The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo Quotes

“Shohaku Okumura ~ We cannot expect any ecstasy greater than right here, right now—our everyday lives.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“KODO SAWAKI ~ To practice the buddha way is not to let our minds wander but to become one with what we’re doing. This is called zanmai (or samadhi) and shikan (or “just doing”). Eating rice isn’t preparation for shitting; shitting isn’t preparation for making manure. And yet these days people think that high school is preparation for college and college is preparation for a good job.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“SHOHAKU OKUMURA: We human beings have the ability to think of things not in front of us. We create stories in our minds in which the hero or heroine is always us. We evaluate what happened in the past, we analyze our present conditions, and we anticipate what should happen in the future. This is an important ability. Because of it, we can create art, study history, and have visions of the future. Without it, we couldn’t write or enjoy poems or movies. Almost all of human culture depends on seeing things not in front of our eyes. This means almost all culture is fictitious. Our ability to create such fictions is the reality of our lives. We cannot live without it. But this ability leads to many problems. We have certain expectations of our stories. If things go as we expect, we feel like heavenly beings, but if not, we feel we’re in hell. Often we desire more and more without ever experiencing satisfaction, like hungry ghosts. It’s important to see that it’s not life that causes suffering but our expectation that life should be the way we want. We can’t live without expectation, but if we can handle the feelings caused by the difference between our expectations and reality, that’s liberation. Zazen practice as taught by Dogen Zenji, Sawaki Roshi, and Uchiyama Roshi is taking a break from watching the screen of our stories and sitting down on the ground of the reality that exists before our imagination. When we’re not taken in by our fictitious world, we can enjoy and learn from the stories we make.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“KODO SAWAKI: Studying originally meant aspiring to discover the meaning of life. These days studying has become all about getting a job.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Sit immovably in the place where being superior or inferior to others doesn’t matter.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“In short, zazen is seeing this world from the casket, without me.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“KODO SAWAKI: During World War II, when I visited a coal mine in Kyushu, they allowed me to go into the mine. Like the miners, I put on a hard hat with a headlamp and went down the shaft in an elevator. For a while, I thought the elevator was going down very fast. Then I started to feel as if it were going up. I shone my headlamp on the shaft and realized the elevator was still going down steadily. When an elevator starts descending with increasing speed, we feel it going down, but once the speed becomes fixed, we feel as if the elevator were rising. The balance has shifted. In the ups and downs of life, we’re deceived by the difference in the balance. Saying, “I’ve had satori!” is only feeling a difference in the balance. Saying, “I’m deluded!” is feeling another. To say food tastes delicious or terrible, to be rich or poor, all are just feelings about shifts in the balance. In most cases, our ordinary way of thinking only considers differences in the balance. Human beings put I into everything without knowing it. We sometimes say, “That was really good!” What’s it good for? It’s just good for me, that’s all. We usually do things expecting some personal profit. And if the results turn out different from our hidden agenda, we feel disappointed and exhausted.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“SHOHAKU OKUMURA ~ If we feel we’re becoming enlightened, that’s delusion.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“We don’t practice to attain enlightenment. We practice dragged around by enlightenment.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“The other day, someone visited me and asked, 'I wish to practice zazen under your guidance. But because I live far away, I can’t come to Antaiji very often. I’d like to practice zazen at home. What should I keep in mind to avoid doing zazen in a mistaken way?' I responded, 'If your wife and children say, "Daddy has become nicer since he began to do zazen," then your practice is on the right track.'

Roshi, Kosho Uchiyama. Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo (Kindle Locations 2519-2523). Wisdom Publications. Kindle Edition.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“However, for human beings, practice is much too tiresome. We want to show our appreciation like sightseers, without doing it ourselves. Like spectator sports, which are very popular, the Zen fad is really a spectator Zen or Zen sightseeing fad.

