry ghosts and naked demons are time.

Wu-wei (update)

How is it possible to acquire something that supposedly comes without effort? 

Tao is obvious, right in our face (Nature does not have to insist...) but this obviousness is precisely the reason we miss it. One must learn to read its subtle language. To observe the cyclic phenomena we must empty our minds of old baggage.

Let's observe poertically! Wu-wei is a form of universal poetry that is acted through virtue (... to produce but not possess, to care but not to control, to lead but not to subjugate.

When our observation becomes efortless, wu-wei happens. Remember, wu-wei is not passive, but active. We choose the world. 

Tao is "what is": the rule of the universe.

Verse #7:

The universe is deathless,

Is deathless because, having no finite self,

It stays infinite.

A sound man by not advancing himself

Stays the further ahead of himself,

By not confining himself to himself

Sustains himself outside himself:

By never being an end in himself

He endlessly becomes himself.

#22

To yield is to [be preserved whole.

To be bent is to become straight.

To be empty is to be full.

To be worn out is to be renewed.

To have little is to possess.

To have plenty is to be perplexed.

Therefore the sage embraces the ONE.