“Rational thinking is not complete thinking. The word ration means to break up into pieces. As long as you think rationally you see the world as a puzzle made up of confusing little pieces that need to be reassembled. Once you stop thinking rationally and begin to think wholly, you will see that there are no pieces and that the world is not really a puzzle to be reassembled.
It is only a trick of the mind that disassembles an otherwise complete picture of the world. We look at the pieces and wonder why it is broken. It isn’t broken. It is the lens of the mind that is defective. It’s like looking through a broken window and wondering why there is a crack in the sky.”
“We tend to make judgments about what is holy and what is ordinary. In truth everything is holy, this means complete. Each object of our attention is perfect in its own natural way. All things are precious and all life is sacred. This is why chicken makes tasty soup and wooden Buddha’s make good firewood.”
“Stop worrying about becoming enlightened and start acting as if you already are. Enlightenment comes from action, not from worry.”
“If you feel you need a teacher to confirm your enlightenment, you obviously haven’t gotten there yet”
Truth
“People say they are looking for truth, what they really want to find is
others that will agree with them. Seeking comfort in a corporate delusion,
they believe they can ignore reality. Truth is what’s actually happening,
what people say has very little to do with this. To find truth, all people
need to do is open their minds and look at the world without opinion. When
it comes to opinions, mine is ever bit as worthless as yours.”
“Learn from your teachers for as long as they do not contradict what you have already learned. But when they begin contradicting what you know to be true, thank them for their teaching then seek others. If they insist that they are somehow authorities, invite them to go with you.”
“I have often compared our attachments to the chains carried by the Ghost of Christmas Past. But, I think Master Rinzai said it best: “There are Zen students who are in chains and they go to a teacher who simply adds more chains. Unable to discern one chain from another they are delighted!”
“I had a student who once told me that he was worried about dying. I told him not to worry about dying, because death is inevitable, to worry about it just causes ulcers.”
“People think we are all separate but what separates us from each other and everything else, is like a fence that divides two yards. On one side of the fence is our yard and on the other side is our neighbor’s yard. The fence is our fence and it is their fence, but from our side we see it as ours and from their side they see it as theirs. The fence connects the yards just as much as it divides them.”
“Teaching Zen is like selling water at the stream bank, those who buy it really don’t know where it comes from.”