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“In the year of Gyesa (1353), on the seventeenth day of the first month, as I was seated in meditation, Great Master Yongjia’s words in the Jeungdoga (Poems on the Essence of Chan) spontaneously came to me: ‘Do not try to abandon false thoughts, do not try to grasp the True Mind. The real nature of ignorance is Buddha Nature, and the illusive empty body is the Dharma body.’ While focusing on these words, suddenly I experienced no-mind. I had no-thoughts; I was cut off from the past and from the future. When I reached this state, I suddenly saw the entire world within myself.”

“When you have an illness, know it yourself. Once you know it, you should cure it as soon as posisble. If you dislike the cure and avoid facing the illness, when impermanence comes upon you it will be too late for regret”

“The psychological basis of insanity is the same basis for enlightenment. It all depends on whether or not it is accepted and comprehended and ultimately worked with as the key to liberation. If it is not, it becomes, because the realization is still there subconsciously, the cause of denial, repression and ultimately, mental illness*.”

“We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.”

“I’ve told you already that to be inaccessible does not mean to hide or to be secretive. It doesn’t mean that you cannot deal with people either. A hunter uses his world sparingly and with tenderness regardless of whether the world might be things, or plants, or animals, or people, or power. A hunter deals intimately with his world and yet he is inaccessible to that same world. He is inaccessible because he’s not squeezing his world out of shape. He taps it lightly, stays for as long as he needs to, and then swiftly moves away leaving hardly a mark.”

“I know what I am. I am alone in a hostile universe, and I have learned to say, So be it!”

“What seems natural is to think that a warrior who can hold his own in the face of the unknown can certainly face petty tyrants with impunity. But that’s not necessarily so. What destroyed the superb warriors of ancient times was to rely on that assumption. Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to withstand the pressure of the unknowable.”

“Measure the hate you feel now, and the shame. That quantity is your capacity also to love and to feel joy and to have compassion.”

“Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for spiritual joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and spiritual joy you have not yet begun to live.”

“Tolerance is a poor word to describe that spirit of active co-operation and mutual appreciation with which an illumined mind may be expected to respond. The world tolerance carries with it a ring of condescending pity; a mere enduring of mistaken notions in other creeds. Normally one tolerates only when one is unable to eliminate that object tolerated. Or one does so as one tolerates as nuisance; an irritating insect but not worth the bother of chasing out of the window. Such an empty and and formal reaction can hardly be the fruit of so rich an experience as Enlightenment.”

“So, a sage adheres to the tranquil Tao and their pursuit remains soft and weak, adapts to the situation to cope with changes, and always remains behind and never vies to be the first. By remaining soft, weak, tranquil, leisurely and peaceful, they can attack the big and strong and defeat the firm and stable, and no one is able to defeat them.”

“There’s a Buddhist formula of the Bodhisattva for the one who has illumination but who determines to remain in the world: all life is sorrowful. So the Bodhisattva participates with joy in the sorrows of the world. This is the crucified one. The Crucifixion is not something that should not have happened; that’s something that must happen. It’s an important concept.”

“I only wish to be rich in enlightenment though personally poor, generous with virtue though emotionally aloof.”

“I only wish to be rich in enlightenment though personally poor, generous with virtue though emotionally aloof.”

Zen Enlightenment and Zen Work

Liberation