The Rinzai Zen Way Quotes

“If you think of everything as training, your suffering will disappear.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“You must raise up your original motivation and aspiration, plant yourself with fearlessness in the unity of mind and body, and cut through obstructions using your koan, using the breath counting, using whatever your method is. In this training, you may have confidence that all the awakened beings of the ten directions support you; all the myriad things—the earth with its trees, mountains, and rivers, all creatures and people, the sky, sun, and moon and extending to the most distant galaxy—all of these ceaselessly proclaim the Buddhist teaching.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“With great compassion, we must enter fully into this world in which we will manifest the wondrous functioning of wisdom within daily activity and so apply myriad skillful means to help others.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“Who am I?” When the answer to the koan comes, it is a direct knowing of this [hits lectern]. Suddenly you know who and what you really are, what “it” is, wordlessly and without doubt. This is recognizing your nature; this is the awakening we call kensho.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“There is heaven and earth; there is nature and humanity. And all of these are apart from each other and arranged into a hierarchy.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“Through Zen practice we all have the opportunity in this life to change how we see. We have the opportunity to change how we experience our own existence. Leaving aside what you believe or do not believe about what happens to us after death, recognize that right now you have the choice to experience your life differently, in a manner that is saner and less entwined with delusion.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“The true Dharma of the Zen school does not differentiate between monk and layman, man and woman; nor does it choose between high and low, old and young; in it there is neither great nor little, neither acute nor dull energy/motive power—but only the great-hearted will finally and without fail attain. So believe profoundly in this Dharma and seek deliverance with diligence.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“We should see clearly that “teacher” is not a title to crave and indicates no high status. On the contrary, to be a teacher is to be the servant of everyone and to constantly negate oneself. Such is the way to honor our teachers most deeply: by taking up their mantles with gratitude and awe.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“those who learn the Buddhist Law become so tenderhearted, admirable-looking, desireless, and good-natured that they somehow tend to lose the will to react to any unfavorable stimulus as angrily as if saying, ‘Damn it!”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“sometimes the teacher we find most puzzling, harsh, and intimidating—who seems almost an enemy to us—is the one who in fact displays true kindness by not indulging our weaknesses and self-centered preferences. Of course, only if we are superior—having sufficiently strong and correct motivation—will we be able to endure practicing under such a person.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“If there is a single point that is most crucial for us to understand as we begin Zen training, it is just this: the training ground of all buddhas, the true monastery or temple, the pure place in which we ourselves arise as awakened ones, is nowhere else but precisely here.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“The term kozen no ki*, found in Mencius2, refers to the universal energetic force that permeates and binds together the heavens, humankind, and earth.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“each time a text is chanted aloud it is reborn into the world: it is heard, it vibrates, and it echoes through space. The practitioner thus literally chants the texts into existence anew each time they are intoned.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“If we begin to breathe incorrectly in this way, our gross mental activity—the “chatter” of our minds—increases. The energetic system becomes imbalanced, creating a sense of pressure, tightness, and heat in our head and shoulders. Our voices become weaker.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“We must never forget that we are not striving to become buddhas; we are letting go our grip upon everything that separates us from manifesting as buddhas here and now.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“the many practices of Zen have three main functions: 1. To remove obstructions to seeing our true nature 2. To actually point out our nature, causing us to awaken (kensho) 3. To help us clarify, actualize, and embody that awakening”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“the purpose of our training is ultimately to bring all activities of body, speech, and mind into accord with awakening. As embodied beings, our Zen training must manifest an embodied enlightenment within this everyday world.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“All beings walk side by side with us, and we will never again feel alone. This is a path, finally, leading home.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“compassion is in fact an active and true expression of our deepest natural wisdom”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“it is enough to grasp that “things” do not exist as separate things within space at all. They are, again, simply labeled appearances within a web that stretches endlessly in all directions.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“Beneath great doubt there is great awakening. —HAKUIN1”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw, and knew I saw, all things in God, and God in all things.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“I am the One whom I love, and the One whom I love is myself. We are two souls incarnated in one body; if you see me, you see Him, if you see Him, you see us.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“turn around and directly recognize the luminous, boundless nature of one’s own mind. The true esoteric Buddhist teachings are not secretly transmitted mantras* and hidden practices, but rather the direct recognition of one’s true nature”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“The true, highest teaching according to Zen, therefore, is neither sutric nor tantric; it is our own intrinsic wisdom,”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“Bodhisattvayana,* the “bodhisattva vehicle”: those who vow to attain enlightenment in order to liberate all beings.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“the important matter of Advanced Practice is to be undertaken; this is called seizing the claws and fangs of the Dharma cave. (It means) to assist all sentient beings with free unimpeded action, and with unflagging heart to continue to carry on the Bodhisattva practice life after life, world after world, until the last sentient being has been helped to deliverance.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“becoming Buddha. These final words call us not only to give testament to the truth of our nature, which is boundless, but also to fully actualize this awakening, to integrate it, to embody it, and so to realize all the activities of body, speech, and mind in accord with it.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“this turning around of the light of awareness to recognize one’s “original face” marks the entrance into Zen. This is kensho.”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice

“Thinking of neither good nor evil [that is, putting down the habit of dualistic seeing], what is your original face?”
― Meido Moore, The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice