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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Seung Sahn
Read between
June 13, 2017 - April 19, 2018
She said, ‘If you make difficult, it is difficult. If you make easy, it is easy. But if you don't think, the truth is just as it is.
Keep your mind as if you were already dead. Then all your attachments will disappear, and it won't matter whether you study Zen or not.
Only think, ‘I am dead.’ A dead man has no desires.”
Don't-know mind is empty mind.
The real Buddha has no name or form. How can theBuddha be smiling?
Form-body and karma-body come from thinking.
Dharma-body is pure and clear and infinite in time and space.
If you keep a complete don't-know mind, how can confusion appear?
True freedom is freedom from thinking, freedom from all attachments, freedom even from life and death. If I want life, I have life; if I want death, I have death.”
This is freedom. No desire for myself, only for all people.”
This don't-know is your true mind. This true mind cuts off all thinking.
If someone is not attached to drinking, sex, etc., then there is no hindrance.
Soen-sa said, “Zen is meditation. Outer Path Zen includes many different types of meditation. For example, Christian meditation, Divine Light, Transcendental Meditation, etc.
Big I is infinite time and infinite space.”
But when you were born, you had no name. So mind is no mind. What is mind? I don't know. Your mind's name is don't-know.”
Soen-sa said, “Three things are important: first, your reason for doing the mantra; second, strong faith that the mantra works; and third, constant practice.”
The Buddha said, “It is impossible to make merited karma disappear.”
Keen-eyed Zen Masters seldom use magic or miracles, because these can't help people find the true way.
True sitting means to cut off all thinking and to keep not-moving mind. True Zen means to become clear.
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.
“If you are thinking, your mind, my mind, and all people's minds are different. If you are not thinking, your mind, my mind, and all people's minds are the same….”
Soen-sa said, “Yes. If you cut off all thinking, this mind is before thinking. If you keep the before-thinking mind and I keep the before-thinking mind, we become one mind. Okay?”
“Socrates used to walk around Athens telling his students, ‘You must know yourselves.’ Someone once asked him. ‘Do you know yourself?’ Socrates said, ‘No. But I understand this not-knowing.’
But if you cut off all thinking, then the dog's barking, the wind, the trees, the mountains, the lightning, the sound of the water—all are your teachers. So you must keep the complete don't-know mind. This is very necessary.
Soen-sa said, “We can talk about three separate minds. The first is attachment mind. This is called losing your mind. Next is keeping one mind. The third is clear mind.”
All these actions are attachment actions. They come from desire and end in suffering.”
“Clear mind is like a mirror.
Clear mind is big mind, which is infinite time and infinite space.”
‘Water becomes square or round according to the shape of the container it is put in. In the same way, people become good or bad according to the friends they have.’
Increasingly, for the last two years, I've been coming out of emptiness, and more and more see that I am the world and the world is me. As I think, so is the world, and as I act, so I create the world around me.
Where you live is not important, if you keep your mind correctly.
First you must throw away all your opinions, all your cognition, your concern about your situation, and your explanations. Then there will be nothing. And then you will understand other people's minds. Your mind will be like a clear mirror. Red comes and it becomes red; white comes and it becomes white. When your mind is clear, then it is a reflection of other people's minds.
What is sitting? Sitting means cutting off all thinking and keeping not-moving mind.
Why spend three to five years going away from no effort only to return?
If you are not thinking, there is no Buddha, no God. That is what the Buddha meant when he said, The whole universe is created by your thinking.’”
One's philosophy should be practical. We should be able to apply it in our daily life. Our philosophy and our daily life should not be separate; they should be one.
This is the field of becoming Buddha. Empty mind passes the test and comes back.’
“All things that appear in this world are transient. If you view all things that appear as never having appeared, then you will realize your true self.”
When he returned to his body, he understood. The rocks, the river, everything he could see, everything he could hear, all this was his true self. All
Soen-sa understood, but he didn't know how to answer. He said, “I don't know.” Ko Bong said, “Only keep this don't-know mind. That is true Zen practice.”
Soen-sa was now a Zen Master. He was twenty-two years old.
