wildflowers in hell

Hey! Liberate yourself with Zen, and you won't be the slave of the bewildered thinking-discriminating process.

A single thought arises
and you are plunged into the Three Realms.
A single thought disappears
and the Three Realms melt away into nothing.
-Bodhidharma

The "one thought" is the origin of the ten thousand things.
Drop this "one thought" and the ten thousand things vanish -- clear sky!
-Takuan Soho

Who?

Who is this nobody?
A dream of snow.
A broken wildflower.
Joy.
Who knows?

No Cut, Nothing Is Cut

There is great suffering in life.
Shakyamuni cut his hair and left home
to find the way beyond it.
What anguish.
Zui, zui, zui; shaku, shaku, shaku!

tathata

Luring a cat with the tip of your tongue --
Cast away all discriminating mind and tell me:
Is It at war? Is It at peace?

satori

When your bow is broken
and all the arrows are gone --
then, shoot with your whole being.
Shoot! Shoot!

The nature of this writing is Absolute Writing;
the nature of this Zen is Absolute Zen.

Hot at dusk, cold in the morning.

Was Shakyamuni A Clear Light Yogin?

When he saw the morning star,
he exclaimed, "All beings' eyes are opened!
There is nobody who is not Buddha."
For a long time he just sat there --
smiling, blissful, contemplating Nirvana.
Huh. Should he go on living in the forest,
Listening to the owls hoot hoot hoot?
Or must he go back out into the shit,
padding the roads on his big bare feet,
to try and get "other people" to experience This, too?

Fudoshin

Stacking up firewood in cold shade under the eaves
as birds sing crazily in the big pine.
Cherry blossoms flying on the spring breeze!
The pure sound of water penetrates everywhere.

There Is Awareness -- Or Is There?

"There is" Awareness. Can you say there "is" anything else? It's just This. Before thinking breaks It down into beings & things, subjects & objects, "there is" the mysterious, shocking immediacy of sensing, mind-ing, etc.

Zen only points to This Here Now -- not as an objective fact, but as the natural state & Absolute Nature of Awareness. One might say that we humans have created our problems by departing from This Here Now in the quixotic attempt to freeze Experiencing-Awareness-Enjoyment into "permanent, graspable, comprehensible names-forms."

Can you grasp a sound? Or a color? Here's a poem for you:

"Thickly growing bamboo stalks
don't obstruct the rushing stream.
A vast, blue mountain
doesn't hold the drifting clouds."

Just As It Is

Everything's here, just as it is,
and can be instantly realized as such.
I stretch out my arm,
& that's It.
I see & hear,
& my seeing & hearing are Not Seeing, Not Hearing,
& that's it, too.
Get it? See it now. Don't blink!
It's all real. There's no problem.

As for the rest --
endless speculation in words,
writing beautiful texts --
that's It, too,
but in a more complicated way,
not so instant & vivid as This-Here-Now.
A bird's voice leaps out of space.
A bamboo pole thunks on rock.

Listen!

The Real Living Truth of Zen

Don't divide yourself up. Do everything naturally, effortlessly from within the Absolute and AS the Absolute.

The fury of the absolute.

The quick sound and the form of the absolute.

THIS is the real living truth of Zen. I know what it is for me. What is it for you?

The Inconceivable State of the Tathagatas

When you enter the Tathagata's Inconceivable State of Suchness, various distinctions disappear. What is "mind"? Who exists to be scornful? What can ever threaten you? Is it possible in this inconceivable state to hold a grudge, to take anything "personally?" Is it possible to "hold" anything in this state? If so, what would it be, and why do you want to hold it? Before this, weren't you just like someone dreaming about a scary tiger? When you wake up, you're not dreaming anymore. Dream, tiger, and dreamer, all gone in a flash! All can realize this. It's as close to you as the nose on your face. Welcome everybody! Be cheerful and gentle with each other. Did any Buddha ever "teach" anything apart from this?

Shake the snow out of your hair, and let's build a snowman.

Naked Sensation Occurring In Bare Space

Touch the back of your head, feeling it with your fingers. Where, now, is your Awareness in relation to your head? To your fingers? To your hair? To your eyelids?

And where is your mind in all this?

Can Awareness really be a sensation of this or that or is it only the spontaneous having of sensations?