Roshi, Kosho Uchiyama. Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo (Kindle Locations 2165-2167). Wisdom Publications. Kindle Edition.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Zazen is indeed the posture of “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). In our zazen we realize the illusory nature of thoughts, and no matter how powerful they might be, we don’t chase after them, try to get rid of them, or act on them. So zazen is the posture of “We know that our old self was crucified with him” (Romans 6:6) or “I have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:19). In the end, zazen is the purest expression of “Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalms 46:10).”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Uchiyama Roshi says that modern people in developed countries who enjoy convenient lives without personal effort are like these heavenly beings. People at the top especially enjoy their lives. However, everything is impermanent. When they lose status, they experience much suffering, just like the heavenly beings of ancient Buddhist cosmology. Heaven is a manmade idea of what’s “better.” When we feel more successful than others, we’re in heaven. When we feel others are more successful, we’re in hell. To leave this way of life based on comparison is to free ourselves from samsara. Living on the ground of the true reality of life is finding nirvana within this world.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“SHOHAKU OKUMURA: In chapter 30, Sawaki Roshi and Uchiyama Roshi talked about people who chase external things and lose sight of themselves. In this chapter they discuss how one’s own opinion is not valid. On the surface, these two are contradictory. How can we seek ourselves without having our own opinion? When the Buddha, Sawaki Roshi, and Uchiyama Roshi talk about “self” they don’t mean the image of ourselves created within the framework of separation between I as subject and others as objects. In Harischandra Kaviratna’s translation of the Dhammapada, the Buddha says, “The self is the master of the self. Who else can that master be? With the self fully subdued, one obtains the sublime refuge, which is very difficult to achieve.” Self is master of the self, but the self still needs to be subdued. In the Japanese translation of this verse, “subdued” is more like “harmonized” or “well tuned.” In Genjokoan, Dogen said, “To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.” To study the self, we need to forget the self. In these sayings, self is not a fixed, permanent entity separate from other beings. Self is our body and mind, that is, a collection of the five aggregates: form, sensation, perception, formation, and consciousness. These aggregates are always changing, but somehow we create a fixed self-image based on our past experiences and relations with others. We grasp this image as I. This I is an illusion, yet we measure everything based on the tunnel vision of this fictitious self. When we see fiction as fiction, illusion as illusion, they can be useful. Although no map is reality itself, when we know how a map was made, what its distortions are, and how to use it, the map can be a useful tool for understanding reality. However, if we don’t see a model’s limitations, we build our entire lives on a delusion.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Karma is any action we take with the desire for satisfaction.”
― Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Within our everyday lives, we practice in the midst of delusion, without knowing whether we will fall to hell or be born in the Pure Land.”
― Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“For example, if we often see violent government debates on TV, our senses become numb, and we just take for granted that the government is such a place. However, if we lead a life of zazen in a temple without TV, and we happen to glimpse such a scene, we’re shocked. We come to understand that this world is an absurd place when we see that even in national politics, important decisions are made with the same sordid violence we see in gang fights.”
― Kosho Uchiyama, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“If he hadn’t become a Buddhist monk, Sawaki Roshi would have been successful in a worldly sense in business, politics, or the military. Instead, he devoted his life to wholeheartedly practicing Dogen Zenji’s just sitting, or shikantaza, which according to him was good for nothing. For him, social climbing in pursuit of fame and profit was meaningless. The Japanese expression for “waste” is bonifuru, which means “sacrifice,” “lose all,” or “ruin.” So when we say he wasted his life, we use the expression in a paradoxical way—like saying that zazen is good for nothing.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“KODO SAWAKI: Human beings are strange. Although we have an intelligent look, we are simply groping in darkness. Human beings work diligently merely to avoid boredom. There are too many things that attract us in this world. We want to do this and that. But once we experience or get these things, we find they’re nothing important. There are people who never discover their own true way of life.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“The Buddha taught the path to freedom from desires, not the way to satisfy them.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“We cannot exchange even a fart with another, can we? Each and every one of us has to live out our self. Who’s better looking, who’s smarter: you or I? We don’t need to compare ourselves with others.”
― Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Nowadays people say everyone should earn a living. I think this is pointless. I've always thought it enough if I can get through a day without starving.”
― Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Just sitting, which is good for nothing, is the ultimate posture of freedom from greed.”
― Shohaku Okumura, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“If we can give up our self-centered concerns and see that this world doesn't exist only to satisfy our desires, then just as in begging, we cannot help but appreciate the things we receive as blessings.”
― Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Delicious food attracts our attention only because we're hungry. Beautiful catch our eyes only if we have sexual desire. In other words, only when appetite and desire exist within us does a world responding to those conditions appear outside us.”
― Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Romantic love is ecstasy and intoxication, but marriage is a long voyage.”
― Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Because I practiced good-for-nothing zazen with devotion, I felt my life was justified. Yet this intensity of practice was possible only when I was young, strong, and healthy. In this way I discovered arrogance in a deep layer of my mind.”
― Shohaku Okumura, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“If we don't worry so much about evaluations by others, we're more free to walk a straightforward path, and even if we stumble or limp along, that's okay.”
― Shohaku Okumura, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Even if we don't become an expert—always prepared, refined, and elegant like a veteran swordsman, virtuoso Noh actor, or tea master—we're fine, aren't we? What's wrong with toddling and limping along the path of life practicing zazen?”
― Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo

“Whatever happens, I am I.”
― Kosho Uchiyama, The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo