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

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

is this moment not complete?

When nothing is wanted, nothing is wanting.

movement/stillness

Stillness is the common denominator of all movement.

Zen and Swordsmanship

...the Mind in its suchness is at once movable and immovable,

it is constantly flowing, never "stopping" at any point,

and yet there is in it a center never subject to any kind of movement,

remaining forever one and the same.


The difficulty is how to identify this center of immovability

with its never-stopping movements themselves.


--- from D.T. Suzuki's "Zen and Japanese Culture"

exist < L exsistere, to stand out

There's no time for anyone to exist.

there's no time

There's no time to conceive 'what' is.

already - always - IS

There is no "doing" Enlightenment, as doing takes time.

Enlightenment already, always IS.

awareness/now

NOW is the common denominator of awareness,

just as awareness is the common denominator for all experience.


--- William Samuel

Awareness is single, only, and all-inclusive

There seems to be a time in our spiritual development

when we awaken (sometimes very suddenly)

to the wonderful realization

that THIS conscious Awareness, right here, right now,

REALLY IS ALL-INCLUSIVE!



That no "thing," no object of perception, no idea, thought or feeling

is EXTERNAL!

INDEED, THEY ARE EVERY ONE INCLUDED

WITHIN THIS AWARENESS-I-AM!


--- William Samuel