What IS, here and now,

cannot be objectified.


Only in the partial optic

of 'self' and 'other'

does there seem to be

'time' and 'space'

separating 'entities'.


If there IS neither 'self' nor 'other,'

'who' is there to suffer any 'thing'?

It takes time

to make something

out of Nothing.

left to itself

Where the true is left to itself,

There is nothing false in it,

Which is Mind itself.


--- Hui Neng

the First Principle of Ch'an

Q: What is the First Principle of Ch'an?

A: If words could tell you, it would become the Second Principle.


--- Wen-yu

perfect

The present moment is perfect

in that

It is a perfect mystery.


--- J. Jennifer Matthews

unconditional acceptance

The mystery that is aware of this moment

has already accepted it, as it is.


We can't create this radical acceptance

and we are powerless to make it go away,

for the very nature of awareness

is to accept, without conditions, what is.


--- John Astin

omnipresence

Who sees God not everywhere,

Sees God nowhere.


--- Meister Eckhart

non-ego

Sokei-an found, after long consideration, that the common basis of both Buddhism (the religion of wisdom) and Christianity (the religion of love) is non-ego.

"Love that does not come from Emptiness is merely partiality."

"Christian love, like the wisdom of Buddhism, is also non-ego."

"When we take this [non-ego] into ourselves, it is wisdom. When we give it to another, it is love."

"With this one key in my mind, Christianity and Buddhism come to know one another."


--- Sokei-an

pure awareness

There is a state beyond consciousness

which is not unconscious...

It is pure awareness,

free from the subject-object nexus.


--- Nisargadatta Maharaj

in non-attention

It occurs to one's attention that one is.

When it was not in the attention of that one,

was the principle not there?

It was.

The principle is unblemished and without attention.

In non-attention it prevails.

Eternally.



--- Nisargadatta Maharaj

totality

When the consciousness fully understands the consciousness, will it embrace the body as itself? It is in totality; it is not going to pick out a fragment of the manifestation and say, "I am this."


--- Nisargadatta Maharaj

I AM, but not as an object.

Since we already are completely-what-we-ARE,

There is neither the need for

Nor the possibility of

Knowing "IT" as something perceived or conceived.

seamless

Q: There is really no "you" that is using the personality [as a tool]?

A: No. It is the situation that asks for the right tool,
for the right acting, the right doing.


--- Jean Klein

the functioning of Totality

Your real being is only availability, openness. There is nothing objective. In this openness, you find yourself adequate to every situation.

Look deeply into what is meant by "volition without volition," volition without interference by the "I-concept." It is not the person who wills an action but the situation which "wills" it.


--- Jean Klein

'Emptiness' is itself empty

The ultimate truth is

that there is no ultimate truth.


--- M. Siderits

In seeing

all that you are not,

in one moment,

no other state is projected

because it is not possible

to conceive of an unconditioned state.


--- Jean Klein

You will see

that all that you try to become

is only an object,

but openness

can never be an object.


--- Jean Klein

Truth cannot be perceived.

It can only be lived in the non-dual continuum,

the non-state where there is neither seer nor seen.


--- Jean Klein

One could say

that the 'seeker' refuses the gift of What IS

by searching for something 'other.'


Yet, Reality is,

always and only,

already given.

"We" don't have to look

In order to "see" that "this"

Is wherever "we" happen to be.


--- Wei Wu Wei

whole-mind IS; split-mind SEEMS to be

Belief in dualistic thinking is the problem.

In non-dual awareness, dualism only appears to be so.


--- Sailor Bob

a Chinese proverb

Tension is who you think you should be.

Relaxation is who you are.

as it is

Awareness always has been here.

It is what "Here" IS.

It is what you ARE.

It is never absent.

....Joan Tollifson

EVERYTHING is seen;

the SEEING is what-you-are, what IS.

what you are is not a what

For practical purposes, there is a body, but it is not what you are.

The body, world, and all else appear as objects in [or aspects of] consciousness.


--- John Wheeler

What IS, IS

Your true nature is now.

It is not a state, but an ever-present fact.


--- John Wheeler

a story about 'me'

...all suffering is

self-referencing conceptualization

that depends on the notion

of a separate 'I'.


--- John Wheeler

You are the timeless, unconditioned, ever-present, non-dual reality here and now.

Q: You say the answer lies in immediate, non-conceptual recognition of being awareness.

A: There is never a doubt about that, even now. The doubt only comes from looking away from the doubtless. This is not a recognition for someone, but only the straight out seeing that this is what is present.


---title and dialogue are from "clear in your heart" by John Wheeler

Essential to the God story is the denial that it is a story. -- David R. Loy

If triangles believed in God,

He would have three sides.


--- Yiddish proverb

Serenity is the coming to rest of all ways of taking things, the repose of named things: no truth has been taught by a Buddha for anyone, anywhere.

We are not saved by discovering any linguistic truth, for there is no such liberating truth to identify with.

This demotes all Buddhist categories to "skillful means," pointers that may be helpful but not if we take the finger for the moon.


--- David R. Loy, whose quoting of Nagarjuna formed the title

not trapped by discriminative concepts

Nowhere is there a principle that is right in all circumstances.

The method we use yesterday we may discard today and use again in the future;

there are no fixed right and wrong to decide whether we use it or not.


The capacity to pick times and snatch opportunities,

and never be at a loss to answer events belongs to the wise.


--- from the Book of Lieh-tzu

overlooked

According to Buddhism, what needs to be UNsettled is neither the God-question nor the Buddha-question but most of all the "commonsense" everyday world, riddled as it is with unconscious, because automatized, ontological commitments [e.g. to objectively existing self and other].

Merely by subverting such ontological claims, and without making any metaphysical claims of its own, the Buddhist deconstruction of all self-existence (especially our own) can allow something else to manifest---something that has always been there/here yet has been overlooked in our concern to reify (objectify) things in order to fixate on them.

Such deconstruction can heal us by revealing a less dualistic way of understanding and experiencing the relation between us and the supposedly objective world we suppose ourselves to be "in." ....this leaves the world ESSENTIALLY mysterious in a fashion that cannot be resolved and does not need to be resolved.


--- David R. Loy

deconstructing a "commonsense" dualism

...if there is no one nontemporal who is born and dies,

then there are only the events of birth and death.

But if there are only those events, with no one IN them,

then there really is no birth and death.


Such is the consequence of nonduality between me

and that most uncomfortable attribute of all,

"my" birth/death.


--- David Loy commenting on a passage from Dogen's "Genjo-koan"

fixed boundaries?

If the "self" is a construct, so is the "external" world,

for when there is no inside there is no outside.


--- David R. Loy

will, be thine - Meister Eckhart

According to Mahayana, our identity is always SHUNYA, "empty,"

yet realizing that is not problematic,

because our emptiness/formlessness is liberated

to take on the form or forms appropriate to the situation.


--- from "Awareness Bound and Unbound" by David R. Loy

how could there ?

How could there be "a self" ?


Wouldn't it require a second one

to know the first ?


How could there be "an other" ?

Wouldn't that require a self ?

who ?

Suffering (positive and negative)

is synonymous with

dualism.

put it down

Zen Buddhism is by definition indefinable, and in the context of its study, nothing--not even nothing--can be defined. In the Diamond Sutra, we are told that there is no formulation of consummate truth. The Buddha himself, herself, or itself cannot be distinguished by any characteristic whatever. Huang Po says:

"This spiritually enlightening nature is without beginning, as ancient as the Void, subject to neither birth nor destruction, neither existing nor not existing, neither impure nor pure, neither clamorous nor silent, neither old nor young, occupying no space, having neither inside nor outside, size nor form, color nor sound. It cannot be looked for or sought, comprehended by wisdom or knowledge, explained in words, contacted materially or reached by meritorious achievement. All the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, with all wriggling things possessed of life, share in this great Nirvanic nature."

Despite such vivid cautions, some students understand this empty nature conceptually, and risk getting stuck in an undifferentiated place where correct and incorrect are the same, where male and female are the same--where all configurations disappear into a kind of pudding. The great teachers of the past adressed this risk directly:

The venerable Yen-yang asked Chao-chu, "When one has not brought a single thing, what then?"

Chao-chu said, "Put it down."

When you cling to nothing as something, then you yourself are not truly empty, and the emptiness you cherish is no more than an idea. Within this NOTION of emptiness, you can be persuaded that the homeless are an illusion, the rainforests are not being destroyed, there are no traditional peoples who are dying out, there is no one freezing or starving or dying from schrapnel in the former Yugoslavia. When you run over a child in your car, there is no child, after all. Put down that "not a single thing" or your successors will use it to enhance and support brutality and imperialism.


