Originally posted by vistesdNice quote. I met her once when doing a very brief investigation of Zen. Where does she fit in the Zen world? Mainstreamer? Visionary? Other?
Most of us (myself included at times) are like children: we want something or somebody to give us what a small child wants from its parents. We want to be given peace, attention, comfort, understanding. If our life won’t give us this, we think, “A few years of Zen practice will do this for me.” No, they won’t. That’s not what practice is about. Practic ...[text shortened]... ko Beck (quoted in Essential Zen, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Tensho David Schneider)
When it comes to shaping one’s personal behavior, all the rules of morality, as precise as they may be, remain abstract in the face of the infinite complexity of the concrete.
—Hans Urs von Balthasar, Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa (from the Foreword).
"Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves... grace without discipleship... Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for... It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Deep in the mountains, the great temple bell is struck. You hear it reverberating in the morning air, and all thoughts disappear from your mind. There is nothing that is you; there is nothing that is not you. There is only the sound of the bell, filling the whole universe.
Springtime comes. You see the flowers blossoming, the butterflies flitting about; you hear the birds singing, you breathe in the warm weather. And your mind is only springtime. It is nothing at all.
You visit Niagara and take a boat to the bottom of the Falls. The downpouring of water is in front of you and around you and inside you, and suddenly you are shouting: YAAAAAA!
In all these experiences, outside and inside have become one. This is Zen mind.
. . .
If you want to understand the truth, you must let go of your situation, your condition, and all your opinions. Then your mind will be before thinking. “Before thinking” is clear mind. Clear mind has no inside and no outside. It is just like this. “Just like this” is the truth.
—Seung Sahn Soen-sa (Zen master)
What is important is one moment of clear mind. Clear mind is before thinking. If you experience this mind, you have already attained enlightenment. If you experience this for a short time—even for one moment—this is enlightenment. All the rest of the time you may be thinking, but your shouldn’t worry about this thinking. It is just your karma. You must not be attached to this thinking. You must not force it to stop or force clear mind to grow. It will grow by itself, as your karma gradually disappears.
Clear mind is like the full moon in the sky. Sometimes clouds come and cover it, but the moon is always behind them. Clouds go away, then the moon shines brightly. So don’t worry about clear mind: it is always there. When thinking comes, behind it is clear mind. When thinking goes, there is only clear mind. Thinking comes and goes, comes and goes. You must not be attached to the coming or the going.
—Seung Sahn Soen-sa (a Korean Zen master)
In the beginning the Word
was; he lived in God
and possessed in him
his infinite happiness.
That same Word was God,
who is the Beginning;
he was in the beginning
and had no beginning.
He was himself the Beginning
and therefore had no beginning.
The Word is called Son;
he was born of the Beginning
who had always conceived him,
giving of his substance always,
yet always possessing it.
And thus the glory of the Son
was the Father's glory,
and the Father possessed
all his glory in the Son.
As the lover in the beloved
each lived in the other,
and the Love that unites them
is one with them,
their equal, excellent as
the One and the Other:
Three Persons, and one Beloved
among all three.
One love in them all
makes of them one Lover,
and the Lover is the Beloved
in whom each one lives.
For the being that the three possess
each of them possesses,
and each of them loves
him who bears this being.
Each one is this being,
which alone unites them,
binding them deeply,
one beyond words.
Thus it is a boundless Love that unites them,
for the three have one love
which is their essence;
and the more love is one
the more it is love.
—San Juan de la Cruz
“Any body of knowledge is built from one datum. That is its stable datum. Invalidate it and the entire body of knowledge falls apart. A stable datum does not have to be the correct one. It is simply the one that keeps things from being a confusion and on which others are aligned.”
-- L. Ron Hubbard
Problems of Work
Time:Could the answer[to the question of why universal constants are right to support life] be God?
Dawkins:There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.
Collins:That's God
Dawkins:Yes. But it could be any of a billion Gods. It could be God of the Martians or of the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri. The chance of it's being a particular God, Yahweh, the God of Jesus, is vanishingly small-at the least, the onus is on you to demonstrate why you think that's the case.