What is the difference between
your experience of existence and that of a saint?
The saint knows that the spiritual path
is a sublime chess game with God
and that the Beloved has just made
such a fantastic move that the saint
is now continually tripping over joy
and bursting out in laughter and saying, “I Surrender!”
Whereas, my dear, I’m afraid you still think
you have a thousand serious moves.
-Hafiz
When practitioners of Zen fail to transcend the world of their senses and thoughts, all they do has no value. Yet, when senses and thoughts are obliterated all the roads to universal mind are blocked and there is no entrance. The primal mind has to be recognised along with the senses and thoughts. It neither belongs to them nor is independent of them. Don’t build your understanding on your senses and thoughts, yet don’t look for the mind separate from your senses and thoughts. Don’t attempt to grasp Reality by pushing away your senses and thoughts. Unobstructed freedom is to be neither attached nor detached. This is enlightenment.
Huang-Po
I have returned to the root and effort is over. From the first there has been no one to see or hear anything. There is nothing outside of my true home. Rivers quietly flow and red flowers bloom.
Kuo-An Shih-Yuan
All verbal teachings are just to cure an illness. Different illnesses require different cures. This is why sometimes it is said there is only Buddha and sometimes that there is no Buddha. True teachings cure the illness. If the cure works, the teachings are true. If they don’t cure the illness, the teachings are false. True teachings are false it they create opinions. False teachings are true if they destroy delusions. The illness is an illusion anyway, so all the cures are also illusions.
Baizhang
Buddha-babble blocks the Way.
Ikkyu
If you use your mind to try and understand reality, you will understand neither your mind nor reality. If you try and understand reality without using your mind, you will understand both your mind and reality.
Bodhidharma
The way is not difficult, for those without preferences.
Seng-T’san
Enlightenment is constant awareness of this world as inherently divine, of life as a loving partnership with God and every moment as an opportunity to offer and receive love.
Radhanath Swami
“We gain enlightenment like the moon reflecting in the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the whole sky are reflected in a drop of dew in the grass.”
Dōgen Zenji