32218e No.439
Post Zen koans and kernels of wisdom in this thread.
Keep them concise – no more than a paragraph or two.
32218e No.440
"When I was the leader of the community at Longmen, Iron Face Bing was leader of the community at Taiping. Someone told me that when Bing was first going on study travels, before he had been gone from his native place for long he suddenly took the notes of what he had heard from the teacher who had instructed him and burned them all to ashes one night. During that time, whenever he received a letter, he would throw it to the ground and say it was just uselessly disturbing people’s minds."
32218e No.450
Xuetang said to Master Huxian Guang: "When I was young I heard these words from my father: ’Without inner mastery one cannot stand, without outward rectitude one cannot act.’ This saying is worth practicing all your life; in it is summed up the work of sages and saints." I remember these words and cultivated myself while living at home. Even now, when I am a leader of a group, these words are like the balance stone weighing heavy and light, the compass and rule determining square and round. Without this everyone loses its order.
32218e No.506
Yuansou: There is no real doctrine at all for you to chew on or squat over. If you will not believe in yourself, you pick up your baggage and go around to other people’s houses, looking for Zen, looking for Tao, looking for mysteries, looking for marvels, looking for buddhas, looking for Zen masters, looking for teachers.
You think this is searching for the ultimate, and you make it into your religion, but this is like running blindly to the east to get something that is in the west. The more you run, the further away you are, and the more you hurry the later you become. You just tire yourself, to what benefit in the end?
32218e No.527
Yuanwu: Human lives go along with circumstances. It is not necessary to reject activity and seek quiet; just make yourself inwardly empty while outwardly harmonious. Then you will be at peace in the midst of frenetic activity in the world.
32218e No.561
Linji: Professional Buddhist clergy who cannot tell obsession from enlightenment have just left one social group and entered another social group. They cannot really be said to be independent.
Now there is an obsession with Buddhism that is mixed in with the real thing. Those with clear eyes cut through both obsession and Buddhism. If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.
9f28fa No.590
If you whip a river, you may just whip your own reflection.
5ddffd No.597
>>590Why would anyone ever whip a river?