intellect will never bring us to the abode of rest

Seppo was one of the great masters towards the end of the T'ang dynasty; one of his favorite responses was, "What is it?" If one should ask him, "What are we facing this very moment?" he might say, "What is it?"

This counter-question on the part of Seppo shows how intimately he feels the presence of "it" or "this." He wants to make his questioner apprehend it as intimately as himself, and he does not know how to communicate it without appealing to conceptualism, so he blurts out, "What is this? Cannot you see it? It is right here this very moment. If I resort to words, it is three thousand miles away."


--- D.T. Suzuki

Prajna

The direct response of the "sage"

is the same thing as "his" Understanding.


--- Wayne Liquorman

We can say...

that because of knowing itself, being is;

knowing is being, and being is knowing.


Also... that being is seeing and seeing is acting,

that there is no being without seeing and acting.


--- D.T. Suzuki (paraphrased)

"What IS...the eternal, intemporal moment"

All composite things are impermanent,

They belong in the realm of birth and death;

When birth and death is transcended,

Absolute tranquillity is realized and blessed we are.


--- Buddhist stanza quoted by D.T. Suzuki

the last stage of simplification

Zen is the casting off of all one thinks one possesses, even life, to get back to the ultimate state of being, the "Original Abode."

This can be done by every one of us, for we are what we are because of it, and without it we are nothing.

This is to be called the last stage of simplification, since things cannot be reduced to any simpler terms.


--- D. T. Suzuki

the most primary feeling

The experience the human mind has when it is identified with the totality of things...is the most primary feeling which lies at the basis of every form of psychic functioning we are capable of. --- D.T. Suzuki

where there is no looking, truth is

Where is there

for any one

to look for

any thing?

(and it can't be bottled)

Truth is not a mosaic,

but a spring.


--- Sokei-an

counterparts

If there's 'knowledge' - there's a 'knower.'

They're stuck with each other.

the worth of this moment is absolute

Beauty is ever alive, because for it there is no past, no future, but the present. You hesitate, turn your head, and it is no more.The morning-glory must be admired at its first awakening as the sun rises; so it is with the lotus. This is the way the Japanese people have learned from Zen teaching how to love Nature, how to be in touch with the life running through all objects including human beings.

The pine tree lives for a thousand years;

The morning-glory but for a single day;

Yet both have fulfilled their destiny.

There is no fatalism in this. Each moment pulsates with life both in the pine tree and the morning-glory. The worth of this moment is not measured by the one thousand years of the one and the single day of the other, but by the moment itself. For this is absolute in each of them. Therefore, beauty is not to be spoiled by the thought of fatalism or evanescence.


---from 'Zen and Japanese Culture' by D.T. Suzuki