Χωρίς μονοπάτι

"Το Ζεν δεν είναι ένας δρόμος με ξεκάθαρα όρια. Δεν έχει κανόνες, αλλά ούτε και απαγορεύσεις. Δεν σου λέει ποια βήματα να ακολουθήσεις επακριβώς για να βρεις τον εαυτό σου. Το Ζεν έχει χαρακτηριστεί σαν Δρόμος που δεν είναι Δρόμος. Ή σαν δρόμος χωρίς μονοπάτι."

('ΖΕΝ, Η ΖΩΝΤΑΝΗ ΣΙΩΠΗ'  από την Ελένη Ιεροδιακόνου, Εκδόσεις Οσελότος)

 

Emptying your cup

"Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself: 

"It is overfull. No more will go in!"

''Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

(''A cup of tea'' from 101 ZEN STORIES and ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki)

WHAT RETURN TO THE SOURCE MEANS

''In the origin all is pure and there is no dust. Collected in the peace of Wu-wei she beholds the coming and going of all things. No longer deluded by shifting phantom pictures, she has nothing further to learn.''

(a comment taken from TALKS BY THE VENERABLE MYOKYO-NI, The Zen Center, London, 1988)

Life challenges and Zen

"In my early years of practice, aglow from some opening experiences and immersion in Koan study, I took a sabbatical from university teaching to live at a zen center. The first night, turning on the light room in the recently purchased old building, I found the place blanketed with thousands of roaches. I ran out and slept in the meditation hall. The next day, wondering how to proceed, I looked to one of zen's precepts; 'Do not kill'. Hmmm, does that apply to roaches?

(from ''Untrain your Parrot'' by Elizabeth Hamilton, Shambala 2007)

Ο ''λόγος'' και το ''ἕν''

 ''Ὁ ἄναξ, οὗ τὸ μαντεῖόν ἐστι τὸ ἐν Δελφοῖς, οὔτε λέγει οὔτε κρύπτει ἀλλὰ σημαίνει''

Αποδίδεται στον Ηράκλειτο

Disguise

I live in disguise

I move from station to station

My dreams smash like glass acts

in jagged formation

like the fool that I am I swallow the slivers

and spit dead empty songs in the face of

miss givers.

 

Memories get pulled like teeth from the shelf

I look in the mirror but can't see myself

The one that I can't see is the one that I am

The one that I can't be is the one in demand.

HENRY ROLLINS

Soto Zen and Enlightenment

''Dogen Zenji, the great thirteenth-century master, regarded as the founder of the Japanese Soto School of Zen says: 'Practice and Enlightenment are not two.'

Reading this, many people believe that Dogen Zenji's Zen is a Zen that does not require an enlightenment experience. To state my conclusion first, such a belief is a mistake. I finally believe that the most important matter of Buddhism is to attain enlightenment.

The point by which Zen Buddhism is differentiated from other religions or philosophies and from all kinds of theories, is precisely this: the attainment of enlightenment."

(''ON ZEN PRACTICE, BODY BREATH AND MIND'',

Revised by Wendy Egyoku Nakao and John Daishin Buksbazen,

Foreword by Robert Aitken. WISDOM PUBLICATIONS, BOSTON)