Is anything really being "had" by anyone, or is it all just naked sensation occuring in bare space, inexplicably wonderful, like a deep booming bell that contains all notes and all tones and all colors in a single vibration?

I have a humble poem for you:

"Dropping all these stupid labels
that don't stick worth a crap anyway,
Void is suddenly not neither Void nor not-Void.
Wonderful! A demon's hair raising Dharma Realm."

"There Is Nothing Further To Be Said About Him"

"All dharmas are truly non-existent in one sense and not non-existent in another sense. In the first point of view they are although apparently existing, de facto non-existing. In the second point of view they are although apparently non-existing, de facto not non-existing. That is why the Sage is as a hollow void. He cherishes no-knowledge. He remains in this world of impermanence and usefulness, however he abides in the realm of non-action. He is situated within the walls of what is expressible, and yet he lives in the open space that transcends all speech. He is silent and alone, empty and open; his form of existence cannot be covered in words. There remains nothing further to be said about him." - Master Seng Ch'ao

Mumyo Soku Hossho

True reality is not hidden from you -- where would it hide, that which pervades all space, that which is everywhere and everything?

The bamboo flute coming alive in your hands, with your breath, in a sudden clear tone, a sudden thrill as if it had been possessed by your specific vibration of ki energy, as if this flute had become your true voice, the buddha's voice, the living voices of the dead, a living serpent, and then with that one note and one breath all sense of separate self vanished and you were no other than everything, inter-being, moving yet still, all vast and silent and pervasively clear like uncreated fire, then all night seeing hearing touching tasting smelling everything as the Dharmakaya, thisness, unbroken and not even fused because never having fragmented, so untroubled and complete and eerily clear as total darkness --

Given Infinite Universes

Given infinite universes (waves appearing out of the Void), it is inevitable that your consciousness will reappear an infinite number of times, though each time may feel to you like the unique one and only time. It is also possible that you right now are just the selection of a single life out of infinite possibilities, a collapse of wave-function that produces you along with a whole particularized universe out of pure potentiality. Each person and each universe would be a such a collapse. It's also possible that you are actually living simultaneously in this and all other universes as every possible form of sentient being and in each of these limited forms you assume that you are "separate" and "unique" when you're really nothing but Empty Uncreated Consciousness. It's because you're empty and uncreated that you can take on any form at all throughout infinite time and space universes in all possible dimensions.

"Singing Madly in Vine Clothing"

Mugwart springs up together on hillsides and in the wasteland.
The families of orchids grow thickly on the south side of mountains.
The sun progresses like the journey of a flying arrow.
In the cycle of the four seasons, people go to death.
The leaves of the willow open in Spring rain.
The flower of the chrysanthemum withers in the autumn frost.
Autumn cicada cry in the fields.
Crickets sadly chirps behind a curtain.
Pine and cypress break on south passes (i.e., between peaks).
In northern cemeteries white aspen are scattered.
People are born and die in solitude .
(Like) lightening is this impermanence (mujō).
Wild geese and swallows alternately come and go.
The red peach formerly dropped the fragrance of the red flower.
The beautiful is robbed by the enemy named time.
Gray hair is not a lucky omen.
People of the past are not seen today.
People of today, why grasp for longevity?
Heat avoids the blowing wind over rocks.
Coolness follows the mist of the waterfall.
Singing madly in vine clothing
In a house of rocks and pine, drinking (wine) and chanting (verse). [11]
If thirsty one drinks ravine water.
If hungry one eats the food of hazy mist.
White Okera (白朮, a medicinal plant for longevity) conditions the heart and stomach.
Yellow Spirit (黄精, a medicinal plant for longevity) fills up the bones and flesh.
The colorful rainbow shines on the mountain.

-KUKAI/KOBO DAISHI

RIDING A WHITE TIGER ON THE WINDS

"Emotions" are just momentary knots formed in Ki-Energy, the Primordial Resonance that flows through your body like a two-sided waterfall with an infinite vortex in the center. By practicing Haragei or some other form of Ki or Qi training (T'ai Chi, or Qi Gong, anyone? How about some sword practice or shakuhachi playing?), an ordinary dull person becomes capable of untying the knots and dwelling in the clear flow of Energy itself. Such a Tao-imbued Sage is called "one who rides a white tiger on the winds." Dropping all reliance on "thoughts" is the Gateway to this Vastness.

