Reb Anderson > Quotes

“The dawning of this vision of the interdependence of the whole body opens upon a greater vision of the interdependence of your body with all animate and inanimate beings throughout the universe. Just as the whole body brings forth the mudra and the mudra brings forth the whole body, the body brings forth the whole universe and the whole universe brings forth the body. When you practice upright sitting with this mudra, you’ve got the whole world in your hands. Thus it is called the Cosmic Concentration Mudra.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“Eiheiji (Monastery of Eternal Peace),”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“The Sixteen Great Bodhisattva Precepts can be divided into three groups or sections: the Three Refuges, the Three Pure Precepts, and the Ten Grave Precepts. The Three Refuges express our vow to take refuge in the Triple Treasure: buddha, dharma, and sangha. The Three Pure Precepts are vows to embrace and sustain forms and ceremonies, to embrace and sustain all good actions, and to embrace and sustain all beings. The Ten Grave Precepts teach us to abstain from killing, stealing, misusing sexuality, lying, intoxicating mind or body of self or other, speaking of others’ faults in a disparaging way, praising self at the expense of others, being possessive of anything, harboring ill will, and disparaging the Triple Treasure. Put in a more positive way, the Ten Grave Precepts encourage us to protect and nurture life, to be generous and respectful of others’ property, to use sexual energy in an appropriate way, to tell the truth, to maintain a clear mind and body, to speak of the virtues of others and our interdependence with them, to be generous in all material and spiritual matters, to practice loving kindness and nonviolence, and to respect and protect the Triple Treasure.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“The Bodhisattva Initiation Ceremony”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“The two truths are presented separately in order to promote understanding, but in practice, neither aspect is more or less important than the other. Each approach, when fully realized, completely includes the other. Those who have realized the ultimate meaning are still completely devoted to the conventional approach to the precepts. Realizing the ultimate is useless and even dangerous if you can’t go back to the beginning and practice with everyone. In the end, the two truths are thoroughly integrated in the bodhisattva’s heart by the practice of compassion.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“Intimately embracing and sustaining these forms and ceremonies, your attachments to body and mind immediately drop away, and you realize selflessness.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“renunciation of selfish attachments, the initiates receive a new name and a traditional Buddhist robe. Finally, there is the formal practice of confession, and the preceptor sprinkles water on the initiates and the assembly as a sign of purification. The initiates are now ready to receive the Sixteen Great Bodhisattva Precepts.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“The person who gives naturally receives joy, and the person who receives gives joy. Just ring the bell with your whole heart, out into the great whatever-it-is. When you ring it in this way, you are putting your life on the line, and you are being met. In such a meeting, buddha is coming alive, dharma is coming alive, and sangha is coming alive.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“Formal confession can be done alone, within your own heart, and that is certainly of great merit. However, in order to realize the complete and inconceivable function of formal confession, you must practice confession in the presence of another. When nonvirtue is brought forward out of the dark, you are more able to fully recognize and therefore confess it. Such confession before the face of another can be practiced in front of a statue of a buddha or bodhisattva, in front of a teacher, or in the presence of community members within a ritual context. There are an infinite number of possible ways of practicing formal confession. The essential point is that you honestly, sincerely, and thoroughly reveal your unwholesome actions.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“them.” We say “enter,” but the Chinese character means, literally, “I vow to understand them” or “to learn them.” We recognize that everything that comes to us is a gateway to the truth, and we vow to use every meeting with every living being and thing as an opportunity for realizing the truth.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“As Dogen approached death, what practice did he choose? Did he enter into the utmost serene and radiant concentration? Did he perhaps give his final, transcendent exposition of the authentic dharma? This is what he did: on a long piece of white paper he wrote three large black characters: buddha, dharma, and sangha. He hung this paper on a pillar in his sickroom. In his great illness he roused himself to walk around that pillar, and as he walked he chanted, “I take refuge in buddha, I take refuge in dharma, I take refuge in sangha.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“he republished it with his own preface, admonitions, and extensive footnotes. This fourth circle, which includes the three inner circles, is called the Essence of Zen Precepts.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“The bodhisattva vow is the wish and the commitment to become intimate with everything—not just humans and animals but plants and inanimate things. You need to be as intimate with all matter as a great sculptor is. When you see a block of marble or a piece of steel, you see it as a dharma gate.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“After being given permission to take the vows, there is usually a period of six months of preparation and practice before the ceremony. These preparations include sewing a rakusu (buddha’s robe), studying the ceremony and the precepts, and doing other special practices, such as prostrations. Sometimes there is a week-long meditation retreat leading up to the ceremony, including lectures and discussion on the precepts and time for individual study.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“When you begin to understand interdependence, you’re grateful for everything that happens in your life, because everything that comes to you is the buddha dharma, or Buddha’s teaching. You turn toward the very situation where you feel pain and anxiety, with an intention to understand it more deeply, and you immerse yourself in the life of your present understanding.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“The one who is bowing, the one who is bowed to
Their nature, no nature
My body, other’s body, not two
Plunging into the inexhaustible vow
Living in harmony with all”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“Renunciation is letting go of your desire to control, so you can appreciate and bring love and happiness to suffering beings.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“As Suzuki Roshi said, “When you bow, there is no buddha and no you. One complete bow takes place. That is all. This is nirvana.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“At the conventional level, the precept of no intoxicants is understood as encouraging us to control our behavior by not using addictive substances to manipulate our state of being. Ironically, using individual effort to try to control our behavior is itself a violation of the ultimate meaning of the precept, because it is akin to manipulating our experience.”
― Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts

“Walking the path of the bodhisattva is accomplished through the spirit and actuality of renunciation. . . . Renunciation is an unsurpassable way of harmonizing body and mind with the buddha way. When you give up attachments, you are free. You are buddha. —The Bodhisattva Initiation Ceremony”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“We might interpret the character setsu as encouraging us to be three-fourths observant and one-fourth actively helpful. First we should receive and understand the situation and then give a hand appropriately.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“Because of their immense and awesome import to our practice, such greetings are transmitted and performed ceremonially, that is to say, in established and traditional ways.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“This ceremony has two main parts: preparation and receiving the precepts. During the preparation phase, the preceptor begins with an invocation and pays homage to the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and ancestors of the precept lineage.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“The Essence of Zen Precepts presents the bodhisattva precepts primarily from the perspective of their ultimate or liberating meaning (which is beyond doing and not-doing), and is less concerned with their conventional or literal meaning (what to do and what not to do). This distinction is of vital importance to this book, and will be explored further in Chapter Six, “The Sixteen Great Bodhisattva Precepts: The Teaching of the Two Truths.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“According to Dogen, the essence of the true transmission of the buddha dharma is taking refuge in the Triple Treasure.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“For Dogen, the “mountains and rivers of the immediate present are the manifestation of the path of the ancient buddhas.”2 We care for everything in the natural and human-made world with utmost respect and devotion. Dogen had a deep veneration for and adamant protectiveness of the great and small trees in the mountains that surrounded Eiheiji (Monastery of Eternal Peace), and he resisted all unnecessary logging there.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“IN ORDER TO AWAKEN to the complete significance of the bodhisattva precepts, it is necessary to understand the teaching of the two truths of the Middle Way (Madhyamika). These two truths are known in Buddhist tradition as samvrti satya (conventional truth) and paramartha satya (ultimate truth).”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“the first refuge really contains the other two. When you take refuge in buddha, you begin to understand the teaching of interdependence, which is taking refuge in dharma, and you honor your connection with other beings, which is taking refuge in sangha.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“Helping others entails learning how you are helped. In order to heal others, you must learn to heal yourself. Learning how to give to yourself is part of learning how to give to others. If you are stingy with yourself, you will be stingy with others. When you understand how everything is given to you, you will be able to give everything to others.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts

“In the third Pure Precept, Buddha’s teaching to purify your mind is transmuted by the bodhisattva vow into “embrace and sustain all beings.” For a bodhisattva, the mind is purified by working for the welfare of others.”
― Tenshin Reb Anderson, Being Upright: Zen Meditation and Bodhisattva Precepts