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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Settle everything in one breath. See through the vanity of all stress. Live this now in naked bliss.
How many thousands of thoughts do you experience each day? Are you really experiencing them, or are they just going on in an unconscious way?
In Zen, there is the Buddha altar, the tea room -- but also the kitchen, the mountain gate, the field, the garden, the battleground, the schoolyard, the bus stop, the laundromat.
develop the sincere altruistic intention to help others also attain enlightenment & liberation in this life.
Your grip of the sword is an entryway into the instantaneous reality; as soon as you grip the sword you are in no mind no thought. This is because the grip is firm yet soft, like an infant's, so instantly your body becomes one with the sword & space.
Relax your shoulders at the outset so a shiver goes through you.
Only knowledge which is non-knowledge can mysteriously reflect what is beyond things.”
"The correct and the incorrect are equally usable."
The Mode of a Lunatic
Without any reference point -- nebulous, ephemeral, and evanescent-- this is the mode of a lunatic, free from the duality of hope and fear. Without the entanglements of wishful thinking, there is no "thing" to strive for or achieve. Let whatever happens happen and whatever manifests manifest. Let whatever occurs occur and whatever is be.
Prajna, unknowing, knows all, Prajna, unseeing, sees all. -Hui-Ha
Once you have sat for a long time, the mind will stabilize.
"A long time" is relative. These days, 5 minutes doing nothing, thinking nothing, comprehending nothing - this is a longest of times.
Like wind becoming breath there is no individual intelligence.
Any practice can be a Zen practice. It is just a matter of going all the way & breaking through.
I have had good experiences during calligraphy, playing the flute, and washing the dishes.
As soon as you grip your sword all thinking should vanish instantly like a snowflake on a blazing hot stove.
Give Everything Back to Its Source Give light back to the sky, darkness to empty space, body to the four elements, thoughts to books, &c. Give everything you've borrowed in your life back to its source, then rest nakedly in the no-thing left over.
It is not a matter of keeping up "mindfulness." There is really nothing to keep up, no such thing as a mind to be mindful. Drop it all!
