Fukan-zazengi | Part Four
When you rise from sitting, move your body slowly and stand up calmly. Do not move abruptly. You should see that to transcend both ordinary people and sages and to die sitting or standing, depends upon the power of zazen. Moreover, your discriminating mind cannot understand how buddhas and patriarchs taught their students with a finger, a pole, a needle, or a mallet, or how they transmitted the Way with a hossu, a fist, a staff, or by shouting. Needless to say, these actions cannot be understood by practicing to attain superhuman powers. These actions come from the practice which is prior to discriminating mind.
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
No intellectual struggle can bring about liberation. Each iteration of an ideology creates its antithesis - it merely acts to polarize. It is the opposite of peace, liberation, and harmony.
KNOW YOUR TRUTH
It is often tempting to rely on ideologies as filters on how we experience the world and define truth.
ORDINARY, EVERYDAY WONDER
If we can simply return to and be present with our activity in this very moment, the ordinary, everyday wonder of our lives shines forth.
IT IS WHAT IT IS
Behind the closed door of our judgments is where the magic of our everyday life resides.
THE SECOND ARROW
There's a parable the Buddha gifted us to relate with suffering more skillfully. Any time we suffer affliction, two arrows are let loose in our direction. To be pierced by the first arrow is painful. To be struck by the second arrow is even more excruciating.
FILL YOUR HEART
Our daily practice helps us widen our window of tolerance so we can face what is coming up for us openly and without judgment. When we experience this way, our relationship with pain and suffering transforms…
SEE THE CONTEXT
Sometimes we get so fixated on our point of view that we see everything through the lens of our conceptual understanding. There's an old saying that "if you only have a hammer, then everything looks like a nail".
EXPLORE DEVOTION
When we place our hearts and our longings outside of the realm of the small self, we create the possibility of wonder. In this place, we explore the boundlessness that is our true nature.