Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn

by Seung Sahn

What is good, what is bad? Who makes good, who makes bad? They cling to their opinions with all their might. But everybody's opinion is different. How can you say that your opinion is correct and somebody else's is wrong? This is delusion.

everything is what it is.

“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”

“In a cookie factory, different cookies are baked in the shape of animals, cars, people, and airplanes. They all have different names and forms, but they are all made from the same dough, and they all taste the same.

Then you can see the stone lion run across the waves and devour the sun.

Noisy and quiet are made by your thinking. If you think something is noisy, it is noisy; if you think something is quiet, it is quiet. Noisy is not noisy, quiet is not quiet. True quiet is neither quiet nor noisy. If you listen to the traffic with a clear mind, without any concepts, it is not noisy, it is only what it is. Noisy and quiet are opposites. The Absolute is only like this.”

The man who has come to this is the man who was here from the beginning. He does what he always did. Nothing has changed.

So actions themselves are not good and not bad; only the intention is important. If you think something is good, it is good; if you think it is bad, it is bad. If you want to cut off all thinking and all karma, you must practice Zen.

But aspiration is not for myself, it is not a merely individual desire, it transcends the idea of self. It is desire without attachment.

The Buddha has already given instructions for someone who is blind or disabled. But most people want easy solutions. They want someone else to do their work for them.

Did Jesus solve anything by raising Lazarus from the grave? Lazarus still had the same karma as before, and he still had to die.

The only way to make karma disappear is for your consciousness to become empty. Then there are no miracles. Then there are only correct views and correct practice. This is the true miracle. Sincerely yours,

So life and death are created by our own thinking. They exist because we think them into existence, and they cease to exist when we cease to think.

‘You must know yourselves.’ Someone once asked him. ‘Do you know yourself?’ Socrates said, ‘No. But I understand this not-knowing.’ Zen is the same. It is not-knowing, not-thinking. ‘What am I?’ This is your true self.

“If you are thinking, your mind wanders away from your action, and the flow of your painting or writing will be blocked, your tea-ceremony will be stiff or clumsy. If you are not thinking, you are one with your action. You are the tea that you're drinking. You are the brush that you're painting with. Not-thinking is before thinking. You are the whole universe; the universe is you. This is Zen mind, absolute mind. It is beyond space and time, beyond the dualities of self and other, good and bad, life and death. The truth is just like this. So when a Zen person is painting, the whole universe is present in the tip of his brush.

With big love, I have no desire for myself, I only give my love to other people. If I love you and you don't love me, that's okay. I will still give you as much love as if you loved me in return. If I love God and get bad karma in return, that's okay.

Things are only as they are.

So you must kill your self. Then you will get freedom and you will have no hindrance.