Mind is Dharma

The Lankavatara Sutra says:
"Getting rid of the discriminating mind is Nirvana."
In Nirvana there is nothing to grasp.
Nothing! In the ten thousand directions, nothing.
Hiding a heron in the moonlight,
filling a silver bowl with snow.
You don't have to prove anything to anybody.

Walking Dhyana

Walking meditation. As you walk just be aware of how your perspective moves -- forward but also up and down. Be aware of how everything is felt, attained, realized, all at once in wide-awakeness without any concepts or ideas and without special effort. You are walking. Walking is you. Everything is gone and here and yet it never was here or gone.

Cut Off Your Own Head

Try some "cutting-off-your-own-head" meditation. Here's how. You kneel in Seiza and bring all your attention along with the energetic flow of your breath decisively and all at once, yet softly, with no special effort (like a cut in kendo) down to the tanden (the one-point in the lower belly). This cuts off your head. If any thoughts occur now, they occur like miracles in space, dreams or hallucinations in the middle of the night, nowhere and at no time. Aware, clear, relaxed, and inspired. No problems. No mind. No body, even. Just the sense of breathing and moving around or sitting still. Once you've "cut off your own head" then you can do whatever you like. After this, meditation isn't even meditation. It isn't anything at all.

"The Dharma Killing Tiger Spirit of Zen"

(I originally posted these notes on my "Dharma Killing Tiger" Website in response to ferocious and constant attacks on my Twitter account by a cult group devoted to a particular insane Tulku in the autumn of 2009. The nature of Zen is "either you get it, or you don't." Sadly, they didn't get it.)

नमः समन्त वज्राणां चण्ड महारोषण स्फोटय हूं त्रट हां मां
na maḥ sa maṃ ta va jrā nāṃ caṃ ḍa ma hā ro ṣa ṇa spho ṭa ya hūṃ traṭ hāṃ māṃ
namaḥ samanta vajrānāṃ caṇḍa mahāroṣaṇa sphoṭaya hūṃ traṭ hāṃ māṃ

WELCOME TO MY "CAVE OF ILLUMINATIONS" --
I HOPE YOU WILL FIND SOMETHING HERE TO HELP YOU CLARIFY ORIGINAL MIND

"Dharma-killing Tiger:/stick your head in its maw to ask the question/what is my 'true self' (honshin)"

"a clear bell ringing in the unmoving, empty sky" /this page is dedicated to Clara Llum Roshi

NAMO GURU DEVA DAKINI SARVA SIDDHI HUNG

Please skip the following note if you are here in a state of open and childlike curiosity; read it if you came with a greedy, judging mind

"THE GREAT DRAGON LOVING GIFTED [ONE]", a Sage/Deity born spontaneously from the Womb of the Great Tao, watches over this site both wrathfully and lovingly - this Inconceivable Being is wrathful to the malicious intent of who would try to harm and meddle, loving to the Great Nature, the Golden Vastness we all fundamentally are - OM AH HUNG NAMO GURU DEVA DAKINI SARVA SIDDHI HUNG! Tiger-Spirit Zen has a special inner relationship with this power. Such is the Directly Realized Mind Transmission that omits nothing, not even mountains and clouds.

If your mind is at all impure you will consider this note a threat. If your mind is bewildered you will consider it a bewilderment. If your mind is scheming, you will consider this a scheme. If your mind is doubting, you will doubt it. If your mind is clear, you will see the clarity-- and laugh with joy.


Q/A 1. "WHAT QUALIFIES YOU TO TEACH?"

This page takes a nonreligious, nonsectarian stance: the welcoming nature of true Zen! "Making snowmen, lumps of coal for eyes/carrot for a nose:/Broomstick to sweep away false deluded mind/What fun at night, to hear the wind howling in the deep eaves!" All are welcome, all can learn, all can teach, all can love and rejoice. "People who are obsessed with teachers will never realize It." What is "It"? "It" is just your open original Mind Nature. I am not saying anything especially shocking here. This was said by Bodhidharma and by all the Chinese Zen Masters. "If I am wrong, all the Chan Masters are wrong!/Bodhidharma glares at you with wrathful eyes!" "Sudden" or "Instantaneous" Enlightenment is the Fundamental Way. Clarifying is hard work and comes afterward. Bodhidharma was already Enlightened when he sat down to face a wall for nine years. No teacher can give you this: the Mind-Seal is everywhere. No teacher of any lineage can promise you Enlightenment by their power; Enlightenment will come only when you yourself make the supreme effort to shatter thinking, see the starry sky at noon. Why would you believe anyone who promises to give you what you deeply and inherently already have? Hilarious, right?

