Advice for a Beginner

[YuimaSLC]

Can I make one more recommendation, something that I am utilizing each day: reading as training-encouragement.
Most monasteries and centers have daily talks which have as one principle focus, to encourage training.
Thus, most of what I read, which usually follows a sitting session, is about 15-20 minutes long.

Many of the writings of teachers such as Roshi(s) Uchiyama, Maezumi, Katagiri, Suzuki, and Okumura, to name a handful,
are actually taken from talks/lectures given by them. And thus, just like Rev. Jundo's and Taigu's video talks (often of similar, modest length that I mention) they are encouragements and guidance to training.

Take them as helpful medicine, just like we consume food when hungry that is just the right proportion to help us, not overwhelm or overindulge appetites.

In gassho

Richard

[Jundo]

Can I make one more recommendation, something that I am utilizing each day: reading as training-encouragement.
Most monasteries and centers have daily talks which have as one principle focus, to encourage training.
Thus, most of what I read, which usually follows a sitting session, is about 15-20 minutes long.

Many of the writings of teachers such as Roshi(s) Uchiyama, Maezumi, Katagiri, Suzuki, and Okumura, to name a handful,
are actually taken from talks/lectures given by them. And thus, just like Rev. Jundo's and Taigu's video talks (often of similar, modest length that I mention) they are encouragements and guidance to training.

Take them as helpful medicine, just like we consume food when hungry that is just the right proportion to help us, not overwhelm or overindulge appetites.

In gassho

Richard

Excellent advice.

Sit, study a bit, work Practice, Sit, eating, everything in life, playing with the kids, Sit ... in balance, each in its proper place and a healthy portion.

This "Way beyond words and letters", by the way, was never completely beyond book study and "words and letters" (except for some rare radicals of centuries past). Primarily it meant to take the Sutras and other writings in small doses, not getting tangled in them, seeing right through them to the light which shines through and as the words. Know when to pick a book up, know when to put it down. Sit on a Zafu, not only in an armchair. Dogen, Bodhidharma, even 6th Ancestor Hui-Neng (though supposedly illiterate) were extremely well read and studied in the Buddhist texts. Perhaps it is better to say that we burn the books ... but only after we have read them!.

Gassho, J

[Jishin]

A belly tattoo like this is a good reminder to sit daily!

image.jpg

[Neika]

Just sit!