It was my first sesshin and, before the first day was over, I was convinced I couldn't make it. My husband’s turn for dokusan came that afternoon. He asked Suzuki Roshi to see me instead.
“This is all a mistake," I told Roshi. "I can't do this; I just came to be with my husband."
“There is no mistake," he insisted. “You may leave, of course, but there's no place to go."
Fran Tribe (RIP), Tassajara, 1967
Quote and image via Cuke
There was a period last fall when every time I began to write, I went into a perfect blank-minded euphoria, where I stared out the window and felt a love for and oneness with everything. I sat in this state, sometimes for the whole time I had planned to write. I thought to myself, "Lo and behold, I am becoming enlightened! This is much more important than writing, and besides this is where all writing leads." After this had gone on for quite a while, I asked Katagiri Roshi about it. He said, "Oh, it's just laziness. Get to work."
Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones
Most people feel cozy enough in samsara. They do not really have the genuine aspiration to go beyond samsara; they just want samsara to be a little bit better. It is quite interesting that “samsara” became the name of a perfume. And it is like that. It seduces us into thinking that it is okay: samsara is not so bad; it smells nice! The underlying motivation to go beyond samsara is very rare, even for people who go to Dharma centers. There are many people who learn to meditate and so forth, but with the underlying motive that they hope to make themselves feel better. And if it ends up making them feel worse, instead of realizing that this may be a good sign, they think there is something wrong with Dharma. We are always looking to make ourselves comfortable in the prison house. We might think that if we get the cell wall painted a pretty shade of pale green, and put in a few pictures, it won’t be a prison any more.
-Jetsünma Tenzin PalmoText and pic lifted straight from her Facebook page
Those CEOs and managing directors at banks with their millions … They deserve our pity, really. They are the victims of their own twisted minds. And it will bring them down. Whether you are a paedophile or pervert or control freak or psychopath; sooner or later a twisted mind will turn on itself.
Sad and interesting: The Joris Luyendijk banking blog
Denk nooit dat je zazen kan zitten! Dat is een grote vergissing! Zazen zit zazen!
Shunryu Suzuki, geciteerd op Cuke.
Beings long to free themselves from misery,
But misery itself they follow and pursue.
They long for joy, but in their ignorance
Destroy it, as they would a hated enemy.
But those who fill with bliss
All beings destitute of joy,
Who cut all pain and suffering away
From those weighed down with misery,
Who drive away the darkness of their ignorance -
What virtue could be matched with theirs?
What friend could be compared with them?
What merit is there similar to this?
Text: Shantideva, Bodhicaryavatara, 1.28-30
Image: Seol Min Sunim, White-Robed Water-Moon Avalokiteshvara
Because of this practice, there are the sun, the moon and stars. Because of this practice, there are the great earth and the open sky. Because of this practice there are body, mind and their environs. Because of this practice, there are the four great elements and the five skandhas. Continuous practice is not necessarily something people in the world love, but it should be the true place of return for everyone. Because of the continuous practice of all buddhas of the past, present, and future, all buddhas of the past, present and future are actualized.
Eihei Dogen, The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, p. 332
Fast food involves both hideously violent economies of scale and sad, sad end users who volunteer to be taken advantage of.
Willy Staley - A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage
"Living in the dharma means we are constantly bouncing. This is our practice. In zazen you experience birth and death directly. Every single moment is birth and death, bounce, birth and death, bounce, constantly working. This is why bodhisattvas practice constantly. Continual practice means you're vivified, your life is really alive in the realm of dharma."
Dainin Katagiri - Each Moment is the Universe
Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb's-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother's soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak's thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.
David Foster Wallace - The Pale King
I never tire of birdsong and sky and weather. I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.
I believe the people who make the world are the ones who do not believe in reality, for example, for centuries, the Christians.
“Our practice is not to clear up the mystery.
It is to make the mystery clear.”
-Robert Aitken Roshi, 1917-2010
Iets om over na te denken, volgende keer als je Google, Gmail, Blogger, Facebook, Hyves, Skype, Twitter, Hotmail, Digg, MySpace etc. gebruikt.[I]f you do not pay for it you are the product being sold.
I write so that I won’t be a passive victim – or ungrateful recipient – of what the world throws me. I write to talk back to the world. I also write to clarify problems for myself. I’m often troubled by a fleeting feeling. I track it down and try to understand it by writing.
Another feature of the recent pony collecting scene is the making and selling of custom ponies. This is an art form in which common or poor condition ponies (called bait) are redesigned according to the vision of the artist. Customizers may paint new symbols on the pony, change their body color, paint their eyes, and re-thread their manes and tails with a different color of nylon hair. Some customs can become very elaborate, using sculpted parts, specially made wings, rhinestones, and/or detailed painting all over the pony. Customs have found a sizable market on eBay alongside regular pony sales but it is typically not a profitable enterprise. Artists are often commissioned by collectors and non-collectors alike to make a unique pony.
"Here’s a species that, of its own accord, has gone down an evolutionary cul-de-sac. It’s not a strong species. Unfortunately it’s big and cute and it’s a symbol of the WWF, and we pour millions of pounds into panda conservation. I reckon we should pull the plug. Let them go, with a degree of dignity."
