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WORLD HONORED ONE ASCENDS THE SEAT
If you sit patiently enough, and sit long enough, just perhaps the teacher will acknowledge you. If he holds out his arms and offers you the heart of the Dharma, will you grasp it and hold it closely? If you try and grasp it it will slip through your fingers, disappear from sight, lost forever.…
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A MEDITATION
The cat curls on the mat and you assume she is not practicing zazen, that is just something cats are prone to do. Hakuin Ekaku only ascribed such nature to dogs, but perhaps true Buddha nature is a secret held close by our felines.
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PRACTICING NOTHING
We assume our seats, listen for the bell and then do nothing. Doing nothing is far more difficult that doing something. Doing nothing is something that takes great practice. You can practice doing something, but eventually, with sufficient practice, you may master that something. You never master doing nothing, for nothing is infinitely broad, something…
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TE SHAN CARRYING HIS BUNDLE
Enter the room slowly and look carefully, since you are here to find something. There is much within this room, but you can see nothing save the old man, sitting calmly, staring at nothing, staring through you at nothing in particular. You know he is the teacher, the one for whom you have been searching,…
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NIGHT ZAZEN
The last inkin bell tone dies on the fading whisper of incense. Here and not here now and still now silence and Zen. The distant mountain kisses the moon’s curled lips.
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MORNING MEDITATION
Settling into perfect stillness, each of us in our brown robes on brown chairs, benches, cushions, note his entry is somewhere between the thundering of a forgotten storm or the garbage trucks crawling slowly down the street. Despite the early morning heat there is no breeze, only a large moth comes through the open windows…
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ZAZEN
Soon I will sit and stare into the wall into my heart into the universe and will find something or nothing but the center.
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ZUÒ CHÁN (ALONE AGAIN)
This morning I plucked a thread of silence from the dawn, watched carefully by a cardinal who knew not to break the purity of the moment. I do this as often as I can, sometimes grabbing one from the moon as it sits overhead holding out its promise of quietude as people retreat into homes.…
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ZAZEN
It does nothing, sits there, immobile and this deeply frustrates you. Things are not supposed to be absolutely still, some motion, however small is required. You stare at it, hoping it will move, will shake or lift, or even settle lower but it does nothing. You sit and stare in growing anger absolutely still doing…
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PACIFYING THE MIND OF THE SECOND PATRIARCH
Sitting on the cushion staring at the wall yet again, the wall seems familiar, as if you should know it, the paint, the fleck of something embedded in the paint. Still you search for something beyond the wall, hidden by the paint, but you find nothing, always nothing. Does this nothing finding frustrate you? Are…
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an old writer and his words 