Some teachers merely drain their students of both ki-energy and money in order to further their own regrettably very selfish and scheming types of practice. They then use their ki-drained, zombie like "students" as "foot" soldiers to try to harry and bewilder other Dharma teachers of different lineages and traditions, or no-lineages and no-traditions. This is really pathetic! Give up your complicated schemes, make the supreme effort on your own, shatter "thinking" and revel in the freshness of your Supreme Awareness! "Grand weather we're having, isn't it?:/Come out to play!"


THE WAY OF DIRECT REALIZATION OF INTRINSIC MIND VASTER THAN ALL SPACE

Tiger Spirit Says, and I quote:

LOOK INTO YOUR OWN MIND:
INQUIRE OF WHAT YOU REALLY ARE!
MONKS AND TULKUS CAN'T DO THIS FOR YOU
NO MATTER HOW GOOD THE INCENSE SMELLS
OR HOW MANY PRAYER-WHEELS THEY SPIN
OR HOW MANY ZEN STICKS THEY BREAK OVER YOUR STUPID SKULL!
YOU'VE GOT TO SORT THIS SHIT OUT FOR YOURSELF!


Q/A 2 "ARE YOU SAYING YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED? WHAT SHIT! MY TEACHER SAYS YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY BE, THAT YOU'RE JUST A WHEEDLING CON ARTIST!"

I have a humble saying for you: "Instead of asking of me why I am think I am Enlightened/ you should ask yourself why you think you're not Enlightened!" Can your teacher answer that one for you? Thought not. Stare at a wall until your eyes bug out, answer it yourself! "Overnight, water freezes to ice in a tin pail/Aeons of samsara result from trying to harm anybody./Hell-beings are Buddhas, but they have a long way to go to realize it!" Satori is Mind chewing on Mind. That's one tasty radish!

Clarifying your nature takes time. People you meet along the way are very beautiful. Others may try to get in your way a little. The Vast Heart isn't free of dust. It loves dust. It loves to dance with dust motes.

Cure your Mind of the sickness of thinking, and the Original Mind Nature is like this: BONG . . . BONG . . . BONG . . . No beginning, no ending, no middle. Every "Mind moment" is like a great big iron bell bonging in the "Empty Sky" -- complete, total, perfect, why meddle with it? It just resounds and brings joy. It doesn't do anything else.

Don't cling to the past moments. Don't yearn for the "brighter day" tomorrow that will never conform to your made up ideas. It's all just Thus. What's the problem?

When something happens to me I look at it clearly. I don't try to react. I don't pretend anything. I don't take the blame or the praise. I am just right there, yet in another sense ten billion miles away -- bowing to the cold wind in ten directions, hair made of bronze.

Hail Buddhas! Hail ordinary confused people! You're all A-Okay in my book. When you sleep, sometimes your pillow gets dirty.

Shake the snow out of your hair and wake up, okay?

The Tiger-Spirit of Zen says:

Prajna (the Spontaneous Cognition of Enlightened Mind) effortlessly takes care of itself and all appearances. What do you think is making that mountain appear over there, or your body right here? Awakeness has never not been awake at any time. Who do you think is hearing those wind chimes right at this instant? Absurd fictions and delusions need no antidote because they are dreamlike, completely impermanent and unreal. The Buddha's golden eyes and lips are always smiling in the temple's incense scented darkness. Since when has anyone's dreaming ever been a problem?

SHAKUHACHI ZEN

The phenomenal world is simply the Absolute -- the Hua T'ou -- chasing its own tail.

In itself it is empty, nothing. Empty and blissful, a dream. BONG goes the mouth of the bell. Or did your ears just go BONG! In any case, there it is. It's just like this. BONG BONG BONG. The Hua T'ou jumps in the sea and laughs, swimming around, floating on its back like a sea otter, gazing up at the vast empty blue sky.

Grasping at "it" with mental and emotional energy causes "dukkha." Why? Because there is nothing to grasp. Grasping at nothing makes you feel crazy, and you get more and more agitated. Finally, desperate and wild-eyed, you run to a Teacher or Guru to save you from so-called ignorance.

Grasping at the Absolute -- Buddha Nature, Luminous Mind, Original Self -- is an even more mystifying idea. It also causes great "dukkha," though sometimes the suffering goes unrecognized even by the grasper. Why? Maybe because so-called religious people tend to inflict suffering much more than they suffer it. Mistaking a one-sided opinion for ultimate bliss, they turn hard, intellectual and arrogant. Don't be like that. Be like warm, wet clay.

Zen actually means not grasping, not holding anything, neither the so-called phenomenal nor the so-called Absolute, let go of Names and Forms completely, then let go of the act of letting go! Shatter thinking.

Go beyond grasping. Totally beyond. All the way to the Starry Sky.

The Energetic realm is actually void and still. Yet phenomena arise, images appear, everything happens quite naturally. What's the problem? What exists to have a roaring dispute about?

Shake the frost out of your hair. You're awake. Clearly awake. Even in dreams, always awake.

"One note on the bamboo flute, Complete Enlightenment."

BO-JI SO-WA-KA

SATORI OF THE WILD GEESE

"Look, wild geese."

"I don't see them. Where have they gone?"

"Oh. They've flown away!"

"They've flown away? Is that your story?"

(grabs and twists nose violently)

"OW! OW!"

"And yet you said they've flown away!"

THE STARRY SKY HAS NO ILLUSIONS - or, WANDER ALONE LIKE THE RHINOCEROS

"The universe" gets born, grows up, grows old, and dies -- in and as every Awareness-imbued being that gets born, grows up, grows old and dies. Face up to it! Don't try to shed your responsibility for making this shit work onto the bowed and weary shoulders of a Guru, or still less the Dharma Itself! Your Guru is alone, in the beautiful and terrifying sense of being an entire universe. You are alone in exactly the same beautiful and terrifying sense. This is why you and the Guru are one. The Starry Sky has no illusions.

Pure Awareness is Non-Dual.
Try it for yourself and see.
At the instant of hearing a sound completely,
there is no instant, no sound, no hearing, no completely.

Pure Awareness is Non-Dual.
Try it for yourself and hear
At the instant of seeing a sight completely,
there is no instant, no sight, no seeing, no completely.

Great Tiger Mother Durga (Shakti)
will wake up you
if she wants you to be awake.
Not even doing the most intense "Zen"
will get you a result She refuses.
You can do nothing,
absolutely nothing,
to "wake yourself up"
lacking the Energy she gives.
But the desire to be awake
proves you already have some.
All you can do now
is ask for more
and keep your eyes and ears open.

When you meet a "human being" these days
chances are you are meeting either an egoistic sheath
made of delusional "thinking"
yet hollow inside like bamboo
or a Hungry Ghost
or a Hell-Demon thirsty for blood.
Sometimes, though,
you can still meet a melancholy spirit
in search of pleasure and love
cut off in a past life.
Or, rarer still, a Guru,
calm and pure, vibrant,
loving eyes ablaze like the Sky --

Which are you?

All the Zen Masters of the past
taught an Ungraspable Zen.
To call it a Dark Void
or a Brilliant Luminosity
is to miss "it" completely.

When you do deep Nonconceptual Meditation
which is just a fancy term for Zen,
you'll soon find that your hair is connected to your scalp,
your scalp is connected to your skull,
your eyes are connected to your brain,
your ears are connected to your feet,
and all your body is connected to space,
and sights and smells and tastes and sounds and skin-sensations
are all fresh and mysterious.

Oddly, you will not find
that you are connected to words,
to a Doctrine,
to a Teacher,
to some Buddha outside in the world.

All Night the Rain

Physical stuff may not be what it seems.
In us it has become miraculously self aware.
This clear shining mind itself is Buddha.
Hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, touching --
the Great Essence is always pure and direct.

Cure the sickness of thinking,
and the starry sky appears at noon.
There is no Ego to discard,
only thoughts that confuse True Being.

Buddha takes his seat and begins to teach. Hear it?
All night the rain sings a deep and beautiful song.

"Why I Started Doing Zen"

After my great spontaneous kensho,
I waited ten years before doing any practice.
Maybe this was a mistake, maybe not.

