If you wish to bring the two matters of birth and death to conclusion, and pass directly beyond the Triple-world, you must penetrate the koan “This very mind is Buddha.”
Tell me: What is its principle? How is it that this very mind is Buddha? And “this very mind” just what is it like?
Investigate it coming. Investigate it going. Investigate it thoroughly and exhaustively. All you have to do is keep this koan constantly in your thoughts.
~ Daito (1282-1334)
After fresh rain on the empty mountain
Comes evening and the cold of autumn.
The full moon burns through the pines.
A brook transparent over the stones.
Bamboo trees crackle as washerwomen go home
And lotus flowers sway as a fisherman’s
Boat slips downriver.
Though the fresh smell of grass is gone,
A prince is happy in these hills
~ Wang Wei (699-759)
Those who wear the patched robe of a Zen wayfarer should be completely serious about taking death and birth as their business.
You should work to melt away the obstructions caused by conditioned knowledge and views and interpretive understanding, and penetrate through to a realization of the great causal condition communicated and bequeathed by the buddhas and ancestral teachers.
Don’t covet name and fame. Step back and turn to reality, until your practical understanding and virtue are fully actualized.
~ Yuanwu (1063-1135)
One who strives to make Truth home
May at times be lonely.
One who fawns on the powerful and influential
Will know the chill of solitude for ages.
The superior person peers deeply into
Transcendent reality,
And thinks about the body
They will have after this one is gone.
Rather should one suffer a temporary loneliness
Than the solitary chill of ages.
~ Hung Ying-ming
The everyday way is fine for me.
Like vines wrapped in mist along rocky ravines,
I am free in a vast wilderness,
Drifting, drifting with my friends, the white clouds.
There is a path, but it does not lead
To the world of men
Mindless, there is nothing to arouse my thoughts.
Alone at night, I sit on a bed of stone,
While the round moon climbs up Cold Mountain.
~ Han shan
@rookie54 saidYeah well you obviously ain't 🐝 to Redcliffe
I don’t go out to wander around
I stay at home here in Miura
While time flows on through
The unbounded world
In the awakened eye
Mountains and rivers completely
Disappear.
The eye of delusion looks out upon
Deep fog and clouds.
~ Muso Soseki (1275-1351)
@rookie54 saidKarma is instant.
After fresh rain on the empty mountain
Comes evening and the cold of autumn.
The full moon burns through the pines.
A brook transparent over the stones.
Bamboo trees crackle as washerwomen go home
And lotus flowers sway as a fisherman’s
Boat slips downriver.
Though the fresh smell of grass is gone,
A prince is happy in these hills
~ Wang Wei (699-759)
No lag
@karoly-aczel saidKarma, like the Christian 'reap what you sow,' is about consequences, often at a future point in time.
Karma is instant.
No lag
