...

Difficult neighbors!
Burning apartment towers!
Solitary nature lovers
Should try to up their game.

By which I mean to say:
Traffic hazards and shabby stores
Are just as good as
This or that.

The ancient masters slept without dreams and woke up without worries.
Their food was plain. Their breath came from deep inside them.

They didn’t cling to life, weren’t anxious about death.
They emerged without desire and reentered without resistance.

They came easily; they went easily.
They didn’t forget where they were from; they didn’t ask where they were going.

They took everything as it came, gladly, and walked into death without fear.
They accepted life as a gift, and they handed it back gratefully,

~ Chuang-tzu

You cannot describe it or draw it,
You cannot praise it enough or perceive it.
No place can be found in which
To put the Original Face;
It will not disappear even
When the universe is destroyed.

~ Mumon (13th c.)

Let go of all your previous imaginings, opinions, interpretations,
worldly knowledge, intellectualism, egotism, and competitiveness;
become like a dead tree, like cold ashes.

When you reach the point where feelings are ended, views are gone,
and your mind is clean and naked, you open up to Zen realization.

After that it is also necessary to develop consistency,
keeping the mind pure and free from adulteration at all times.

Cut through resolutely, and then your state will be peaceful.
When you cannot be included in any stage,
whether of sages or of ordinary people,
then you are like a bird freed from its cage.

~ Yuan wu (1063-1135)

@rookie54 said
Let go of all your previous imaginings, opinions, interpretations,
worldly knowledge, intellectualism, egotism, and competitiveness;
become like a dead tree, like cold ashes.

When you reach the point where feelings are ended, views are gone,
and your mind is clean and naked, you open up to Zen realization.

After that it is also necessary to develop consistency, ...[text shortened]... ages or of ordinary people,
then you are like a bird freed from its cage.

~ Yuan wu (1063-1135)

The Way is arrived at by enlightenment.
The first priority is to establish resolve;
It is no small matter to step directly
From the bondage of the ordinary person
Into transcendent experience of the realm of sages.
It requires that your mind be
Firm as steel to cut off the flow of birth and death,
Accept your original real nature,
Not see anything at all as existing
Inside or outside yourself,
So all actions and endeavors
Emerge from the fundamental.

~ Yuan wu (1063-1135)

One instant is eternity;
When you see through this one instant,
You see through the one who sees.

~ Wu-men (1183-1260)

It is all pervading, spotless beauty;
It is the self-existence and uncreated
Absolute
Then how can it even be a matter
Of discussion that the real Buddha
Has no mouth and preaches no dharma,
Or that real hearing requires no ears,
For who could hear it?
Ah, it is a jewel beyond all price.

~ Huang-po (d. 850)

When you are free and independent,
You are not bound by anything,
So you do not seek liberation.

Consummating the process of Zen,
You become unified.

Then there are no mundane things
Outside of Buddhism,
And there is no Buddhism outside of mundane things.

~ Yuan wu (1063-1135)


https://www.dailyzen.com/

The body does not know
How to discourse or to listen to a discourse.
This which is unmistakably perceivable
Right where you are,
Absolutely identifiable yet without form,
This is what listens to the discourse.

~ Rinzai (d.867)

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”

― Max Planck, The New Science

Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.

~ Rumi

Till now you seriously
Considered yourself
To be the body and to have a form.
That is the primal ignorance
Which is the root cause of all trouble.

~ Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)

Because you grasp labels and slogans,
You are hindered by those labels and slogans,
Both those used in ordinary life and those
Considered sacred.
Thus they obstruct your perception of objective truth,
And you cannot understand clearly.

~ Linji (d. 867)

The Mountain's Friend

The broad arms of this dusty world
Hold few true friends.
One feels the pangs of loneliness, and see
How cold the autumn air becomes!

But no, behold your search is ended here,
For countless mountains,
Blue afar, and green ones near,
Remain your friends eternally.

~ Jakushtsu Genko Zenji (1290–1368)