During those years, about a dozen times
my mind suddenly cleared
in the midst of some trivial activity.

All thinking stopped --
everything was open, boundless,
like a deep bell ringing in empty space.

No sense of body or mind left at all,
just infinity, timeless and pure.
Yet all phenomena were right there,
vibrant with energy, resonating, bright.

One day, when I was feeling a dark anguish
because a person quite close to me had died,
by chance I struck a spoon on the edge of a wine glass,
and the ringing woke me up again.

I turned to stone and the stone shattered.
I turned to ice, and the ice melted.
I was on a windy mountaintop,
bowing to the ten directions.
I was a pine tree shooting energy into the blue sky.
I was the sea crashing on itself.
The "thought" -divided Universe dissolved
like a sugar cube in hot tea.

Dazzling in all directions,
nothing to be found but sheer wonder:
profound Body-stillness beneath all movement,
simple Mind-truth beyond all appearances!

Shortly after this I started doing Zen.

Let Knowing Go

Let knowing go and be not-knowing. By not holding onto anything, by keeping the mind in its unborn state, liberated from all "thoughts" and cravings, one secures the essential mystery in the no-place where it has always been, and by so sheltering the mystery in a limitless state of no-thought and no-mind one will pass effortlessly through every "stage" and finally attain perfect sambodhi. "Everything perishes as soon as it arises." The Buddha is the absolute now, flashing like an infinitely sharp sword. Mind Itself is the only Dharma.

Ki

Signs and marks are Ki.

Ki is also the energy of desire. Its resonance.

What is Ki? Nowhere. Mysterious. But not nothing.

"Not." But not zero -- not absolutely nothing at all.

Manifesting the Mysterious Deep Essence of Mind is Zen

Getting rid of unreal fabrications,
this is the practice --
seeing the essence of mind directly,
this is "realization."
But as Master Dogen said,
practice and realization are really one and the same.

Satori is just the direct seeing of mind-essence, naked.
Seeing also that it is the essence of "phenomena."
This can be shattering, or it can just be glorious.

Once realized, there is no going back to "thoughts,"
but there is still a practice of going deeper.
The practice is the continuation of "realizing,"
and further realizing leads to more practice.

To get rid of fabrications one concentrates the mind.
To concentrate the mind one relies on its essence.
The Bodhi mind starts growing and demands more effort,
the effort leads to clearer realization of Bodhi.

All the Zen masters continued to work on developing realization.
They read sutras and koan collections and wrote commentaries;
they sat in deep meditation both day and night,
following the example of Bodhidharma.
In the end there is no end to "Realization."
The first moment is bound up with the last.
Devoid of unreal thoughts, ordinary mind and Buddha mind are indistinguishable.

Spreading the Light of Zen is always a natural clear thing to do.

Once Upon a Time on Twitter

Once upon a time on Twitter,
a group of weird American Tibetan Buddhists
began systematically hunting down,
loudly debating,
and anxiously trying to discredit
all "unqualified teachers."

That's it.
That's all I've got.
That's the joke.

ZEN IS THE VOID- FLOWER OF VULTURE PEAK

Satori is an experience within Thought-Generated Duality.
Enlightenment is the Heart Essence of Emptiness beyond all Duality.

If you claim to be Enlightened
you are wrong, unless you say everything is,
because you are claiming something objective,
something that exists within time,
something that belongs to delusion.

Attaining no self, no mind -- Muga Mushin.
This is the wisdom of Zen Practice.
Sinking below thoughts into no thought.
Shedding mind to be no-mind.
Becoming no-form, boundless, still.

Wrongly, it has been said
that this means the Ultimate for Zen practice
must be no mind, no thought, no form --
a boundless, still emptiness, total Void.

Not so.

No-thought clears away dualistic thoughts,
allowing True Thought - Manjusri's Blazing Wisdom -- to appear.
No-mind sheds calculating, stupid mind
allowing True Mind -- the Buddha Mind -- to appear.
No form drops away all illusory forms,
allowing True Form -- the Dharma Kaya -- to appear

Zen sheds all grasping,
so the egoistic sheath that says "I"
cannot claim to be Enlightened.

No thoughts, no mind, no form
means all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas appear
all at once, radiantly, throughout infinite space
like flowers raining from a clear blue sky.