--- Robert Aitken

awakeness

Awakeness

Is

Now

and Now

and...

freefall

Mystical Understanding is a freefall...

Conceptless, open, and free.


--- Wayne Liquorman (paraphrased)

"Totality"

Whatever may seem to be lacking,

"Complete Isness" already "IS."

This is this. That is all.

While you are using your mind symbolically, that is, depending on names and comparisons, you cannot see Reality. See Reality first, then use your mind. The glass of water---what is it? This is this. That is all. There is just one Reality. Transcendental, actual---just names. Surprise the mind and see Reality directly.

When you talk you need names, but in meditation you do not need a word. We start in naked silence. When you find real meditation without a word, you attain true wisdom [Prajna]. Your mind becomes pure, and you can see your true soul directly. When your mind is free from all conceptions that do not truly exist---Is it good or bad?---you will find true emancipation.


--- Sokei-an

It is not thinking of truth; it is not looking at truth as a picture.

When we are thinking about the highest truth, we think and think and think until we come to the ultimate, then we cannot think anymore. Our thinking mind can go no further; it is at the edge of a great cliff.

It's like using a drill. As long as you can drill, it's not the end. When there is no resistance left, when you can drill no more, it goes "Ztt" and the end is reached. We say thought has penetrated through reason. When you have reached the true conclusion, there is no word. When you have destroyed the last word and arrived at chaos, it is infinite. If you come to God or Buddha or anything, it is not the end. But when you have destroyed the last word, when you cannot think of anything more, then you will see that endless gap.

Perhaps you will turn back because you are afraid. But the Zen student is not afraid; the Zen student will leap into the infinite. You must jump into it. Just jump! (Not with your body; your body still sits where it is; so you need not be afraid.) Jump into that conclusion!

While you have a word, you are not a good student. While there is some picture in your brain, you have not reached the end... You are thinking about it, but you don't SEE it. You are looking at something, so you haven't come to the end yet. As long as you are thinking something is there, and you are thinking about it, it is not the real end. But when there is nothing to think about, and your faculty of thinking has come to an end, and you all of a sudden throw yourself into chaos---into the infinite---your mind and body and soul all disappear. That is the real end.

Shakyamuni's enlightenment under the bodhi tree is an example of reaching the end. He proved Nirvana. There is nobody whose name is God, whose name is man, neither devil nor demon, who lives in Nirvana. Nirvana is infinite, boundless.


from "The Zen Eye" by Sokei-an

the only spot that speaks loudly about the truth of the universe

Certainly you have a center in yourself. Where is it? If you try to find it, you will search in vain; but if you do not try, it is there like a moonprint in the water. You cannot grasp it. Do not touch it! The moon is floating on the surface of the waves. If you abandon all your attention toward anything, you will come into that center.


--- Sokei-an

"Self-awakening only I call my teacher"- Buddha

"Self-awakening" is awakening to one's own self. But this self is a Great Self...not this self called Mr. Smith, but the Self that has no name which is everywhere.

Everyone can be this Self that is the Great Self, but you cannot awaken to this Self through your own notions. When you abandon your self (your notions, your thoughts, your desires), all of a sudden you will find your Self there.

You do not need to go anywhere. You find you are already there.


from "The Zen Eye" by Sokei-an

THIS is ALL !

The Buddha's Buddhism was, so to speak, simply his realization of God, which in Japanese is called Satori. He had left his friends, his brothers, and his teachers Ramaputra and Kalama because their attitude was was to become one with Brahma in meditation, so that meditation became the main reason for surviving on earth.

The Buddha left them. He could not accept such a theory, and he went alone to sit under the Bodhi tree. All of a sudden---he realized: THIS is God, THIS is ALL! The endless sky is the extension of this body, and the earth, covered with mountains and divided by rivers, is also this very body---and trees, weeds, insects, flowers, and other human beings are also Buddha's body; and this soul is the soul of the universe, the soul of God.

He realized that prayer (and reasoning) are not necessary to prove God. All of a sudden
---"THIS is THAT." THIS is his standpoint.


