Originally posted by vistesdLove all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things, and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
—Ernest Hemingway
--William Shakespeare
The Master said, “You can’t seem to stop your mind from racing around everywhere seeking something. That’s why the patriarch said, ‘Hopeless fellows—using their heads to look for their heads!’ You must right now turn your light around and shine it on yourselves, not go seeking somewhere else. Then you will understand that in body and mind you are no different from the patriarchs and buddhas, and that there is nothing to do. Do that and you may speak of ‘getting the Dharma.’
“...At this time, having found it impossible to refuse, I have been addressing you, putting forth a lot of trashy talk. But make no mistake! In my view, there are in fact no great number of principles to be grasped. If you want to use the thing, then use it. If you don’t want to use it, then let it be.”
—Lin-chi, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi, translated by Burton Watson.
The Master ascended the hall and said, “Here in this lump of red flesh there is a ‘true man of no rank.’ Constantly he goes in and out the gates of your face. If there are any of you who don’t know this for a fact, then look! Look!”
—Lin-chi, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi, translated by Burton Watson
Most of us (myself included at times) are like children: we want something or somebody to give us what a small child wants from its parents. We want to be given peace, attention, comfort, understanding. If our life won’t give us this, we think, “A few years of Zen practice will do this for me.” No, they won’t. That’s not what practice is about. Practice is about opening ourselves so that this little “I” that wants and wants and wants and wants and wants—that wants the whole world to be its parents, really—grows up.
—Charlotte Joko Beck (quoted in Essential Zen, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Tensho David Schneider)
The monks at a Japanese training temple had questioned a student of Suzuki Roshi’s about the validity of the monk’s ordination. They said that it wasn’t real, because he hadn’t gone through the proper ceremony, hadn’t done any monk’s begging, and hadn’t had his head shaved or received robes until he arrived in Japan.
“So, am I a monk or not a monk?” he asked Suzuki.
“Things go the way the mind goes,” Suzuki told him. “If you think you’re a monk, you’re a monk. If you don’t think so, you’re not a monk.”
—To Shine One Corner of the World: Moments with Shunryu Suzuki, edited by David Chadwick.