Samsavana

The idea that there is even so much as a hair's breadth difference
between the Phenomenal and the Absolute,
or between Samsara and Nirvana,
is a crazy delusion born of blindness.
Fortunately, the blindness is momentary.
Illusions take care of themselves by disappearing.
The disappearing is also illusory,
and this illusory disappearing all by itself disappears.
Finally, even the sense that there ever was illusion disappears,
and this is just the Clear Form of Ultimate Bliss appearing
exactly in the no-place where it has always been.

To say that "you" want to be able to see the Absolute clearly
is like a cataract saying it wants to see forms and colors.
The cataract cannot; only the eye can.
The egotistic sense is just like a cataract,
it causes blurriness, dulling of clear sight.
It isn't the eye, it is just the eye's affliction.
Remove the cataract, and the eye sees clearly.
Shatter "thinking," and the blue sky appears at noon.
Mountains are mountains Water is water.
Avalokitsvera's subtle form pervades all time and space.

JOSHU IS CRANKY

What is an "experience"?
What is a "teaching"?
What is a "dream"?
What is "awakening?

Who exists anywhere,
or at any time
to have anything like these?

Just stop talking nonsense!

Who Is Your Teacher?

-Who is your Teacher?

-Today a mountain taught me
that everything is clear,
vast and brilliant as empty space,
and the True Form of Nirvana,
dwelling in the Heart of Emptiness,
isn't transitory at all
nor does it suffer.
It's all just exactly like this.

What's the Meaning of Being You Right Now?

What is this blog? It's just words. What's the meaning of the words? What's the meaning of being you right now? My blog has words in it to point to the direct nature of being you right now, which is a changing nature, everything changing as fast as in a dream, nothing exactly the same from moment to moment, let alone from last year, or the first cherry blossom season during the reign of the third Tokugawa Shogun, yet there is clear awareness which doesn't change -- has it ever changed? Can you perceive THIS mind-awareness shifting and changing the way you can see THAT cloud shifting and changing as the wind drives it East? Can perception grasp perceiving? Is it possible to hold empty space?

Does Mind Have a Function?

Mind as such has no functions. To have functions it would have to be a machine.

But Mind-Nature is not mechanistic.

Does a bird have functions? Some claim as much.

But Mind is not even a particular kind of being. It's the container of all beings whatsoever.

Mind in its essence has no functions, no shape, no color, no form.

It's the Way of Mysterious Brightness, Obscure Lightening.

Drop the inane and mechanistic conceptual "discursivity" that right now has your Mind gripped in its talons. Come out and play in the Clear Sky of Open Awareness that is Zen!

Demons Walking on Lotus Flowers in Space

You've landed on a good site to absorb some of the Non Conceptual Yoga of Intrinsic Awareness that in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and China was and is sometimes called "Zen."

Not to be confused with Zafu-Zombie-ism, Shaven Jugheads, or guys who look like Dr. Phil in black robes uttering supposedly profound truths about Mindfulness. If that's what you're here for, I can't help you!

Many Asian cultures once had a "preverbal" or even "nonverbal" bias about Zen training, as about much else. At those times and in those places, it would have been difficult to get too tangled up in the nets of conceptuality.

But for us the risk is extreme, as we pose every question in conceptual terms -- in terms of a particular idea of "is" or "is not."

This Great Yoga of Zen cannot be "taught" as such, yet you may need someone who has entered deeply into it to help you unveil and explore its true (and maybe even sometimes, from some points of view, terrifying) profundity.

The time to get started is always "Now." For Awareness, this "Now" never changes. Even the past and future are in this "Now" and can only be experienced through the amazing wonder of It.

This "Now" means there is really no beginning at all. By the time you've begun you're already Buddha.

But, warns Huang-Po, "If you cling to so much as a single particle of is or is not, even if you walk on lotus flowers in space your so-called path does not differ from a demon's."

Writing is Zen

Writing is Zen. Zen is writing.

Playing with the energy of signs and marks in the Void. Spectacular!

"Once you've written it, drop it away!
Shreds of paper, ink stains --
giving way to crazy cherry blossoms and the spring breeze."

What Is It Right Now? Quick!

Try to be "fully present in the present moment."

See?

You can't be! Or at least, not as someone trying to be. Presentness is No-mind.

"Knock knock, who's there?
A thousand kalpas of ice.
A billion kalpas of fire."