--- from "The Zen Eye" by Sokei-an

seemingly

In-seeing (whole-seeing)
is cut off (cut up)
by out (divided) -seeing.

In the absence of out-seeing, it is present. --- Wei Wu Wei


...in every state Prajna is there, but it is covered by the turmoil of the mind

...in quietude, Prajna, which is innate, appears. --- Sokei-an

Rest...

Relax,

'I' can neither be affirmed nor denied,

Neither captured nor gotten away from.

Omnipresence

Everything that noumenally we are---is godhead-noumenon.

Everything that phenomenally we may be---is also godhead-noumenon.

Whatever godhead-noumenon (or noumenal godhead) may be---noumenally we are.

Whatever godhead-noumenon (or noumenal godhead) may be---phenomenally we are.

That is because no "thing" is, other than as objective phenomenon, which necessarily is the appearance, or manifestation, of noumenal godhead.

Noumenal godhead is every objective appearance, while whatever is not objective appearance is nothing but noumenal godhead.

There are no separate bits of noumenal godhead---for noumenal godhead is non-objectivity, which being the subjective source of conceptualisation, cannot be its object.

Therefore noumenal godhead knows no conceptual limitations, such as space-time.

Spaceless and timeless, there can neither be one (whole) nor parts.

There can only be UBIQUITY.


--- Wei Wu Wei

I am, but not as an object.

[Sometimes] on examination it will be found that the "non-existent," the "void," "non-being," etc., of which so much has been written and taught...in fact represents nothing whatever but a philosopher's attempt to objectify subjectivity.

However, [trying] to conceive them as objects is simply looking in the wrong direction...these so familiar emptinesses are not objects at all, for they are what the perceiver of them is. He has reached a dead-end in his analysis and finds himself face to face with his own nature. But instead of recognising it as such and realizing that his void is "what an eye sees when it looks at itself," he goes on trying to objectify what he can never see by turning it into an objective concept.

[Fortunately] there has always been an alternative when the dead-end of conceptualization has been reached, and that is just to turn round and wake up to the truth. Having arrived at the gate [our philosopher] tried to prise it open, not realizing that he was already on the right side of it.

The traveller has only to turn round in order to find that he is already at his destination, which is home. The sought is then seen to be the seeker.


---Wei Wu Wei on the Heart Sutra

effects in consciousness

If we could apperceive that subject is always and also object, and object always and also subject, we should be able profoundly to understand that neither could possibly have any independent existence as either, which IS the bodhisattvic vision wherein there is no see-er nor anything seen---but just a functioning that produces effects in what we know as consciousness.

That, indeed, is freedom, for all bondage is limitation consequent on identification with a supposed object which could not exist as such. There is no other freedom, and it is liberation from all that is not joy.


--- Wei Wu Wei on the Heart Sutra

void-seeing

What is called "voidness" is not an object, but a functioning. It is void because seeing cannot see seeing.

Appearing (form) is not an object, BUT A FUNCTIONING. It appears as an objectivisation.

To "empty," therefore, is to apperceive non-objectively (void-seeing): no thing seen as such by no see-er as such.

Doctrines also are ways of seeing, not things seen; they are not a description of absolute truths---for nothing of the kind could exist.


--- Wei Wu Wei on the Heart Sutra

whole-seeing

Perceiving is everything, "Seeing, seeing, seeing," as Rumi cried---and he was not referring to phenomenally-based observation of objects by subjects, but to the noumenally-based in-seeing that is devoid of both !

In-seeing does not mean looking in one direction instead of another, "in" instead of "out", but seeing from the source, which is noumenon, not from manifestation, which is phenomenon.

The one is whole-seeing, the other is divided-seeing: that is the essential, for a spatial discrimination could not be correct.


--- Wei Wu Wei

The Heart Sutra

The burden of the Heart Sutra

Is not the nature of objects

But the seeing of them,

Which is what they are.


--- Wei Wu Wei

the ground-principles of Buddhism

If I am requested to formulate the ground-principles of the philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism, and, indeed, of all the schools of Buddhism, I would suggest the foillowing:

(1) All is momentary.

(2) All is empty.

(3) All is without self.

(4) All is such as it is.

These four tenets, as it were, are so closely interrelated that, stand or fall, they all inevitably share one fate together.


--- from "Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism" by D.T. Suzuki