conceptual extension in space and time

All events, all shifts are in time.

Because without time and space, there is no world in which to have any sort of shift or event.

So, people are waiting for separation to fall away...but essentially they are waiting for TIME ITSELF to fall away, aren't they?

Because separation IS time.


--- Jeff Foster

this as it is

There is no perception of Suchness in Suchness.
--- from the Prajnaparamita


When there is nothing to see, what is it he sees so clearly?
--- a Ch'an master

if the bard was on fb ?

Methinks thou doth ATTEST too much.

blessed are the poor in spirit

[Meister] Eckhart has much to say about the saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," which is the most illuminating statement in the Bible. What does "poor" mean here, asks Eckhart. He replies: "The poor man, the one who is poor, is the one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing."

[Upon awakening] a Zen monk said, "Last year my poverty was something like the point of a drill, a very small point. My poverty was such that I had nothing but the small point of a drill. This year my poverty is such that there is no drill, and there is no ground in which its point could be inserted. So I am entirely poor."

This corresponds to what Eckhart means...The mind must be entirely empty of the things we generally put in it. When this takes place there is real God, that is, real poverty---not to want anything, not to know anything, not to have anything.


--- D.T. Suzuki

looking for something that could never be lost?

You are primarily Buddhas; you are not going to be Buddhas for the first time.


If you have the least desire to be something better than you actually are,

if you hurry up to the slightest degree in search of something,

you are already going against the Unborn.


--- Bankei

no boundary

Undistracted, undivided

by hope and fear,

the Buddha awakes

to/as What IS.

Prajna and Vijnana

Zen masters wish us to see into that unconscious consciousness which accompanies our ordinary dualistically-determined consciousness. This is a sort of undifferentiated knowledge, knowledge of non-distinction, sometimes called transcendental Prajna-knowledge.

In Buddhism, generally two forms of knowledge are distinguished: one is Prajna and the other is Vijnana. Prajna is all-knowledge, or transcendental knowledge, i.e. knowledge undifferentiated. Vijnana is our relative knowledge in which subject and object are distinguishable, including both knowledge of concrete particular things and that of the abstract and universal.

Prajna underlies all Vijnana, but Vijnana is not conscious of Prajna and always thinks it is sufficient in itself and with itself, having no need for Prajna. But it is not from Vijnana, relative knowledge, that we get spiritual satisfaction. However much of Vijnana we may accumulate, we can never find our abode of rest in it; for we somehow feel something missing in the inmost part of our being which science and philosophy can never appease.

Science and philosophy do not apparently exhaust Reality; what is still left in Reality, according to Buddhism, turns towards Prajna for its recognition. Our spiritual yearnings are never completely satisfied unless this Prajna is awakened, whereby the whole field of consciousness is exposed, inside and outside, to our full view. Reality has now nothing to hide from us.


---from "Living by Zen" by D. T. Suzuki