Shohaku Okumura in his latest book about Zen chants and texts, Living by vow, writes the following (p.167-168):
(...) When we see the flower without thinking "this is beautiful" or "What is this flower called?" we really meet the flower itself. When we see the flower without thinking, we find that our life, this body and mind, and the life of the flower are the same life. There is no separation. We can say:"I am blooming there as a flower". To extinguish our views, to let go of thought, or to negate our own way of thinking is not negative. It makes our life very vivid and dynamic(...).
If you come here with your petty pretty understanding of the path and get it approved and stamped, you are in for a big disappointment. And this disappointment is part of practice itself.
This path is about loosing, loosing our beliefs, our ideas, our theories and breaking the little boxes in which we try to put everything away.
When will we wake up to the fact that that all sutras, all shobogenzo, countless teachings take place here and now in the body-mind of Buddha, that to study sutra and texts is not to study dusty books or scrolls coming from the past, that Dogen was not born yesterday and we are so old already, that once we surrender to this hidden-treasure-in-full-view, when we strip everything to just let the original face shine, it meets all beings and things as just an expression of itself?!! YOU ARE THE SHOBOGENZO!!!Wake up! It about you and your life and not old guys playing little pretty koan games and lovely poetic contests.
gassho
Taigu
(...) When we see the flower without thinking "this is beautiful" or "What is this flower called?" we really meet the flower itself. When we see the flower without thinking, we find that our life, this body and mind, and the life of the flower are the same life. There is no separation. We can say:"I am blooming there as a flower". To extinguish our views, to let go of thought, or to negate our own way of thinking is not negative. It makes our life very vivid and dynamic(...).
If you come here with your petty pretty understanding of the path and get it approved and stamped, you are in for a big disappointment. And this disappointment is part of practice itself.
This path is about loosing, loosing our beliefs, our ideas, our theories and breaking the little boxes in which we try to put everything away.
When will we wake up to the fact that that all sutras, all shobogenzo, countless teachings take place here and now in the body-mind of Buddha, that to study sutra and texts is not to study dusty books or scrolls coming from the past, that Dogen was not born yesterday and we are so old already, that once we surrender to this hidden-treasure-in-full-view, when we strip everything to just let the original face shine, it meets all beings and things as just an expression of itself?!! YOU ARE THE SHOBOGENZO!!!Wake up! It about you and your life and not old guys playing little pretty koan games and lovely poetic contests.
gassho
Taigu
Taigu
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