More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
always imagined enlightenment ought to
feel like. Once you start believing in that stuff your ego’s got you right where it wants you. You’ll never be able to look at your day-to-day life honestly again. But you’ve got to forg...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
I knew my life wasn’t really bad at all. It was a lovely thing. It was a precious, fragile, and very valuable thing. There are many diamonds in the world and if you lose your favorite, you can work hard, earn a lot of money and get another one to replace it. But the moments of your life aren’t like that. Once they’re gone, they’ll never return. Each and every one is the most precious thing in existence. You can never meaningfully
compare one moment with any other.
But
at that moment nothing could compare to that little tangerine in my hands. I felt so grateful just to be me, just to be sitting at my desk, just to be able to peel and taste and eat that tangerine. No one else would ever taste that tangerine.
“Eating a tangerine is real enlightenment.” It was something he really didn’t need to say. Still, I was glad he did.
If you were bound and gagged inside a wooden barrel just about to head over Niagara Falls, you’d pray for just one minute more to live. And yet, while you’re alive, what do you do? You get bored. You wish to be elsewhere. You wish to get whatever you’re doing now over with.
And you don’t have to do it at all, but if you decide you want to try it, here’s how. It couldn’t be simpler, actually.
This style of zazen is traditionally called shikantaza, or “just sitting.” This is the real deal, sisters and brothers. This is hardcore Zen.
Hardcore Zen isn’t like that. Everything non-essential has been stripped away.
ZEN REPLACES ALL OBJECTS OF belief with one single thing: reality itself. We believe only in this universe. We don’t believe in the afterlife. We don’t believe in the sovereignty of nations. We don’t believe in money or power or fame. We don’t believe in our idols. We don’t believe in our positions or our possessions. We don’t believe we can be insulted, or that our honor or the honor of our family, our nation or our faith can be
offended. We don’t believe in Buddha. We just believe in reality. Just this.
Zen doesn’t ask you to believe in anything you cannot con...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Believe only in the universe as it is right now. See the world and yourself for what they are. Don’t be deceived by your imagination no matter how beautiful it is.
Reality is the one and only constant thing in this universe. It’s always right there. Just as it is.
You can transform your life, and it is
imperative that you do it. Because only you can do it. No guru can make your life right. No Zen master can show you the way. Only you have the power to make this place you’re living in right now a realm so beautiful even God himself couldn’t dream of anything better. And doing this will transform the universe.
People long for big thrills, peak experiences, deep insights. Some people take up zazen practice expecting that enlightenment will be the ultimate peak experience, the peak experience to beat all peak experiences. But real enlightenment is the most ordinary of the ordinary. And our ordinary, boring, pointless lives are incredibly, amazingly, astoundingly, relentlessly, mercilessly joyful. You don’t need to do a damned thing to experience such joy either. You don’t need to snort an ounce of coke, get a turkey-baster
baster full of hot grease shoved up your ass, blow up the Washington Monument, win the Indy 500, or walk on the moon. You don’t need to go hang-gliding over the Himalayas, or kayaking down the Amazon. You don’t need to screw that oh-so-willing babe with the dark hair and the pouty lips or the smokin’ seventeen-year-old on your brother’s baseball team, and you don’t need to party all night with the beautiful people. You don’t need to do any of that stuff to know what it means to be alive. You’re alive when you’re sitting in your bedroom cleaning wax out of your ears. You’re alive when you’re
...more
now has joys even God could never know. No one else has ever lived this moment and no one else will ever live it. No one in the whole universe. Oh, there may have been people who stood on subway platforms looking at a book before. But they weren’t you. It wasn’t this book. They weren’t as hungry for a nice slice of pizza as you are right now. They hadn’t schtupped the people you have. They hadn’t made the same stupid mistakes with their lives as you have. Nor have they felt the same joys. They haven’t made happy the people you’ve made happy. The snot in their noses hasn’t hardened into the
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
