More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
So the source of time is being, and the source of being is time, but both depend on space.
If you see the intersection of time and space, you experience complete freedom of being.
The past has already gone, so it does not exist. The future has not yet come, so it also does not exist. So the past and future are nothing, no-time.
When the present is no-time, it is interconnected with all sentient beings in the peace and harmony of timelessness.
Life is always at the pivot of nothingness; it is always right now, right here.
The real present is the full aliveness that exists at the pivot of nothingness before your
conceptual thinking creates an imaginary world through human consciousness.
When the moment ends and all sentient beings disappear, your idea of time also disappears.
real time is nothing but dynamic function, so time itself possesses the great power to emancipate you from the limitations of your idea of time.
Perceive each particular thing in this entire universe as a moment of time.
When the time is ripe and conditions are arranged, the way-seeking mind comes up in your life, blooms, and is the rhythm of the whole world.
life is just a continuation of learning. Day after day, life after life, we just have to learn constantly. That’s enough.
To place yourself in the harmony of time and timelessness is to practice; being in the harmony of twelve hours and timelessness is enlightenment.
instead of expecting something from zazen, just do zazen with wholeheartedness.
Real enlightenment is awakening to where we are, who we are, what everyday life is, what
time is.
egolessness comes up simultaneously with the activity of practice itself, and that practice is free from suffering.
practice is not a means to an end.
Doing meditation, or any spiritual practice, because we want to be something special in the future is not the point of Zen practice. The point is to be
free where we ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Where we are is a problem, but where we are is also the b...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Through practice we can be free from
where we think we are, which lets us return to where we really are and experience what the self really is.
Right now, right here is the best time and place for you to do it, and you are a person who can practice this spiritual way of life.
To be sure of your existence with confidence, you have to see yourself doing something in the universe with all myriad beings, not in your individual territory.
If you continue to act with full devotion, your consciousness becomes one with your activity, and the form of your consciousness disappears. Your perception of your mind is dissipated, absorbed into
the pure sense of simply action itself.
You are already enlightened, but you can never conceptually know what enlightenment is because when you think of it you create a gap between yourself and enlightenment.
Let’s see human activity in terms of Buddha’s wisdom! Intimacy is not something to discuss—intimacy is activity itself. This is not philosophy—it is something you have to do.
To have strong, stable confidence every day, you must concentrate yourself on making the effort to constantly approach and
penetrate this very moment.
When you are approaching to this very moment, you cannot see time objectively, not even slightly, because your activity is time itself. There is no gap where you can think about this moment objectively. But you cannot ignore it, because you are there. So all you have to do is just be present—right here, right now!
awaken bodhi-mind, you have to observe impermanence. It doesn’t mean to see impermanence objectively; it means to participate in impermanence itself. In Buddhism we don’t ignore subject or object, concepts or ideas; we try to understand them very deeply through action. Then impermanence as an object and you as a subject are illuminated
simultaneously.
Buddhist practice is to constantly create beauty. Beauty is the functioning of wisdom.
what is the energy that causes it to survive and go from the past to the present to the future? This is a most important question.
Time is going constantly. Again and again, seed produces seed, seed produces form, the perfume of form matures seed,
and seed produces seed again.
the basic consciousness of alayavijnana becomes mature in the
unconscious world, appears as the form and function of the conscious world, then disappears and returns with a perfume that makes it mature in the unconscious world.
by taking care of everydayness, you
don’t make just the surface mature; you also make the depth of your life mature. That is the most important point!
Whether you have a problem, pain, or pleasant feeling in zazen, please sit. That’s it!
The seed is the cause of the pumpkin’s existence, but the seed can’t grow into a pumpkin by itself. It
needs conditions: sunshine, warmth, humidity, soil, water, human effort—many things. These are called secondary causes, or conditioned elements.
In The Awakening of Faith it says that the meaning of ignorance is that the mind
moves. The mind moving is a very minute vibration that is difficult for us to recognize. That is the incipient moment. The very minute movement of mind is called moment.
If you want to understand, you have to examine yourself very deeply—through zazen, through everyday life—then you can touch the bottom of your human life and see
what exists there: just ignorance, a very minute mind movement, constantly going. Then, through the realization of ignorance, you can see the vastness of existence, which is called emptiness, or
truth. That’s pretty go...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.